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Title: The Structure of Achievement and Behavior across Middle Childhood
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Kowaleski-Jones, Lori
Duncan, Greg J.
The Structure of Achievement and Behavior across Middle Childhood
Child Development 70,4 (July-August 1999): 930-943.
Also: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8624.00067/abstract
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Gender Differences; Heterogeneity; LISREL; Modeling; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Racial Differences; Test Scores/Test theory/IRT

This research uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) to describe and model developmental trajectories across middle childhood. Our sample consists of approximately 1,000 children of NLSY women who were age 6-7 in either 1986 or 1988. Assessments of PIAT math and reading scores and the mother-reported Behavior Problem Index in 1986, 1988, 1990 and 1992 provide data for middle-child trajectories of children age 6-7 in 1986. Assessments in 1988, 1990, 1992 and 1994 provide data for children age 6-7 in 1988. We use the raw-score form of these data to estimate LISREL-based models of their autoregressive structure. As with other samples, average math and reading achievement trajectories are parabolic for NLSY children, with scores increasing at a decreasing rate over this period. Average behavior-problem trajectories are flat. Behind these average shapes is extreme diversity in level, and in some cases, slopes, of individual trajectories, and a pronounced tendency for above average changes between two adjacent assessments to be followed by opposite-signed changes in the subsequent period. Estimates from our structural models showed great heterogeneity in the average level of achievement and behavior for all three outcomes and heterogeneous slopes for reading scores as well. Boys but not girls were found to have heterogeneous slopes for math and behavior problems, while girls but not boys showed a significantly higher degree of persistence if "shocked" off of their expected trajectories.
Bibliography Citation
Kowaleski-Jones, Lori and Greg J. Duncan. "The Structure of Achievement and Behavior across Middle Childhood." Child Development 70,4 (July-August 1999): 930-943.