Increasing Wellbeing through a Parenting Program: Role of Gender and Partnered Attendance

Coping skills provide a resource for tackling stress in everyday situations, including those relating to parenting. The aim of this article is to establish whether parents who experienced a 10-hour universal social emotional parenting program — Families Coping (FC) — benefit through increased productive coping strategies, decreased nonproductive coping strategies, and increased parent wellbeing, within a positive parenting framework. It is also of interest to see whether gender and/or partner attendance makes a difference in program outcomes such as coping styles and wellbeing. The data set combined two groups of parents (N = 23) of preschool-aged children from an early learning centre in inner-metropolitan Melbourne in 2013 and 2014 who undertook the FC parenting program. A mixed methods design was employed, where parents completed pre- and post-program questionnaires on coping and wellbeing. Results were considered with respect to gender and partner attendance. A one-way repeated-measures multiple analysis of variance (RM-MANOVA) showed a significant increase in one productive parenting style (Dealing with the Problem), a significant decrease in nonproductive parent coping, and a significant increase in parent wellbeing. Comparison of results between gender and partner attendance groups showed minimal differences in program effectiveness. Qualitative data mostly confirmed the key findings.

The Role of School Counsellors and Psychologists in Supporting Transgender People

As growing numbers of transgender people — including students, parents, and educators — become visible within schools, so comes with this the requirement that schools ensure their full inclusion. This article suggests that school counsellors and psychologists have an important role to play in supporting transgender people within schools. As an initial scoping of this suggestion, the article reports on findings from two Australian surveys: one focused on cisgender parents of transgender children, and one focused on cisgender school counsellors and psychologists in regard to their capacity for working with transgender people. The findings suggest that while the parent sample had largely negative experiences with school counsellors, the professional sample reported a high level of confidence in working with transgender people, although differences in gender and religiosity impacted upon school counsellors’ and psychologists’ acceptance of transgender people, and clinical knowledge for working with transgender people. The article concludes by advocating for ongoing training for school counsellors and psychologists in regard to working with transgender people, in addition to outlining the role that school counsellors and psychologists can play in facilitating a whole of school approach to transgender issues.

Development of the Dimensions of Adult Mastery Motivation Questionnaire

Mastery motivation is an important developmental construct that has implications for development across the lifespan. Research to date has focused predominantly on infants and children, with the Dimensions of Mastery Questionnaire (DMQ) being the most widely used measure of mastery motivation. This article reports on the development and initial validation of an adult measure: the Dimensions of Adult Mastery Motivation Questionnaire (DAMMQ). Six hundred and twenty-eight adults (68% female) aged from 18 to 90 years completed the questionnaire. Factor analysis produced 24 items that represented five factors: task persistence, preference for challenge, task-related pleasure, task absorption, and self-efficacy. The DAMMQ was found to have good internal consistency, test-retest reliability and concurrent validity. Within group differences for age, gender and education are reported. The development of the DAMMQ paves the way for future research about mastery motivation in adult populations.

New Horizons for The Educational and Developmental Psychologist

This is the final issue in 2015 and this will also be the last issue under the name of The Australian Educational and Developmental Psychologist. After consultation with the Associate Editors, the College of Educational and Developmental Psychologists, Cambridge University Press and with approval from the Australian Psychological Society (APS) it was agreed to change the name to The Educational and Developmental Psychologist. This change will take place from the 1st of January 2016 and is an attempt to improve the quantity, quality, and range of submissions to the journal. The journal will still be clearly embossed with the College and the APS logo and will continue to proudly promote high quality Australian psychological research. The change will hopefully attract more submissions from countries in North America and across Europe. It has been clear that some researchers would not consider publishing in small journals, which are obviously outside of their geographical area, so the name change is an attempt to give a more global appearance to the journal.

Acquiescence Response Bias — Yeasaying and Higher Education

Acquiescence response bias is the tendency to agree to questionnaires irrespective of item content or direction, and is problematic for both researchers and clinicians. Further research is warranted to clarify factors relating to the confounding influence of acquiescence. Building on previous research that investigated the interaction between acquiescence, age, and secondary education, the current study has considered the role of adult higher educational achievement and acquiescence. Using the Big Five Inventory (BFI), acquiescence scores were calculated for a sample of 672 Australian adults (age M = 41.38, SD = 12.61). There was a significant inverse relationship between the variance in acquiescence scores and formal education. The greatest difference was found between the lowest education groups and the highest education groups, with the variance of the lower groups more than twice as large as the higher groups. The confounding influence of acquiescence was demonstrated using the BFI and targeted rotation to an ideal matrix, where worse model fit was found in the lower education group compared to the higher group. Implications for both researchers and clinicians are explored.

Positive Mental Well-being in Australian Adolescents: Evaluating the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale

While there is increasing recognition of the need to go beyond measures of mental ill health, there is a relative dearth of validated tools for assessing mental well-being among adolescents. The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) is a promising tool for use in this context, and this study evaluated its use in an Australian context. The WEMWBS was completed by 829 Western Australian adolescents, aged from 13 to 16 years old, drawn from Grades 8, 9 and 10 in seven separate high schools. Using confirmatory factor analytic techniques, the utility of the full 14-item scale was not supported, but good fit for a previously validated seven-item short version (SWEMWBS) was supported. Strong measurement invariance was demonstrated across age, and weak measurement invariance was demonstrated across gender. The scale has good internal reliability. There were no differences in SWEMWBS scores across Grades 8 to 10. Overall, the SWEMWBS represents a useful tool for educational, developmental, and school psychologists investigating positive mental wellbeing in younger adolescents.

Personal Best (PB) Goal Setting and Students’ Motivation in Science: A Study of Science Valuing and Aspirations

To build on prior correlational research into personal best (PB) goals and motivational outcomes, an experimental study was conducted to assess the role of PB goal setting in gains (or declines) in students’ motivation in science (viz. biology, anatomy, health). The study (comprising N = 71 elementary/primary and secondary school students) applied a pre/post-treatment/control group experimental design to test whether setting a PB learning goal in a self-paced science education program (conducted in a museum context) leads to growth in science valuing and science aspirations. The treatment group (PB goal setting), but not the control group, demonstrated significant growth in science aspirations (but not valuing) between pre- and post-testing. This study provides support for the proposition that PB learning goals are associated with motivational growth in students’ lives. Findings also hold implications for museum-based education programs for students.