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Predictors of parental school involvement were examined within a sample of 159 economically disadvantaged, African American parents living in an urban setting. School involvement was defined in terms of parent activity within the school. Parent demographics, attitudes about education, and community engagement behaviors as well as parent perceptions of school receptivity to parental involvement were evaluated as predictors of school involvement. Predictors of school involvement were examined separately for parents of elementary school students and for parents of middle and high school students. Results indicated that school receptivity was the strongest predictor of parental school involvement within both groups of parents. In addition, parental educational aspirations for the child and community engagement behaviors were significant predictors for both groups of parents. Parent level of employment was a significant predictor of school involvement only for parents of middle/high school students. Implications for school psychologists based on the findings are discussed. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Parental involvement in children's schooling has been associated with children's school success, including better achievement and behavior, lower absenteeism, and more positive attitudes toward school (

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Retrospective self-reports of behavior are widely used in alcohol and drug research. However, assessments of the reliability and validity of such data among certain populations are nonexistent. This study examines the ability of the Addiction Severity Index (ASI), a widely used clinical and research instrument, to provide valid and reliable data within a homeless population of drug misusers. The results support the usefulness of the ASI in producing quality data among homeless substance misusers seeking treatment. Qualitative data gathered from field interviewers are used to highlight strategies for enhancing the quality of ASI data in the future.

Despite numerous studies, the nature of the unemployment-crime relationship remains controversial. The relationship should be clearer for some segments of the population than for others, but is obscured by the use of general population data. Exploring this possibility through the use of a model developed by Cantor and Land (1985), a time-series analysis is conducted to determine relationships among age- and race-specific rates of unemployment and corresponding rates of arrests for homicide, robbery, and burglary for the United States during the period 1959–1987. Negative criminal opportunity-related and positive criminal motivation-related effects are found at the aggregate level, but these vary among age groups and are more evident for white than for African American arrest rates. Further, these effects hold even when controlling for the potential influence of other variables identified in recent research as having an impact on the unemployment-crime relationship.

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