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Effective self-report screening tools for emerging adults are understudied. The present study examined the latent structure of the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales (DASS-21) with U.S. undergraduates. Data were collected from 1,413 undergraduates surveyed online. Three models were tested: (a) a one-factor model, (b) the original correlated three-factor model, and (c) a bifactor model that included a general negative affectivity factor and three specific factors of depression, anxiety, and stress. The bifactor model with three specific orthogonal factors yielded the best fit. All items loaded onto the general negative affectivity factor. This study provides an important evaluation of alternative models of the latent structure of the DASS among U.S. undergraduates, with results supporting it as an assessment of general distress for emerging adults.

This study focused on characteristics of the family environment that may influence the relationship between hurricane exposure and ataques de nervios in Puerto Rican children and youth. Approximately 18 months after Hurricane Georges hit Puerto Rico in 1998, participants were randomly selected based on a probability household sample using 1990 US Census block groups. Caregivers and children were interviewed about past year and lifetime experience of ataques de nervios, hurricane exposure, and the family environment in Spanish. Areas of the family environment assessed include parent-child relationship quality, parent-child involvement, parental monitoring, discipline, and parents' relationship quality. Structural equation models were estimated for parents and children, and by age group. For children (4-10 years old, N = 582), hurricane exposure was directly related to lifetime experience of ataques, but not for past year experience of ataques. However, for children, none of the family variables had a significant mediating role in the relation between hurricane exposure and either past year or lifetime experience of ataques; rather, parent-child involvement decreased risk for lifetime and past year ataques. For youth (11-17 years old, N = 569), per youth report, positive discipline mediated the hurricane exposure to lifetime experience of ataques relationship, whereas parents' relationship quality mediated the relationship between exposure and past year experience of ataques. Hurricane exposure decreased positive discipline and parents' relationship quality, and positive discipline and parents' relationship quality decreased risk for ataques. Per parent report, parent-child involvement decreased risk for past year or lifetime experience of ataques. Implications for post-disaster mental health recovery efforts are discussed.

Disasters affect the school and community microsystems in which children and youth recover. This study explored characteristics of the school (school violence, teachers' attitudes) and community microsystem (neighborhood climate, neighborhood monitoring, community violence) that may affect the disaster exposure and internalizing psychopathology relationship in children and youth 12-27 months after Hurricane Georges hit Puerto Rico. A representative sample (N=1,637) of caregivers and children/youth completed structured interviews in Spanish. Controlling for gender and perception of poverty, for children (age 6-10 years), hurricane exposure increased risk for internalizing psychopathology, but the school and community variables did not have an influence. For all youth (age 11-17 years), witnessing community violence and poor teacher attitudes increased the risk of psychopathology. In addition, neighborhood climate and school violence were moderators. For non-exposed youth, poor neighborhood climate and perceiving greater school violence increased the risk of internalizing psychopathology, whereas for exposed youth it did not.

The emergence of positive psychology has generated increased interest about the correlates of positive psychological functioning. Researchers have identified and studied various positive psychological constructs (e.g., hope, optimism, self-efficacy, gratitude, and life satisfaction) and found them to covary and to be positively associated with optimal human functioning and negatively associated with mental illness. This study of 528 college students examined the co-occurrence of selected positive psychological traits and explored their relations with a proposed second-order latent construct called "covitality" and with psychological well-being. Structural equation modeling examined each first-order positive psychology construct related to the second-order concept of covitality. Findings supported the second-order latent factor model of covitality, which was also significantly related to indicators of psychological well-being. Implications for theory development related to understanding positive human resources and applications within the context of college student populations are discussed.

Youth strengths are as important to consider as deficits in understanding developmental outcomes and thus are an important component of psychoeducational assessment. Latino/as are understudied with regard to strength-based constructs, although cultural and socioeconomic factors may be related to differences in Latino/a parents' views of their children's strengths and school experiences. The Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale-2 (BERS-2) Parent Report is one of the most widely used measures to examine school-based strengths of students. With two sets of data collected with Spanish-speaking Latino/a parents of students aged 9 to 14 years, the authors examined the BERS-2 to explore and then preliminarily confirm latent constructs present in reports of their children's strengths. A three-factor model, labeled Self-Control, School Participation, and Emotional Health, emerged as an alternative fit to the data. Results indicate that the BERS-2 measures culturally sensitive constructs, yet amended procedures may enhance the assessment of student strengths from the parent perspective, particularly when working with Spanish-speaking Latino/a families. (Contains 6 tables and 1 note.)

Objective: To investigate the long-term influence of disaster exposure, parent-child relationship quality (PCRQ), and gender on child and youth physical health.Methods: Parent-child dyads (N = 1,886) were randomly selected and interviewed approximately 18 months after Hurricane Georges hit Puerto Rico (1998), and reinterviewed 12 months later. The outcome variables were parent report of a global rating of children's physical health, and frequency of medical problems and medical visits in the past year.Results: Conservative analyses that accounted for a host of postdisaster health-relevant factors showed that hurricane exposure exerted detrimental influence on physical health at both 18 and 30 months after the event. The moderating role of PCRQ in the relation between hurricane exposure and physical health varied by gender.Conclusion: Disasters have long-term potential to influence the physical health of children and adolescents. PCRQ serves as resource but its role in the context of disasters is complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study deepens our understanding of the prediction and structural relationship between a student's academic performance and his/her regular after-school exercise by estimating models based upon the quantile regression and the instrumental variable quantile regression methods, respectively. Using data on Korean middle school students, we found that negative relationships were dominant for the prediction models, whereas the relationships were reversed for the structural models, affirming the theoretical and experimental hypotheses observed in prior literature. Furthermore, we also found that the low-performing students, in terms of the academic performance, had stronger associations between the two variables than the high-performing students, overall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]