Associations of Cumulative Family Risk With Academic Performance and Substance Involvement: Tests of Moderation by Child Reading Engagement.

Background: Exposure to cumulative contextual risk within the family early in life increases children's risk for substance involvement and related difficulties, including school failure, in adolescence and young adulthood. However, potential protective factors that buffer these risk associations are relatively untested, yet such tests are needed to improve existing preventive interventions for enhancing resilience among vulnerable children. Objectives: This study tested child reading engagement with parents at home as a moderator of cumulative family risk associations with adolescent substance use and academic performance as well as young adult substance abuse. Methods: Population register data as well as parent-report and adolescent-report data from 6,963 participants of the 1986 Northern Finland Birth Cohort study were analyzed via structural equation modeling with latent variable interactions. Results: Results showed that child reading engagement moderated the associations of cumulative family risk with both adolescent academic performance and young adult substance abuse, but not with adolescent substance use. The highest levels of academic performance were observed under conditions of low risk and high reading engagement. Interestingly, cumulative family risk had a small positive association with substance abuse when reading engagement was low and a negative association with the young adult outcome when reading engagement was high. Conclusions/Importance: Moderation tests revealed complex interaction forms that may have implications for both theory and family-based preventive interventions.

Longitudinal Pathways from Cumulative Contextual Risk at Birth to School Functioning in Adolescence: Analysis of Mediation Effects and Gender Moderation.

Children and adolescents exposed to multiple contextual risks are more likely to have academic difficulties and externalizing behavior problems than those who experience fewer risks. This study used data from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1986 (a population-based study; N = 6961; 51 % female) to investigate (a) the impact of cumulative contextual risk at birth on adolescents' academic performance and misbehavior in school, (b) learning difficulties and/or externalizing behavior problems in childhood as intervening mechanisms in the association of cumulative contextual risk with functioning in adolescence, and (c) potential gender differences in the predictive associations of cumulative contextual risk at birth with functioning in childhood or adolescence. The results of the structural equation modeling analysis suggested that exposure to cumulative contextual risk at birth had negative associations with functioning 16 years later, and academic difficulties and externalizing behavior problems in childhood mediated some of the predictive relations. Gender, however, did not moderate any of the associations. Therefore, the findings of this study have implications for the prevention of learning and conduct problems in youth and future research on the impact of cumulative risk exposure.

Parent Training to Reduce Problem Behaviors over the Transition to High School: Tests of Indirect Effects through Improved Emotion Regulation Skills.

Adolescent problem behaviors are costly for individuals and society. Promoting the self-regulatory functioning of youth may help prevent the development of such behaviors. Parent-training and family intervention programs have been shown to improve child and adolescent self-regulation. This study helps fill gaps in knowledge by testing for indirect effects of the Common Sense Parenting® (CSP) program on reduced substance use, conduct problems, and school suspensions through previously identified short-term improvements in parents' reports of their children's emotion regulation skills. Over two cohorts, 321 low income families of 8th graders were enrolled and randomly assigned to either the standard CSP program, an adapted CSP Plus program, or a minimal-contact control condition. Pretest, posttest, 1-year follow-up, and 2-year follow-up survey assessments were completed by parents and students with 94% retention. Intent-to-treat multivariate path analyses were conducted. Neither intervention had statistically significant total effects on the three targeted adolescent outcomes. CSP, but not CSP Plus, had statistically significant indirect effects on reduced substance use and school suspensions at the 1-year follow-up as well as conduct problems and school suspensions at the 2-year follow-up through increased child emotion regulation skills at posttest. Findings provide some support for emotion regulation as one pathway through which the intervention was associated, indirectly, with reduced substance use, conduct problems, and school suspensions among at-risk students over the high school transition.

Universal screening in grades K-2: A systematic review and meta-analysis of early reading curriculum-based measures.

In reading, several curriculum-based measures (CBM) are used for universal screening in Grades K-2. This study summarized the criterion-related validity of early reading CBM tools used in the context of universal screening. After the application of the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 54 studies (53 documents across 34 articles, 16 dissertations, and 3 technical reports) were identified through a systematic review of the literature through December 2018. Forty-eight studies (47 documents across 31 articles, 15 dissertations, and 2 technical reports) were included in the meta-analysis, representing 47,168 students in the US who were enrolled in Grades K, 1, or 2 when they completed the screening measure. A random effects meta-analysis with robust variance estimation was conducted separately for concurrent and predictive correlations to estimate the average effect size between each early reading CBM and the reading outcome measures. Aggregated concurrent Pearson correlation coefficients (r) ranged from 0.343 (phoneme segmenting CBM predicting more complex reading skills) to 0.750 (nonsense words CBM predicting oral reading skills). Aggregated correlations were similar in magnitude for predictive validity. For some measures, correlations were moderated by administration lag. Findings have implications for research and practice regarding the use of universal reading screeners in the early elementary grades.

Evaluation of schedule frequency and density when monitoring progress with curriculum-based measurement.

School-based professionals often use curriculum-based measurement of reading (CBM-R) to monitor the progress of students with reading difficulties. Much of the extant CBM-R progress monitoring research has focused on its use for making group-level decisions, and less is known about using CBM-R to make decisions at the individual level. To inform the administration and use of CBM-R progress monitoring data, the current study evaluated the utility of 4 progress monitoring schedules that differed in frequency (once or twice weekly) and density (1 or 3 probes). Participants included 79 students (43% female; 51% White, 25% Hispanic or Latino, 11% Black or African American, 1% other, 12% unknown) in Grades 2 (n = 45) and 4 (n = 34) who were monitored across 10 weeks (February to May). Consistent with a focus on individual-level decision making, we used regression and mixed-factorial analysis of variances (ANOVAs) to evaluate the effect of progress monitoring schedule frequency, schedule density, grade level, and their interaction effects on CBM-R intercept, slope, SE of the slope (SEb), and SE of the estimate (SEE). Results revealed that (a) progress monitoring schedule frequency and density influenced the magnitude of SEb, (b) density had a significant but negligible impact on SEE, and (c) grade level had a significant effect on slope and intercept. None of the interaction effects were statistically significant. Findings from this study have implications for practitioners and researchers aiming to monitor students' progress with CBM-R. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Differential item functioning across race and ethnicity for the Emotional and Behavioral Screener.

The objective of this study was to assess the measurement invariance of items from the Emotional and Behavioral Screener (EBS) across racial and ethnic groups and assess the impact of differential item functioning (DIF) on test scores from the EBS. Participants were 4,856 first-grade students (49% female) who were diverse with regard to race and ethnicity (45% African American, 41% Hispanic/Latino, and 14% Caucasian). Classroom teachers rated each student on the EBS during the fall semester screening window. Item response theory modeling was combined with ordinal regression to investigate the presence and impact of differential item functioning across 3 race and ethnicity groups. The findings suggest that items from the EBS exhibit small to negligible levels of DIF, and the limited DIF that was present does not significantly impact overall scores. Researchers and practitioners can have confidence that scores from the EBS are relatively unaffected by test bias when measuring the emotional and behavioral risk of young students from African American, Hispanic/Latino, or Caucasian backgrounds. (PsycINFO Database Record

Does Educational Marginalization Mediate the Path from Childhood Cumulative Risk to Criminal Offending?

PURPOSE: Early exposure to multiple risk factors is known to predict involvement in criminal offending. The purpose of this study was to examine the processes responsible for this association. Specifically, the focus was on the capacity of adolescent educational experience to mediate the effect of childhood cumulative risk (CCR) on criminal offending, net of expected continuity in antisocial propensity and behavior. METHODS: Data from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort Study 1986 (n = 5,743) were used to estimate a structural equation model to examine the hypothesized pathways. The educational pathway was captured by a latent variable (educational marginalization) consisting of indicators of low academic performance, weak school attachment, and low educational aspirations. RESULTS: CCR had a strong positive relation with educational marginalization, which, in turn, emerged as a statistically significant predictor of having criminal record by age 19. Although continuity in antisocial behavior accounted for most of the total effect of CCR on criminal offending, one third of it was mediated by educational marginalization. CONCLUSIONS: The results highlight the adolescent educational experience as a promising target of intervention in efforts to curb criminal careers among children at risk.

Cumulative contextual risk at birth and adolescent substance initiation: Peer mediation tests.

BACKGROUND: Children who experience multiple adversities, such as prenatal exposure to drugs and poverty, early in development are at increased risk for the early initiation of alcohol and cigarette use. However, studies that examine potentially malleable processes associated with substance use initiation in the context of exposure to cumulative stressors are scant. This study examined associations between cumulative contextual risk at birth and initiation of alcohol and cigarette use in adolescence, testing childhood peer marginalization and peer aggression and behavior problems as mediating mechanisms. Analyses further adjusted for fearfulness/inhibition and hyperactivity/distractibility to determine if the hypothesized mediating mechanisms were significant after accounting for temperamental characteristics associated with substance initiation. METHODS: Participants were 6190 adolescents from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1986 Study. Data were collected on cumulative contextual risk (parent reports), substance initiation (adolescent reports), childhood peer processes and behavior problems (teacher reports), and temperamental characteristics (teacher reports). Novel discrete-time survival mediation analysis was conducted to test the hypothesized mediating mechanisms. RESULTS: Initial analyses showed that the associations between cumulative contextual risk and both alcohol and cigarette initiation were mediated by childhood peer processes and behavior problems; however, the indirect effects became statistically non-significant after adding the temperament variables, which themselves predicted substance initiation. CONCLUSIONS: Targeting peer processes may not be an effective way to interrupt pathways leading from early contextual risk to substance initiation. Instead, early screening and intervention efforts to delay substance initiation may need to be tailored to the individual temperamental characteristics of targeted participants.

Cumulative contextual risk at birth in relation to adolescent substance use, conduct problems, and risky sex: General and specific predictive associations in a Finnish birth cohort.

BACKGROUND: Research indicates that risk factors cluster in the most vulnerable youth, increasing their susceptibility for adverse developmental outcomes. However, most studies of cumulative risk are cross-sectional or short-term longitudinal, and have been based on data from the United States or the United Kingdom. Using data from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1986 Study (NFBC1986), we examined cumulative contextual risk (CCR) at birth as a predictor of adolescent substance use and co-occurring conduct problems and risky sex to determine the degree to which CCR predicts specific outcomes over-and-above its effect on general problem behavior, while testing for moderation of associations by gender. METHODS: Analyses of survey data from 6963 participants of the NFBC1986 followed from the prenatal/birth period into adolescence were conducted using structural equation modeling. RESULTS: CCR had long-term positive associations with first-order substance use, conduct problems, and risky sex factors, and, in a separate analysis, with a second-order general problem behavior factor. Further analyses showed that there was a positive specific effect of CCR on risky sex, over-and-above general problem behavior, for girls only. CONCLUSIONS: This study, conducted within the Finnish context, showed that CCR at birth had long-term general and specific predictive associations with substance use and co-occurring problem behaviors in adolescence; effects on risky sex were stronger for girls. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that early exposure to CCR can have lasting adverse consequences, suggesting the need for early identification and intervention efforts for vulnerable children.