Debra Zand

ABSTRACT Outcome studies of mentoring programs have demonstrated that they hold considerable promise in promoting competence across multiple developmental domains. A theoretical model of mentoring identified modification of youths’ perceptions of their interpersonal relationships as a contributor to positive outcomes. To date, however, there has not been a direct examination of the role of the mentor—youth bond in this process. The present study examines whether the quality of the mentoring relationship uniquely predicts other relationship-based outcomes at two time points. Regression analyses indicated that the quality of the mentor—youth bond significantly predicted youths’ scores in most relationship-based outcomes (i.e., friendship with and self-disclosure to adults) at 8 and 16 months. Study implications and directions for future research are discussed.

The purpose of this survey-design research study was to evaluate the usefulness of a researcher-developed tool designed to improve office-based health care services and to assess the barriers and resources affecting office-based health care services for children with autism spectrum disorder. Fifty-four health care providers (HCPs) and 59 parents participated in the study. HCPs reported child behaviors, communication, and fears as barriers to providing care, whereas parents reported child behavior, sensory issues, and feelings of a disconnect with the HCP as barriers. HCPs identified the parent as a key resource. Parent-identified resources included provider adaptations to the patient, including slowing down the delivery of care and environmental adaptations to the office. In addition, both HCPs and parents indicated that the researcher-developed tool would be useful in reducing barriers during the HCE. Reducing barriers and improving health care interactions during delivery of care for children with autism spectrum disorder has the potential to improve health outcomes.

To date, little research has addressed within-group variables as predictors of academic achievement among middle-class African American youth. The present study helped fill this gap by investigating the role of sex, self-perceptions, and school bonding as predictors of academic success among 174 middle class early adolescent boys (n = 91) and girls residing in a large Midwestern city. Results of a path analysis indicated that gender identity fully mediated the relationship between biological sex and adolescents' perceptions of peer acceptance. Perceptions of peer acceptance were positively related to perceptions of behavior, which, in turn, were related to school bonding. School bonding was then related to academic achievement. The findings are discussed within the context of helping educators to better meet students' educational needs.

Background and Purpose Relationship-based prevention interventions such as youth mentoring have been found to improve academic performance among youth at high risk for school failure. Little is known, however, about the qualities of the mentoring relationship and how it may impact other relationships in the lives of mentored youth (Lawner, Beltz, & Moore, 2013). This study sought to identify specific pathways by which mentoring relationship impacts academic domains. Methods Data from the nationwide, multi-site evaluation of the SAMHSA-funded “Project: Youth Connect” mentoring intervention were analyzed regarding randomly assigned, treated youth (n = 230) aged 9-16 (M = 12.09, SD= 1.55) who met with one mentor and at 8-month follow-up completed the Mentor-Youth Alliance Scale (MYAS) and other measures of parental attachment, self-efficacy, and self-reported grades. Mentor-youth pairs met for an average of 6.8 months at follow-up; on average, youth met with their mentor 5.63 times per...

Parents of children newly diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders are a high-need population for whom skills-based parenting interventions likely help. Diagnostic centers are compelling locations to deliver parenting interventions because families are served in an accessible location and at a time they receive overwhelming treatment recommendations. Additionally, behavioral interventions in these settings may be especially effective in helping parents feel an early sense of mastery of disruptive child behaviors and enable families grappling with this diagnosis to be proactive and build resilience. Providing parenting interventions in diagnostic centers is a promising service delivery innovation and deserves expanded piloting and testing.

Little research has empirically addressed the relationships among parental knowledge of child development, parental attunement, parental expectations, and child independence in predicting the social competence of infants and toddlers with special health care needs. We used baseline data from the Strengthening Families Project, a prevention intervention study that tested Bavolek's Nurturing Program for Parents and Their Children with Health Challenges to explore the roles of these variables in predicting social competence in infants and toddlers with special health care needs. Bivariate relationships among the study variables were explored and used to develop and test a model for predicting social competence among these children. Study findings pointed to a combination of indirect and direct influences of parent variables in predicting social competence. Results indicated that parents who encouraged healthy behaviors for developing a sense of power/independence were more likely to have children with social competence developing on schedule. Elements related to parental expectations, however, did not have the hypothesized relationships to social competence. The present study provides preliminary data to support the development of knowledge based interventions. Within medical settings, such interventions may indeed maximize benefit while minimizing cost.

... Nicole Renick Thomson Debra H. Zand Missouri Institute of Mental Health ... self-evaluations are measured, some studies find that White American students score higher than African American students in certain domains (eg, social and academic; Osborne & LeGette, 1982), and ...

ABSTRACT This article explored recruitment patterns, as well as factors that predicted these patterns, in a relationship-based substance abuse prevention intervention study, targeting inner-city African American adolescents living in economically disadvantaged ...

... empirical studies reviewed above address only direct, linear relationships between demographic, individual, and ... parents com-pleted “some college.” Thirty-five percent of the parents were married ... This 5-item subscale of the Self-Perception Profile for Adolescents (Harter, 1988 ...

... Nicole Renick Thomson and Debra H. Zand Missouri Institute of Mental Health, St. Louis ... This concurs with Worrell's (1997) and Trent et al.'s (1994) factor-ana-lytic results of the SPPA with samples of academically gifted and Australian ado-lescents, respectively. ...

This article explored retention patterns, as well as factors that predicted these patterns, in the evaluation of a relationship-based substance abuse prevention intervention study that targeted inner-city African American youth. A total of 851 contacts were made to retain 82% (n = 104) of the baseline sample (N = 127) in the evaluation. Results from multinomial regression analyses indicated that participants who were retained in the evaluation were more likely to perceive alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use as less risky and were more likely to report higher levels of family supervision than were evaluation attrits. Those who were easy to retain reported lower family conflict and fewer family relocations during the past year than those who were difficult to retain. Implications of these findings for developing retention strategies, as well as future research, are discussed.