Effects of a Head Start to elementary school transition service program on children's behavioral and cognitive outcomes: Direct, mediated, and moderated pathways.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of this study was to examine direct, mediated, and moderated effects of a transition service program on children's behavioral and cognitive outcomes in middle childhood. The sample for this study was taken from a local site of the National Head Start/Public School Transition Demonstration Project (conducted between 1992 and 1997), in the northeast (N = 175). This was a longitudinal evaluation of Head Start transition services that extended from kindergarten through third grade. The program showed non-significant associations, all in expected directions, with child cooperation (β = .09), and hypothesized mediators in areas of no-nonsense parenting (β = .11), verbal ability (β = .09), family involvement in school (β = .10), and family-school communication (β = .08). In addition, exploratory analyses examining differences in effects of the intervention for those children receiving no months of transition services compared to those receiving all 40 months of services indicated non-significant associations between participation in the intervention and cooperation, positively (β = .19), and antisocial behavior, negatively (β = −.16). Results also suggested that some of the proposed mediators had significant associations of moderate size with behavioral outcomes. Specifically, verbal ability predicted cooperation, assertiveness, and antisocial behavior, and family-school communication was associated with cooperation and antisocial behavior, all in expected directions. Although moderated effects of the transition service program were not indicated in this study, all of the moderators except parenting style did significantly predict children's outcomes. Especially noteworthy was the finding that both number of family moves and irregular family routines significantly predicted both positive and negative behavioral outcomes, in the expected directions, and irregular routines also predicted children's verbal ability (negative association).