F. Donald Kelly

Relationships Among Involvement, Attachment, and Behavioral Problems in Adolescence: Examining Father’s Influence

This study explores the nature of the parent-child relationship during early adolescence. Differences between the mother-adolescent and father-adolescent relationships and possible behavioral correlates of parental involvement and attachment are examined. A multimodal data collection procedure was used to gather information from adolescents (N = 116), their parents, and their teachers. Findings indicate that consistent with previous reports, fathers are less involved in parenting their adolescent children than are mothers, and teenagers report being more securely attached to their mothers. Nonresidential fathers were found to be significantly less involved in parenting than fathers who live at home. In addition, adolescents not living with their fathers reported feeling less secure paternal attachment than adolescents who lived with their fathers. Finally, father-adolescent involvement and attachment were found to explain a unique proportion of the variance seen in adolescents’ teacher-reported externalizing and total behavioral problems at school. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Dropping out of school: A review of intervention programs

Abstract This article reviews the literature on dropout prevention for school-aged children. A review of dropout prevention programs identified in the literature highlights methodological concerns, with a discussion of design, sampling, statistical analysis, and implementation issues. The interventions employed with greatest frequency in the studies reviewed emphasized academic enhancement, psychosocial skill development, mentoring, and parent/teacher behavior management training. Programs that were academically oriented or those that were multi-component programs emerged with the most promising empirical base. However, at the present time, there is a lack of consistent and persuasive outcome evidence that meet Kratochwill and Stoibers [Sch. Psychol. Q. 15 (2001) 233] criteria for empirically supported interventions. This deficiency leads to the conclusion that there is no one particular best practice or beneficial treatment currently available to address the problem of school dropout even though a number of intervention programs appear to hold promise. Implications for school psychologists include both practice and research applications.

The Effects of Decision-Making Style and Cognitive Thought Patterns on Negative Career Thoughts

Peoples thoughts and beliefs about themselves and their career options affect their ability to make decisions. Career counselors would benefit from knowing the factors that contribute to negative career thoughts. This study examined two unexplored factors that may affect the development and maintenance of negative career thoughts, decision-making styles and a ruminative thought pattern. Pearson product correlations and a multiple regression were used to determine the extent to which maximizing and rumination predicted negative career thoughts. Results suggested that maximizing and rumination are moderately correlated with negative career thoughts. Together they account for 14% of the explained variance of negative career thoughts. Implications of findings on practice and research are discussed. The cognitive information processing theory is also presented as a method by which to conceptualize a clients maximizing decision-making style and ruminating thought patterns.

Sibling Conflict in a Single-Parent Family: An Empirical Case Study.

Abstract Rivalry and conflict among siblings are common problems that affect many contemporary families. This article presents an empirical case study of sibling conflict in a single-parent family. A theoretical perspective on sibling conflict is presented as well as the treatment plan employed and the results derived therefrom. As is standard for intensive, single case study research, the data were subjected to visual analysis. In addition, however, an interrupted time-series analysis was employed to test for level and changes in level across baseline and treatment phases of the experiment. Both analyses showed significant reduction in sibling conflict over a ten-week experimental-treatment period.