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Longitudinal Associations Between Housing Instability, Primary Caregiver's Mental Health, Parenting Skills, And Child Behavior Problems: A Latent Growth Modeling Approach, Xi Du

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Children who grow up in disruptive environments have heightened vulnerability to psychological and behavioral difficulties, which may influence overall well-being through the course of their lives. This study combined a life course perspective with Conger’s family stress model to investigate the longitudinal associations between housing instability, primary caregiver’s mental health, parenting skills, and child internalizing/externalizing behavior problems by unpacking dynamic change from a focal child’s early childhood to adolescence in each factor.

Data came from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its Child Development Supplement survey. The analytic sample comprises 783 children who aged 3-7 at enrollment with consistent …

Polynomial Regression Analyses Of Parental Desirable Responding, Megan Elizabeth Lilly

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Child assessments have consistently yielded poor agreement between parent-child self-report measures and considerable research has failed to isolate the underlying source of the discrepancies. Validity testing has successfully been used to differentiate credible from non-credible performance, recognize feigned symptoms, and detect underestimates of ability in adults for decades (Sherman, 2015). Despite these potential benefits, attention to the importance of validity testing in the child assessment literature has been largely neglected. Many psychologists believe children are not capable of feigning or exaggerating their symptoms and lack the underlying motivations and incentives for deception found in adult assessments. Whereas, more research is …

Utilization Of The Alabama Parenting Questionnaire Across Family Structures: Do The Same Constructs Apply?, Leah Michelle Adams

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

America has experienced a marked increase in non-nuclear family structures over the last five decades. The evolution of more diverse family systems has led some researchers to eschew a “one size fits all” approach to parenting assessment, as these measures may neglect or misconstrue parent-child dynamics unique to non-nuclear families. The current study examined the underlying factor structure of the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (APQ) in two distinct family structures to determine if parenting constructs were replicated across groups. Participants included 246 mothers from single parent and two-parent households in Louisiana. Statistical analyses included exploratory factor analysis, replication analysis, hierarchical regression …

Development And Initial Validation Of The Family Eating And Activity Questionnnaire, Jennette Lea Palcic

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Pediatric overweight is a growing public health concern in the United States. According to the CDC approximately 17% of children are currently obese (Body Mass Index (BMI) ¡Ý 95th percentile) and the percentage of obese children has tripled since the 1970¡¯s. Both eating and physical activity behaviors have been shown to be related to increased rates of obesity; however, there is a lack of assessment tools to measure these behaviors. The purpose of the current study was to develop a psychometrically sound, parent-report measure of family and child behaviors related to obesity in children between 5- and 12- years-old. Item …

Further Validation Of The Child Routines Inventory (Cri): Relationship To Parenting Practices, Maternal Distress, And Child Externalizing Behavior, Sara Sytsma Jordan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The importance of establishing predictable routines during early childhood has been consistently emphasized by parenting experts in the popular press, despite limited empirical study or understanding of their relationship to child behavior. The lack of research may be partially due to a lack of instruments suitable for measuring children’s routines. The Child Routines Inventory (CRI) was developed as an empirically based parent-report measure of commonly occurring routines in school-aged children. Since its development, the CRI has demonstrated moderate correlations with related constructs, including family routines, child behavior problems, parenting stress, and maternal depression. However, child routines have not been evaluated …