Forty European American (EA; 20 girls, 20 boys) and 40 second-generation Chinese American (CA; 20 girls, 20 boys) preschool and kindergarten children (mean age at Time 1 = 5.7 years) and their mothers, fathers, and teachers participated in 3 data collections (1993,1995, and 1997) to investigate sociocultural and family factors that contribute to children's academic achievement. CA children outscored EA children in mathematics at all 3 times. Initially, EA children outscored CA children in receptive English vocabulary, but CA children caught up to EA children at Time 3. CA children were better readers than EA children at Time 3. According to parental self-reports, CA parents structured their children's time to a greater degree, used more formal teaching methods, and assigned their children more homework. Parents' work-oriented methods and child-specific beliefs at Time 1 influenced children's mathematics performance at Time 3.The much poorer mathematics performance of U.S. schoolchildren relative to that of European and East Asian nations has been noted for the last 30 years (e.g., Geary, 1996;Stevenson, Chen, & Lee, 1993). In comparisons with East Asian students, the difference is evident as early as kindergarten and first grade (e.g., Geary, Bow-Thomas, Fan, & Siegler, 1993). Within the United States, Asian American children and adolescents outperform other American students in mathematics (e.g.,

No abstract

We evaluated the importance of interviewer and subject effects on cocaine and marijuana use disclosure in a sample of over 3,000 male juvenile arrestees. Analyses evaluated the viability of Social Attribution and Conditional Social Attribution models of interviewer effects. The viability of alternative models was investigated in the context of comparative analyses excluding and including statistical adjustments for the clustering of responses by interviewers. Interviewer effects were more salient in models predicting marijuana disclosure than in models predicting cocaine disclosure. Logistic regression analyses provided support for Social Attribution and Conditional Social Attribution models of interviewer effects. Models suggested large interviewer cluster effects. Cluster adjustment altered interpretation of effects for both cocaine and marijuana. Subject race/ethnicity effects were salient in models predicting disclosure for both drugs, but were especially large in models predicting cocaine disclosure.

Although a small number of studies are available that evaluate the effects of Interviewer characteristics in substance use surveys conducted in person, none have done so using information collected via telephone interviews. We address this issue by examining the utility of social attribution and social desirability models for detecting the presence of Interviewer effects In a large statewide telephone survey concerned with substance use. The specific outcome variables ofinterest were reports oflifetime and 18-month composite drug use. Analyses focus on the direct effects of Individual Interviewer characteristics (to assess social attribution) and a summary measure of interviewer-respondent similarity (to assess social distance) and employ random effects regression models to control for respondent clustering by Interviewer. Results are most consistent with a social distance model and suggest that social distance between respondent and interviewermay decrease the probability ofrespondents reporting substance use behavior.

No abstract