Social Risk and Protective Child, Parenting, and Child Care Factors in Early Elementary School Years

Associations Between Early Family Risk, Children’s Behavioral Regulation, and Academic Achievement in Portugal

“…Multiple family and social risk factors, including low income, low maternal education and low occupational skills, have been shown to adversely predict children's achievement (Ackerman, Brown, & Izard, 2004;Burchinal, Roberts, Zeisel, Hennon, & Hooper, 2006;Lipina, Martelli, Vuelta, & Colombo, 2005;McLoyd, 1998). Although less extensively examined, a number of studies also suggest the adverse effects of socioeconomic disadvantage on children's behavioral regulation skills (Evans & Rosenbaum, 2008;Lengua, Honorado, & Bush, 2007;Mezzacappa, 2004;Noble, Norman, & Farah, 2005;Wanless, McClelland, Tominey, & Acock, 2011).…”

“…Previous research has also shown that the family socioeconomic risk factors examined in this study individually or jointly predicted achievement and behavioral regulation. Family income has been shown to negatively predict numerous academic outcomes (Burchinal et al, 2006;Krishnakumar & Black, 2002;McLoyd, 1998) and more recently, behavioral regulation (Evans & Rosenbaum, 2008;Mistry et al, 2010;Raver, Mccoy, Lowenstein, & Pess, 2013;Sektnan et al, 2010;Wanless, McClelland, Tominey, et al, 2011). It has also been established that children whose mothers have low levels of education are more likely to perform poorly on achievement and behavioral regulation tasks (Ardila, Rosselli, Matute, & Guajardo, 2005).…”

“…Mathematics seems therefore more effortful compared to letter identification (Blair & Razza, 2007). It is also possible that other mediators, namely language skills, have a more substantial role for the relation between family risk and literacy (Burchinal et al, 2006;Sarsour et al, 2011). Language is an important skill underlying academic achievement that is negatively affected by early exposure to risk (Krishnakumar & Black, 2002).…”

“…Language is an important skill underlying academic achievement that is negatively affected by early exposure to risk (Krishnakumar & Black, 2002). For example, Burchinal et al (2006) reported that the child's language skills at school entry mediated associations between family sociodemographic risk and achievement outcomes. It is very likely that multiple mediators contribute simultaneously to explain the detrimental effects of risk on early achievement.…”

Consistency of toddler engagement across two settings

“…To provide a context for interpreting the findings from HLM, effect sizes were computed as the product of the unstandardized coefficient and the standard deviation of the predictor divided by the standard deviation of the outcome (see Burchinal, Roberts, Zeisel, Hennon, & Hooper, 2006). As suggested by Burchinal and colleagues, and following Cohen's guidelines (1988), these indexes were interpreted according to the following criteria: .10 was considered a small effect, .30 was considered a moderate effect, and .50 was considered an important effect.…”