The present study examined linkages between educational goals, parenting practices (school involvement and monitoring) of single-mothers and single-fathers, and the academic achievement of their school-going adolescents. Additionally, it sought to examine the differences in educational goals and parenting practices between the single fathers and mothers, as well the parents' differential treatments toward their male and female adolescents. Through Single Mother Associations, we recruited 60 single mothers and snowball 30 single fathers for the study. We found that the parents differ only in terms of educational goals where single fathers had significantly lower goals compared to single mothers. In zero order correlational analyses, we discovered positive relationships between (1) parenting practices and academic achievement of adolescents from both families; (2) fathers' educational goals and their monitoring behaviors; and (3) mothers' educational goals and their school involvement, and monitoring behaviors. Findings from this study accentuate the importance of an active educational socialization process in diverse family settings to promote adolescents' educational success.

The Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA) is the most widely used self-report measure of individual differences in adolescent attachment. However, the factor structure of this measure has not been replicated outside of the Western adolescent population. Using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), the aim of this study is to explore the factor structure of the IPPA in Malaysian adolescents. A total of 2,040 school-going adolescents across urban and rural areas of Malaysia completed the 75 items of the IPPA Mother, Father and Peer forms. Contrary to Western findings, results revealed that the three factor structure of the original IPPA sets were not replicated in the Malaysian data. A different three-factor structure for the Parental scales and a two-factor structure for the Peer scale were found to best fit the data. Multigroup CFA (MGCFA) of the IPPA-Malay scales supported invariance of the structural model across age, gender and locality of adolescents. The results indicate that assumptions underlying the cross-cultural assessment of attachment relationships need to be examined. Future research is suggested to look into culturally valid instruments to investigate the adolescent attachment relationship beyond the Western context.

The majority of the literature investigating depression pertains to individuals from European Western cultures, despite recognition that depression ranks as one of the most debilitating diseases worldwide. This raises questions as to whether current depression models and interventions can be applied universally or whether they are limited to European Western groups. The current study found that pan-culturally those with MDD had similar structuring of their life story relative to controls. However, there were some cultural differences that need to be considered (e.g., Malay individuals provided less detailed, less elaborate and less emotionally diverse life stories and while the British MDD group had greater compartmentalization than British controls, the Malay MDD group had lower levels of compartmentalization than Malay controls). Limitations of the study included group differences in gender and mood at the time of testing. Cultural differences in the number of attributes used may have influenced findings. Only the Malay group completed the individualism-collectivism measure.

Understanding sex differences in depressive symptomatology among Malaysian adolescents ABSTRCT Depressive symptomatology is among the primary psychological problems experienced by adolescents. Extant literature has also extensively reported sex diferences in the occurrence of depressive symptoms. However, a majority of related research has primarily been carried out in the Western context. Hence, we conducted a study to identify the prevalence of depressive symptoms among Malaysian adolescents, and to determine its relationship with certain risk factors as well as the potential moderating role of sex. The sample comprised of 964 adolescents from 20 secondary schools across Malaysia. Logistic regression results demonstrated that stressful life events and maternal verbal aggression signifcantly predicted symptoms of depression. In moderation tests, sex signifcantly interacted with stressful life events and parental verbal aggression in predicting depressive symptoms. Hence, there is evidence to suggest that the depressogenic impact of stressful life events and parental verbal aggression on depressive symptomatology difers between male and female adolescents.

We conducted a study with the aims of examining adolescents’ perceptions of their mother’s and father’s parenting behavior and developing a new Malaysian Parenting Behavior Inventory (MPBI). In Phase One, we recruited 903 adolescents using the proportionate to size sampling technique. The results of the exploratory factor analyses of the MPBI Mother and Father scales revealed four underlying factor structures: Warmth, Monitoring, and Harsh Discipline were somewhat similar to those in past findings and theory, and Indigenous centered on religious and cultural values in parenting. In Phase Two, using an independent sample of adolescents, we replicated the factor structure of Study One with confirmatory factor analysis, resulting in strong model fit estimates. We conclude that the MPBI has good initial psychometric properties and is culturally influenced. The MPBI may be useful for prevention and intervention programs in clinical and non-clinical settings, including providing valuable information on factors pertinent to parent-adolescent interactions.

AbstractObjectivesThe present pilot study examined the associations between attachment relationships, psychological problems, and negative automatic thoughts among late adolescents in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.SubjectsA total of 98 participants (male = 49, female = 49) were recruited from government colleges in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.MethodsThe measures used to assess the research variables of this cross sectional study were the Inventory of Parent-Peer Attachment (IPPA-Urdu), Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-Urdu), and the Automatic Thought Questionnaire (ATQ-Urdu).ResultsAll of these measures had good reliabilities. Findings of the correlation analyses demonstrated that maternal, paternal and peer attachment relationships were negatively related to symptoms of depression and anxiety as well as to negative automatic thoughts. On the other hand, depressive and anxiety symptoms were positively associated with negative automatic thoughts. Additionally, findings suggested that future studies must investigate adolescents from two-parent households and exclude those with only one living parent.ConclusionThe results underscored the need for further investigations of the linkages between attachment relationships, negative automatic thoughts and psychological problems on larger samples.

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