We are proposing the continuation of a cross-sectional, longitudinal, field-based study of the development of children's self esteem, and activity preferences across four activity domains common to childhood experience: academic, social, instrumental music, and sport. Our previous work in the academic achievement domain has indicated that both parents' beliefs and children's perceptions of their competence, expectations for success, task difficulty perceptions, and task value perceptions are critical mediators of achievement behavior and choices among children in grads 5-12. We have now extended this work to younger children and a broader set of children's activities to study four basic issues: 1) the development of self and task beliefs within and across domains, 2) the role of these beliefs in shaping children's behavioral choices across the domains, 3) the antecedents of parents; and teachers' beliefs about their children in each of these domains, and 4) the impact of parenting and teaching styles and of teacher and parent beliefs, values, and perceptions on children's developing self and task beliefs. Subjects have been tested five times over a four year period. In year one and year two a total of 855 children in grades K-4 were recruited into the sample. Seventy-four percent of these children and their teachers, and 60-80% of their parents, have participated in 3-4 primary annual waves of data collection designed to assess these issues. Both questionnaire and interview procedures were used. Objective measures of the children's competence in math, language arts, and sport/physical skill were obtained from the child's school records and through the administration of standardized measures of cognitive and physical skills. Subjective indicators of the children's competence were obtained from teacher and parent ratings. Detailed information about the school and home social and material context were obtained from parents, children, and teachers. A within family sub-study of siblings was added in year 3 and continued into year 4. This proposal is for data analysis and for a follow-up of the sample at two time points in the next five years to continue to study these issues over the adolescent developmental period. Both structural equation modeling procedures and more traditional statistical procedures will be used to assess the developmental changes in children's, parents', and teachers' beliefs and the relations among these changes.
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