Interrater reliability of teacher rating scales for children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder

Interrater reliability of eight teacher rating scales designed to assess characteristics of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder was investigated. Coteachers of 46 students completed the rating scales. The students, ages 8–17, were designated as having a Serious Emotional Disturbance. The resulting interrater reliability correlation coefficients ranged from .62 to .87. The percentage of variance shared between raters ranged from a low of 38.4% (the ACTeRS Oppositional factor and the CBCL-TRF Attention Problems factor) to 75.7% (ADHD Rating Scale). The percent of shared variance was higher for younger children. Kappa scores evaluating rater agreement were highest at the two standard deviations above the mean cutoff. The reliability coefficients were consistent with those reported in prior research.     

Multinational efforts in substance abuse prevention

This article is a review of the world-wide efforts of clinicians and researchers in the area of diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of multiple substance abuse. Represented are studies in cross-cultural prevention research and substance abuse which address the new and burgeoning area of clinical prevention research from a multidisciplinary perspective. The article also discusses the theory and methods in prevention in New York City, Israel, Italy, Spain, and in Cali, Columbia. The authors hope that this information will result in greater recognition for the need to understand effective measures of drug prevention, and to develop new research directions which shall enrich and enhance our present state of knowledge in substance abuse prevention programming.     

Do Obese Women Have Poorer Social Relationships Than Nonobese Women? Reports by Self,Friends, and Coworkers

Both theory and research suggest that obese women may have relatively poor social relationships even if their self-reports about their relationships do not differ from the reports of nonobese women. Seventy-seven obese and 78 nonobese women completed self-report measures of social anxiety, social self-esteem, social competence, social network size, and perceived social support from friends and family. Friends and coworkers also rated these women on the same measures. The self-reports of obese and nonobese women did not differ significantly on any of these social measures, and ratings from friends and coworkers of obese women were not different from ratings of nonobese women by friends and coworkers. These results suggest that obese women may be able to overcome prejudice against obese people in their relationships with others.     

Can mental rotation begin before perception finishes?

We conducted six experiments to determine if mental rotation can begin before perception finishes, as allowed by continuous flow models but not discrete stage models of information processing. The results of Experiments 1–3 showed that the effect of shape discriminability on RT was underadditive with the effect of stimulus orientation, suggesting that mental rotation began before shape discrimination had finished and that the two processes overlapped in time. The results of Experiments 4–6 indicated that mental rotation can overlap with color discriminations as well. In both sets of experiments, however, the amount of underadditivity tended to be much less than predicted by models allowing interference-free overlap. This suggests that mental rotation can overlap with perceptual analysis, contrary to fully discrete models, but that little rotation is carried out during this overlap due to interference between simultaneous discrimination and rotation processes.     

Development and validation of adolescent-perceived microsystem scales: Social support,daily hassles,and involvement

Developed and validated instruments for urban and culturally diverse adolescents to assess their self-reported transactions with family, peer, school, and neighborhood microsystems for the constructs of social support, daily hassles, and involvement. The sample of 998 youth were from schools in three Eastern cities with high percentages of economically disadvantaged youth. Data were collected before and after the transition to junior high school or to senior high school. Blacks constituted 26%, whites 26%, and Latinos 37% of the sample. Factor analyses confirmed and enhanced the hypothesized four-factor microsystem factor structure for support, hassles, and involvement; internal consistency and stability coefficients were consistent with these structures. In general, the microsystem factors were common across gender, ethnicity, and age. However, when group differences did occur on these demographic variables, they tended to validate the salience of microsystem specificity. In contrast to the total scores, the microsystem-specific factors yielded more meaningful and differential information with regard to demographic differences and the mediating processes across a school transition.     

Theme-focused family therapy: the inner emotional world of the family

This paper is an account of a method of family work developed for social workers in social services departments which allows them to work with the emotional impact on children and adults of traumatic events in family life. Theme-focused family therapy has been designed to meet the needs of the families and also to enable social workers and their supervisors to develop both psychodynamic and systemic perspectives m their work with families. It is a staged approach, moving from individual work to a structured family interview through to a series of theme-focused family sessions. It is phased in this way both to facilitate the development of a therapeutic attachment between social worker and family and to take account of the crises that can interrupt planned work in social services departments. Theme-focused family therapy is carried out in partnership with families, and gives children a voice and a leading role in the therapeutic process. The approach is illustrated with a case example.