Background
Anxiety disorders in children and young people are common and bring significant personal and societal costs. Over the last two decades, there has been a substantial increase in research ...evaluating psychological and pharmacological treatments for anxiety disorders in children and young people and exciting and novel research has continued as the field strives to improve efficacy and effectiveness, and accessibility of interventions. This increase in research brings potential to draw together data across studies to compare treatment approaches and advance understanding of what works, how, and for whom. There are challenges to these efforts due largely to variation in studies’ outcome measures and variation in the way study characteristics are reported, making it difficult to compare and/or combine studies, and this is likely to lead to faulty conclusions. Studies particularly vary in their reliance on child, parent, and/or assessor‐based ratings across a range of outcomes, including remission of anxiety diagnosis, symptom reduction, and other domains of functioning (e.g., family relationships, peer relationships).
Methods
To address these challenges, we convened a series of international activities that brought together the views of key stakeholders (i.e., researchers, mental health professionals, young people, parents/caregivers) to develop recommendations for outcome measurement to be used in treatment trials for anxiety disorders in children and young people.
Results and Conclusions
This article reports the results of these activities and offers recommendations for selection and reporting of outcome measures to (a) guide future research and (b) improve communication of what has been measured and reported. We offer these recommendations to promote international consistency in trial reporting and to enable the field to take full advantage of the great opportunities that come from data sharing going forward.
Peer victimization is a highly stressful experience that impacts up to a third of all adolescents and can contribute to a variety of negative outcomes, including elevated anxiety, depression, drug ...use, and delinquency, as well as reduced self-esteem, school attendance, and academic achievement. Current prevention approaches (e.g., the Olweus program) have a mixed record in American schools. We propose a new approach to prevention that leverages theory and research surrounding the social aspects of bullying and victimization, particularly peer relations. Our approach attempts to (a) break down the process of homophily among bullies and (b) provide a mechanism by which socially isolated students can develop new friendships. Our approach asks teachers to increase opportunities for positive peer interaction through carefully structured, group-based learning activities in school (i.e., cooperative learning). We hypothesized that these positive peer interactions would result in reductions in bullying, victimization, perceived stress, and emotional problems, as well as increases in peer relatedness, among more marginalized students. Using a cluster randomized trial with 15 rural middle schools in the Pacific Northwest (N = 1,460 7th-grade students), we found that cooperative learning significantly reduced bullying, victimization, and perceived stress for marginalized students (i.e., moderated effects) and reduced emotional problems and enhanced relatedness for all students (i.e., main effects). Given that cooperative learning has already been shown to enhance student engagement and achievement in prior research, our results demonstrate that cooperative learning should be a permanent, sustainable component of teacher training and school culture.
Educational Impact and Implications Statement
Our findings indicate that cooperative learning can address many of the social problems in middle school that can give rise to bullying and victimization. Due to its established ability to enhance academic achievement, cooperative learning can be seen as a low-risk, high-reward approach to prevention that should enhance, rather than detract from, academic outcomes. Considering its straightforward implementation and flexibility, we hope that our results contribute to increased interest in cooperative learning as a means to support positive academic, social, and behavioral outcomes simultaneously.
Given the pivotal role of student satisfaction in the higher education sector, myriad factors contributing to higher education satisfaction have been examined in the literature. Within this ...literature, one lesser-researched factor has
been that of the quality and types of interpersonal interactions in which students engage. As existing literature has yet to fully explore the contributions made by different forms of interaction to student satisfaction in higher
education, this study aimed to provide a more fine-grained analysis of how different forms of interaction between students, their peers and their instructors relate to different aspects of student satisfaction. A total of 280
undergraduate students from one of the largest higher education institutions in Singapore participated in the study. Results provided an in-depth analysis of eight aspects of student satisfaction (i.e. satisfaction with the program,
teaching of lecturers, institution, campus facilities, student support provided, own learning, overall university experience and life as a university student in general) and suggested that the different aspects of student satisfaction
were associated with three different forms of interaction: student-student formal, student-student informal and student-instructor. Author abstract
ObjectiveTo assess whether patient-reported outcomes at return-to-play (RTP) clearance predict subsequent injury risk in the year after concussion among adolescent athletes.DesignProspective cohort ...study.SettingSports-medicine clinic.ParticipantsThirty-six adolescent athletes within 14 days of diagnosed concussion (female: n=18, age=15.31.5 years; male: n=18, age=15.51.7 years).Assessment of Risk FactorsAt RTP assessments, participants completed ratings of concussion symptoms, sleep quality, and fear of pain with movement (kinesiophobia). They also completed monthly injury/athletic exposure logs for a year after RTP.Outcome MeasuresPost-Concussion Symptom Inventory (PCSI), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Tampa Scale of Kinesiophobia (TSK), and Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Pediatric Profile 25 questionnaire (domains: physical function mobility, anxiety, depression, fatigue, peer relationships, pain interference).Main ResultsTwenty participants (56%) reported a subsequent injury upon RTP. We constructed Cox proportional hazards models for each outcome using established cut-points or median values. After adjusting for age, PCSI (hazard ratioHR=1.00, 95%CI=0.92–1.10, p=0.93), PSQI (HR=1.05, 95%CI=0.91–1.21, p=0.50), TSK (HR=1.03, 95%CI=0.95–1.11, p=0.49), and PROMIS domain ratings physical function mobility (HR=1.13, 95%CI=0.90–1.43, p=0.28), anxiety (HR=1.08, 95%CI=0.94–1.25, p=0.28), depression (HR=1.12, 95%CI=0.96–1.30, p=0.14), fatigue (HR=1.12, 95%CI=0.99–1.27, p=0.06), peer relationships (HR=0.96, 95%CI=0.78–1.18, p=0.69), pain interference (HR=1.09, 95%CI=0.96–1.25, p=0.20) were not significantly associated with injury hazard after concussion RTP.ConclusionsPatient-reported outcomes after concussion clearance were not predictive of injury risk in the year following RTP. Further work should investigate the utility of objective measures in identifying athletes at elevated post-concussion injury risk.
Appearance-related interactions with peers, both positive and negative, are commonplace on social media. Using qualitative methods, this study explores U.K. adolescents’ shared understandings and ...experiences of these interactions. Sixty-four adolescents (Age M = 12.56; SD = 0.97; Girls = 33) from a secondary school in Northern England participated in semi-structured focus groups. Using thematic analysis, three themes were developed that encapsulate their shared understandings of appearance-related interactions: (a) positive appearance commentary is the norm, especially if you are popular and attractive; (b) comments to others should be positive, but comments about the self should be modest and self-deprecating; and (c) negative appearance comments are problematic but not always intentionally harmful. Overall, our findings suggest that, to adolescents, the boundaries between positive and negative interactions are blurred, as content, intention, gender, and social rules intersect with social media platform design. Further research is needed to better understand how social media site design alters adolescents’ appearance interactions, as well as the role of these interactions in the development and maintenance of peer relationships and body image concerns.
Background: The aim of this study was to investigate longitudinal relations among child maltreatment, emotion regulation, peer acceptance and rejection, and psychopathology.
Methods: Data were ...collected on 215 maltreated and 206 nonmaltreated children (ages 6–12 years) from low‐income families. Children were evaluated by camp counselors on emotion regulation and internalizing and externalizing symptomatology and were nominated by peers for peer acceptance and rejection.
Results: Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that experiencing neglect, physical and/or sexual abuse, multiple maltreatment subtypes, and earlier onset of maltreatment were related to emotion dysregulation. Lower emotion regulation (Time 1) was associated with higher externalizing symptomatology (Time 1) that contributed to later peer rejection (Time 2), which in turn was related to higher externalizing symptomatology (Time 2). Conversely, higher emotion regulation was predictive of higher peer acceptance over time, which was related to lower internalizing symptomatology controlling for initial levels of symptomatology.
Conclusions: The findings emphasize the important role of emotion regulation as a risk or a protective mechanism in the link between earlier child maltreatment and later psychopathology through its influences on peer relations.
Teachers and peers are two influential social agents in students' academic functioning. In the present study, we differentiated perceived social relationships into positive and negative aspects and ...investigated how these perceptions influence students' motivation and educational outcomes. Results based on 2211 Chinese middle school students revealed that the perceived teacher relationships emerged as more important predictors than perceived peer relationships. Differential aspects of perceived social relationships also showed distinct predictive patterns. Moreover, multiple-group comparisons further revealed that girls were more sensitive to negative teacher relationships, whereas boys were more sensitive to negative peer relationships. These findings highlight the importance of including multiple aspects of perceived social relationships and considering potential gender differences to more fully capture the factors that affect adolescents' academic functioning.
Social media use is nearly universal among US-based teens. How do daily interactions with social apps influence adolescents’ affective well-being? Survey self-reports (n = 568) portray social media ...use as predominantly positive. Exploratory principal component analysis further indicates that positive and negative emotions form orthogonal response components. In-depth interviews with a sub-sample of youth (n = 26), selected for maximum variation, reveal that affect experiences can be organized across four functional dimensions. Relational interactions contribute to both closeness and disconnection; self-expression facilitates affirmation alongside concern about others’ judgments; interest-driven exploration confers inspiration and distress; and browsing leads to entertainment and boredom, as well as admiration and envy. All interviewees describe positive and negative affect experiences across multiple dimensions. Analyses suggest the relationship between social technology usage and well-being—whether enhanced or degraded—is not confined to an “either/or” framework: the emotional see-saw of social media use is weighted by both positive and negative influences.
The positive links between children’s theory of mind (ToM), emotion understanding, and positive peer relationships are well established. However, the existing literature lacks comprehensive studies ...investigating the longitudinal interplay between these components in preschool-aged children. This study aimed to fill this gap by examining the concurrent and longitudinal associations between young children’s social cognition and their positive peer relationships at three different time points over the course of 7 months. A sample of 211 preschool children (age in months: MT1 = 43.2, SDT1 = 6.6) underwent standardized assessments evaluating their ToM and emotion understanding, while playgroup educators reported on children’s positive peer relationships. Using multivariate latent growth modeling, we expected to find that higher levels of ToM and emotion understanding would be associated with a greater rate of change in positive peer relationships and that higher levels of positive peer relationships would be associated with a higher rate of change in ToM and emotion understanding. Contrary to our expectations, the results did not support the anticipated longitudinal associations. Nevertheless, a noteworthy correlation emerged between children’s emotion understanding and positive peer relationships at T1, in line with previous research and social-constructivist theories.
Given the challenging transition from secondary school into higher education, this quasi-experimental study measured the effects of a pre-academic programme (i.e. before starting at university) on ...student-faculty interactions, student-peer interactions, sense of belonging, and first-year academic performance. Fifty-eight first-year students participated in a pre-academic programme (i.e. the experimental group) focused on changing their perceptions of effective learning behaviour to enhance high-quality interaction with peers and faculty, their sense of belonging, and academic performance. A control group comprised 237 first-year students who did not attend the programme. Participation in the programme enhanced formal student-faculty and student-peer interactions, as well as informal student-peer interactions. No effect was found on sense of belonging. Furthermore, participation in the programme enhanced students' attained grade during the first course and enhanced their first-year cumulative GPA. The results suggest that participation in the pre-academic programme could give students a head start in higher education.
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