This proposal is for 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. Earlier studies in the academic achievement domain 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 grades 5-12. This longitudinal study extended the work to younger children and a broader set of children's activities. The study was designed to look at 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. Of the 855 children in grades K-4 recruited into the sample, 74% of the children and their teachers, and 60-80% of their parents, participated in 3-4 primary annual waves of data collection using both questionnaire and interview procedures. Objective measures of the children's competence in math, language arts, and sports/physical skills were obtained from the child's school records and through standardized measures of cognitive and physical abilities. Subjective indicators of the children's competence were obtained from teacher and parent ratings. Detailed information about social and material contexts of school and the home were obtained from parents, children, and teachers. In Year 3 a within-family substudy of siblings was added and was continued into Year 4. During the three years since the last data collection, substantial progress has been made in analyzing this data, providing important contributions to knowledge of children's achievement motivation. Adolescence is a critical time for studying the development of these constructs because choices over course enrollment and other activities during this period begin to have more significant implications for the life course of the individual. The current proposal is for data analysis and for a follow-up of the sample at three time points in the next five years to continue studying these issues over the adolescent developmental period. Data analysis using 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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