Child Indicators Research

School Readiness among U.S. Children: Development of a Pilot Measure Abstract No single U.S. data source supports a multidimensional, population-based assessment of young children’s readiness to start school. This changed with the 2016 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH). This study provides an overview of the process by which content related to multiple domains of school readiness was identified, refined and selected for inclusion in the NSCH; describes the analytic processes and resultant outcomes associated with the development of domain-specific and summary measures of school readiness; and discusses opportunities to refine and validate these pilot measures to provide a national portrait of young children’s progress towards timely mastery of skills and competencies needed to be “Healthy and Ready to Learn.” The NSCH, an annual, address-based, self-administered survey, produces national- and state-level data on the physical and emotional health of children ages 0–17 years. In 2016, 22 items were added to assess school readiness among 3–5 year-olds and pilot summary measures of “Healthy and Ready to Learn” were developed. Four distinct domains were identified: Early Learning Skills, Self-Regulation, Social-Emotional Development, and Physical Health/Motor Development. Over four in ten children were “On Track” across all four domains while another three in ten were on track in three of the four domains. One in ten are reported to be “On Track” in ≤ 1 domain. New NSCH content and related summary measures of “Healthy and Ready to Learn” present a unique opportunity to extend what is known about young children’s school-readiness at both the national and state levels. Continued measure development and validation is required.

Perceptions of Health: a Developmental Trend in Indian School Children Abstract The potential for children to be used as agents of change in health research and practice is being increasingly valued. To reach this objective, it is foremost to gauge children’s perceptions about health, based on which future pathways to health promotion programs may be built which are easily comprehensible to children. Therefore, this study was conceptualised to understand the way school children perceive health and track the changes in their comprehension of health. Basing on a cross-sectional design, a sample of 667 children belonging to Class 6 to 10 from three different Indian schools were selected. These children having similar socioeconomic status and education curricula were asked to respond to an open-ended question—What do you understand by ‘being healthy’? The obtained qualitative data were analysed by means of content analysis to explore categories or themes of responses. Divergence of conceptualisation was measured through calculation of entropy. The three emerged major themes—Meaning of health, Ways to be healthy, and Indices of health— represented children’s health perceptions. The entropy values revealed a steep rise in the divergence in perceptions of health of Class 10 children compared to plateau in perceptions of children of lower classes. Implication and limitations of this study were also discussed.

The Association Between Corporal Punishment and Problem Behaviors Among Chinese Adolescents: The Indirect Role of Self-Control and School Engagement Abstract There is a large gap in knowledge about the mechanism by which corporal punishment is associated with problem behaviors. The current study addressed this by testing a model involving self-control and school engagement as mediators in a sample of Chinese adolescents. A sample of 505 adolescents completed anonymous questionnaires regarding corporal punishment, self-control, school engagement, and problem behaviors. Structural equation models showed that self-control mediated the association between corporal punishment and school engagement; self-control exerted an indirect effect on problem behaviors via school engagement; furthermore, corporal punishment might impact problem behaviors by the way of self-control and school engagement in sequence, implying the crucial roles of self-control and school engagement as particularly valuable intervention points. The present study contributes to our understanding of key mechanisms underlying the association between corporal punishment and adolescent problem behavior and can be used to guide future intervention development.

Exploring the Effects of Positive Psychological Strengths on Psychological Adjustment in Adolescents Abstract The present study reported an exploration of the association between covitality constructs and psychological adjustment– subjective wellbeing, academic achievement, and internalizing and externalizing behavior problems– in adolescents. Participants of the study comprised of 547 adolescents, with 51.1%female and 48.9% male, ranging in age from 13 to 19 years (M = 15.57, SD = 1.13). Findings from the study indicated that higher levels of belief-in-others and engaged living were significant predictors of increased subjective wellbeing. Higher levels of belief-in-self, belief-in-others, and engaged living were also found the significant predictors of increased academic achievement. Thereafter, results from the predictive effect of covitality constructs on mental health problems revealed that higher levels of belief-in-self, belief-in-others, and engaged living were significant predictors of decreased internalizing behavior problems, whereas externalizing behavior problems were significantly predicted by belief-in-self and emotional competence in adolescents. What is more, the combined effect of each of the covitality constructs on adolescents’ psychological adjustment indicators was greater than the effect of this each positive psychological domain individually. Taken together, these outcomes should contribute to the design of prevention and intervention services in order to promote mental health and wellbeing.

Social Support and Academic Stress in the Development of Psychological Adjustment in Chinese Migrant Children: Examination of Compensatory Model of Psychological Resilience Abstract This study aimed to testify the compensatory model of psychological resilience in the development of psychological adjustment of Chinese migrant children and adolescents. Social support and academic stress were involved in the model to investigate the mediating role of psychological resilience. In this cross-sectional study, 411 participants from 5th to 7th grade completed self-report questionnaires measuring social support, academic stress, resilience, and psychological adjustment (defined as the composition of depression, self-esteem, and loneliness). Results found that social support compensated the negative impact of academic stress on psychological resilience. The effect of social support and academic stress accumulatively facilitated the development of resilience and further affected psychological adjustment. The results suggest the importance of enhancing resilience in the process of improving psychological well-being among Chinese migrant children and adolescents.

Social Capital in the Health Development of Children Abstract Social capital addresses networks and ties, which deliver support, information and trust for the members of these networks. Being a member of such a network is your social capital, which in turn might improve your quality of life. This paper investigates the impact of social capital on the health and health behaviour of children in their growing up process. Therefore, the panel design employed includes 10 to 12-year-old school children, followed up for three annual waves. The data used is from the German survey of Health Behaviour and Injuries in School-Age–A Panel Study 2013–2020 (N ≈ 10.000 per wave). We took a longitudinal perspective to estimate the impact of changes in the social capital’s volume on health-related variables by relying on fixed effects models. Furthermore, we analysed whether the effect of social capital differs between certain socio-demographic groups, e. g. between children from high- and low-privileged households. The findings suggested a causal influence of social capital on their health and health behaviour. Intrapersonal changes in social capital significantly affected an individual’s health and health behaviour. Moreover, this effect was evenly distributed among all the socio-demographic groups, meaning that all children benefit from an increase in social capital in the same way. This suggested that for the health development of all children and adolescents, it is of foremost importance to build and stimulate social networks and resources (social capital) rather than concentrating solely on the financial aid.

Characteristics of Emotion Recognition Ability among Primary School Children: Relationships with Peer Status and Friendship Quality Abstract The present study explored the characteristics of children’s emotion recognition ability, as well as its relationships with peer status and friendship quality. Participants were 308 Chinese primary school children in Grades 2 to 6 (54% boys; Mage = 9.99 years, SD = 1.49). Emotion recognition ability was measured by responses to multimodal videos covering eight emotions. Peer status and friendship quality were measured by peer nomination and questionnaire, respectively. Results indicated that: 1) Emotion recognition ability showed an overall upward trend as children age, with girls performing better than boys; 2) There were significant differences on the accuracy scores between emotion categories (ranked from high to low as: anger, sadness, joy, amusement, fear, irritation, pleasure, and interest), as well as a significant interaction between emotion category and grade; 3) Emotion recognition ability was positively related with both peer status and friendship quality, demonstrating its ties to children’s interpersonal interactions. These results not only broaden understanding about the development of emotion recognition ability, but also evidence its importance as a sensitive indicator of children’s social relationships.

Examining the Relationship between Life Satisfaction, Smartphone Addiction, and Maternal Parenting Behavior: A South Korean Example of Mothers with Infants Abstract This study examined the relationship between maternal life satisfaction, smartphone addiction, and parenting behavior in order to protect and promote sustainable well-being of mothers as well as children throughout their lifetimes and quality of life in the family system. Self-report questionnaires were used on 328 Korean mothers with children aged 3 to 5 years. Data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling. Results revealed that maternal life satisfaction had a significant and direct influence on parenting behavior, and its indirect influence on parenting behavior was mediated by smartphone addiction tendency. The findings confirm that a mother’s psychological well-being (life satisfaction) and smartphone addiction tendency are preceding factors for positive maternal parenting behavior. Significant attention must be paid to parents’ psychological well-being to promote children’s healthy development from very early on in life.

Caring about Tomorrow: the Role of Potency, Socio-Economic Status and Gender in Israeli Adolescents’ Academic Future Orientation Abstract The construction of future expectations for higher education is one of the key processes in adolescents’ lives. However, little is known about the factors facilitating this construction. The current study explored the contribution of potency (i.e., self-confidence, mastery, alienation, and anomie) to the building of adolescents’ academic future orientation in a sample 172 Israeli early-to mid-adolescents. In addition, the moderating role of adolescents’ SES and gender on the relationships between potency variables and academic future orientation was explored. The findings indicated that future orientation was enhanced by adolescents’ self-confidence. The moderation analysis showed that boys’ perceived anomie was associated with a decrease in their future orientation. Anomie also contributed to a decrease in academic future orientation, but only in low SES adolescents.

Money Matters: a Nuanced Approach to Understanding the Relationship between Household Income and Child Subjective Well-Being Abstract This paper examines the links between household income and child subjective well-being. Previous studies produce contradictory findings: qualitative investigations indicate a strong relationship which is elusive in quantitative studies. I hypothesise that the reason for this discrepancy is that household-level measures of child poverty do not adequately capture children’s active roles in forming views on their material needs, assessing their comparative socio-economic status, and contributing to processes and outcomes of intra-household resource sharing. Thus a relationship between household income and subjective well-being is hypothesised to exist, but to be mediated by factors including (among others) material deprivation, perceptions of fairness in the processes and outcomes of intra-household allocation, and subjective material well-being. Drawing on survey data from a sample of 1010 parent-child (aged 10–16) pairs in England, structural equation modelling is used to examine these potential mediating effects. Findings indicate that income has a complex role to play in child subjective well-being, with significant direct and indirect associations. Income, deprivation, perceptions of the fairness of intra-household allocation processes and outcomes, and subjective material well-being are all significantly interrelated and are all predictors of subjective well-being. The complex nature of these relationships illustrates the multi-dimensional nature of child poverty and its impacts. Household income is an important factor; but alone it cannot capture children’s active roles in assessing their needs and material living conditions. This confirms the importance of considering children’s agency in understandings of child poverty and material well-being, and including their reports in studies of child poverty and intra-household allocation.