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Purpose: The need for psychometrically sound measurement approaches to social work educational outcomes assessment is increasing. Method: The research reported here describes an original and two replication studies of a new scale (N = 550) designed to assess an individual's self-efficacy regarding social work competencies specified by the Council on Social Work Education as part of the accreditation of social work programs. Results: This new measure, the Self-Efficacy Regarding Social Work Competencies Scale (SERSWCS), generally performed in line with our expectations. Discussion: The SERSWCS is a measure that is based on substantial theoretical and empirical work, has preliminary evidence regarding the psychometric properties of the data it produces, can be used with large numbers of students in an efficient manner, is neither expensive or subject to user restrictions, and provides views of outcomes that have utility for pedagogical considerations at multiple curricular levels.

The Evaluation Self-Efficacy (ESE) scale was designed as an outcome measure for evaluation research courses in social work. A revised version of the Social Cognitive Theory-based ESE (ESE-II) was developed and evaluated in the current study including both new and revised items. The ESE-II was evaluated in a final sample of 168 masters level students using a pretest-posttest design. Exploratory factor analysis revealed a single-factor structure underlying the 14 self-efficacy items at both assessment points. Cronbach's alphas for the ESE-II were high at pre- and posttest. An argument underpinning content validity was developed and convergent validity was demonstrated. The ESE-II was also sensitive to change over time both at the item and scale level. The current study provides evidence supporting select psychometric properties of the ESE-II and the flexibility of self-efficacy as an outcome measure for social work education.

Purpose: The increasing role of systematic reviews in knowledge production demands greater rigor in the literature search process. The performance of the Social Work Abstracts (SWA) database has been examined multiple times over the past three decades. The current study is a replication within this line of research. Method: Issue-level coverage was examined for the same 33 SWA core journals and the same time period as our 2009 study. Results: The mean percentage of issues missing in the current study was 20%. The mean percentage of issues missing in the current study was significantly greater than the mean percentage of issues missing in the 2009 study. Discussion: The research of other groups, and that of our own, has failed to prompt the National Association of Social Workers Press (NASW-P) to act. SWA was failing, it is failing, and NASW-P has failed to correct those failures.

Youth aggression has been associated with negative parenting practices, but previous research about this association has mainly focused on physical and verbal aggression. Because more subtle forms of aggression are considered at least as harmful as their physical and verbal counterparts, there is a growing scientific interest in parenting practices that are linked with relational aggression. Guided by social learning theory, a link between youth relational aggression and parental psychological control has been postulated, but the empirical evidence is inconsistent. The present meta-analysis provides a multilevel and sequential quantitative synthesis of 165 dependent effect sizes (23 studies) encompassing 8,958 youths. Across studies, a positive, albeit weak, association between parental psychological control and relational aggression was found. The sequential analysis demonstrated that sufficient cumulative knowledge was attained to yield convincing evidence on this overall association. Moderator analyses revealed that developmental period and assessment method were associated with differences in research findings. Overall, however, results suggest that clarifying the precise role of psychological control in the development and maintenance of relational aggression requires more targeted primary research, which in turn would allow additional and more complex synthesis efforts with potentially more nuanced conclusions.

Although a number of instruments for assessing attitudes toward statistics have been developed, several questions with regard to the structure and item functioning remain unresolved. In this study, the structure of the Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics (SATS-36), a widely used questionnaire to measure six aspects of students' attitudes toward statistics, is investigated. This study addresses the previously unexplored issue of individual item functioning. Based on confirmatory factor analysis using individual items, the results suggest that the SATS-36 can be improved by removing some poorly functioning items and that depending on the goals of a specific study either six subscales could be used or three of them (Affect, Cognitive Competence, and Difficulty) can be combined into one subscale without losing much information. (Contains 4 tables.)

The Supports Intensity Scale (SIS) was developed to provide information on the support needs of persons with intellectual disability. Our aim here was to evaluate the factorial validity of the SIS in a sample of 14,862 persons with intellectual disability. The structure of the instrument as promulgated by the developers was tested and its stability evaluated across gender, age, disability complexity, and disability severity groups. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the originally proposed subscale structure. The six-factor structure yielded strict factorial invariance across gender, age, and disability complexity, whereas invariance of factor configuration was merely established across disability severity groups. Possible explanations and implications of these findings are discussed.

Recently, several instruments have been developed to measure the subjective component of the quality of life (QOL) of people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD). A next step, however, must be the further validation of these instruments. The present study aimed at evaluating the psychometric properties of one of these instruments, the Dutch version of the Mood, Interest and Pleasure Questionnaire (MIPQ). The MIPQ is a 25-item Likert scale questionnaire with two subscales (Mood and Interest and Pleasure). The MIPQ and the Aberrant Behavior Checklist were completed on 360 participants with severe or profound intellectual disabilities. About 27% of these participants were included in an examination of test-retest of and the inter-rater reliability of the MIPQ. The results suggest that the proposed two-factor structure did not show an adequate fit to our data. An exploratory factor analysis revealed a three-factor structure with positive mood, negative mood and interest as three correlated but distinct subscales. These results are in concurrence with the literature on positive emotions. High internal consistency (alpha greater than or equal to 0.80), high inter-rater (r greater than or equal to 0.69) and high test-retest reliability (r greater than or equal to 0.86) were found, which indicates the reliable use of the MIPQ in the population of people with PIMD. Strong negative correlations between the MIPQ total score and the Aberrant Behavior Checklist's "lethargy, social withdrawal" subscale provides some evidence of the construct validity of the MIPQ. However, further validation of the MIPQ including other measures of subjective well-being is warranted. (Contains 5 tables.)

The present study examined specialized associations between parental control and child aggression in a sample of 600 8- to 10-years old children. Parental control dimensions and aggression subtypes were assessed using multiple informants (i.e. children, mothers, fathers, peers, and teachers). In line with expectations, parental physical punishment was positively associated with overt aggression, whereas parental psychological control was positively associated with relational aggression in both girls and boys. In addition, this study demonstrated that if both parents employed similar parenting strategies, it appeared to have a cumulative effect on child aggressive behaviour. Associations involving overt aggression were more pronounced for boys than girls, whereas associations involving relational aggression were not moderated by gender. Overall, the present study contributes to an emerging research field by supporting the hypothesis of specialized associations between parental control and child aggression.

Using a cross-lagged panel design, this study examined the directionality of relations between parental psychological control and child relational aggression. Data were collected from a proportionally stratified sample of 600 Flemish 8- to 10-year-old children at 3 measurement points with 1-year intervals. Reciprocal effects were evident in mother-child dyads. Maternal psychological control was positively related to child relational aggression 1 year later, and child relational aggression was positively related to maternal psychological control 1 year later. The father-child dyads were best represented by unidirectional parent effects. Paternal psychological control was positively related to child relational aggression 1 year later. Surprisingly, these effects emerged only for relational aggression as indexed by mother and father reports and not for relational aggression as indexed by teacher and peer measures. (Contains 1 footnote, 5 tables and 1 figure.)

The effects of psychoactive substance abuse are not limited to the user, but extend to the entire family system, with children of substance abusers being particularly at risk. This meta-analysis attempted to quantify the longitudinal relationship between parental alcohol, tobacco, and drug use and child well-being, investigating variation across a range of substance and well-being indices and other potential moderators. We performed a literature search of peer-reviewed, English language, longitudinal observational studies that reported outcomes for children aged 0 to 18 years. In total, 56 studies, yielding 220 dependent effect sizes, met inclusion criteria. A multilevel random-effects model revealed a statistically significant, small detriment to child well-being for parental substance abuse over time (r =.15). Moderator analyses demonstrated that the effect was more pronounced for parental drug use (r =.25), compared with alcohol use (r =.13), tobacco use (r =.13), and alcohol use disorder (r =.14). Results highlight a need for future studies that better capture the effect of parental psychoactive substance abuse on the full breadth of childhood well-being outcomes and to integrate substance abuse into models that specify the precise conditions under which parental behavior determines child well-being. Registration: PROSPERO CRD42017076088 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]