The Parent Behavior Inventory (FBI) is a brief measure of parenting behavior for use with the parents of preschool-age and young school-age children. It may be used as a parent self-report measure, a report measure for others familiar with the parent, or as an observational rating scale. Its parallel forms offer clinicians and researchers a single measure capable of multimethod, multi-informant, and multisetting assessment. The FBI's two independent scales, Supportive/Engaged and Hostile/Coercive, have sufficient content validity, show adequate internal consistency and test-retest reliability, and relate to measures of parental affect, parental stress, and child behavior problems. Evidence for its usefulness as a rating scale is presented. The results provide support for the reliability and construct validity of the FBI and demonstrate its versatility as a measure of parenting behavior.

Background: The last two decades have seen the development of theoretical models of hope, which have greatly influenced the field of positive psychology and the study of well-being. Recently, there has been increased interest in using these theories to create interventions and other strategies to enhance hopefulness among clinic-referred individuals and members of the community. We used meta-analysis to determine whether these hope enhancement strategies were associated with (a) increased hopefulness, (b) improved life satisfaction, and (c) decreased psychological distress among participants. Results: Analysis of 27 studies involving 2, 154 participants showed significant, but small, effect sizes for hopefulness and life satisfaction and no overall relationship between hope enhancement strategies and decreased psychological distress. Moderation tests indicated greater effect sizes for studies involving brief interventions, conducted in laboratory settings, and administered to students or individuals recruited from the community. Results also suggested publication bias. Conclusions: As the current study provides only modest evidence for the ability of hope enhancement strategies to increase hopefulness or life satisfaction and no consistent evidence that hope enhancement strategies can alleviate psychological distress., traditional psychotherapeutic interventions or other effective positive psychological constructs (e.g., gratitude, optimism, mindfulness) might best be targeted in applied settings.

COVID‐19 brought significant challenges to college students in Spring 2020. Mindfulness‐based interventions might help students cope with COVID‐19‐related stressors in at least three ways: by cultivating attention that is self‐directed rather than reactive to a rapidly changing situation; by teaching the acceptance and regulation of negative thoughts and feelings; and by encouraging individuals to view adverse events non‐judgementally and as opportunities for growth. The purpose of our study was to determine whether Koru Mindfulness (KM), a four‐week, mindfulness‐based group therapy designed for emerging adults, could help students cope with COVID‐19‐related stress and anxiety. Students were assigned to either KM or waitlist at the beginning of the 2020 Spring semester. Assessment of students’ functioning occurred at baseline before the onset of COVID‐19, mid‐semester at the height of the COVID‐19 crisis on campus, and the end of the semester after students had returned home and transitioned to remote learning. After treatment, KM participants reported greater mindfulness and self‐compassion and less stress, anxiety and sleep problems than controls. KM participants also showed superior functioning on performance‐based measures of attention. Most gains were maintained over time. Increased mindfulness mediated the relationship between KM and reductions in stress and anxiety. KM can help students cope with academic and COVID‐19‐related stressors by improving mindfulness.

Clinicians uniformly recommend accommodations for college students with learning disabilities; however, we know very little about which accommodations they select and the validity of their recommendations. We examined the assessment documentation of a large sample of community college students receiving academic accommodations for learning disabilities to determine (a) which accommodations their clinicians recommended and (b) whether clinicians' recommendations were supported by objective data gathered during the assessment process. In addition to test and instructional accommodations, many clinicians recommended that students with learning disabilities should have different educational expectations, standards, and methods of evaluation (i.e., grading) than their nondisabled classmates. Many of their recommendations for accommodations were not supported by objective evidence from students' history, diagnosis, test data, and current functioning. Furthermore, clinicians often recommended accommodations that were not specific to the student's diagnosis or area of disability. Our findings highlight the need for individually selected accommodations matched to students' needs and academic contexts.

Young boys who did not own video games were promised a video-game system and child-appropriate games in exchange for participating in an "ongoing study of child development." After baseline assessment of boys' academic achievement and parent- and teacher-reported behavior, boys were randomly assigned to receive the video-game system immediately or to receive the video-game system after follow-up assessment, 4 months later. Boys who received the system immediately spent more time playing video games and less time engaged in after-school academic activities than comparison children. Boys who received the system immediately also had lower reading and writing scores and greater teacher-reported academic problems at follow-up than comparison children. Amount of video-game play mediated the relationship between video-game ownership and academic outcomes. Results provide experimental evidence that video games may displace after-school activities that have educational value and may interfere with the development of reading and writing skills in some children.