Eur. J. Investig. Health Psychol. Educ., Volume 3, Issue 2 (August 2013) – 9 articles , Pages 75-180

Adolescence is characterized by concerns about body self-esteem, as well as sexual arousal. Social Networks (SN) have become the way to express the sex interests in adolescents and the place where they publish more virtual photographs. Objectives: a) Analyze the sex and age differences in body self-esteem, virtual images and sexual advance strategies; b) Carry out correlations among variables studied. Participants: 200 adolescents from 14 to 17 years, 98 boys (49%), selected randomly from the Basque country. Assessment instruments: Body Self-Esteem Scale (Maganto & Kortabarria, 2011), Questionnaire of Virtual Image on Social Network (Maganto & Peris, 2011), Sexual Advance Strategies (Roman, 2009). Results: Statistically significant differences in sex and age were obtained. The boys obtained higher scores than girls in body self-esteem, erotic publications and coercive sexual strategies. Youth of 16-17 years have more strategies of sexual advances and positive emotions to sexuality than adolescents of 14-15 years. Social and erotic body self-esteem correlates positively with aesthetic, erotic publications and physical and verbal sexual advance strategies. Conclusions: Adolescents with higher body self esteem, both aesthetic and erotic, more virtual images on social networks publish, and they are those who carry out more strategies of sexual advance, specifically physical and verbal strategies. Full article

The involvement of family factors in the problem of bullying is well documented, not only in terms of the various differential profiles presented by bullies and their victims in terms of parental socialization styles, but the implications are derived from the perception of family climate. Specifically, this study provides an analysis of the relationship between psychosocial perception of family social climate by a group of 550 adolescents of the Principality of Asturias (Spain) (278 girls and 272 boys 50.5%, 49.5%) and their attitudes to bullying according to a three-dimensional assessment model (planes cognitive, affective and dispositional) measures through Attitudes toward Social Aggression Scale constructed ad hoc by the authors (Moral, 2005). It has been confirmed that adolescents with more favorable attitudes to violence perceived peer more conflictual family climate, feel less affection in family relationships, express greater difficulty communicating with them, and less respect for their opinions and paternal highest demands and declared to be subject to physical and psychological punishment by their parents compared to those adolescents with more negative attitudes towards bullying violence. Full article

In our schools, diversity is reflected in different learning rates, abilities, interests, motivations, expectations, needs, and so on. This situation affects coexistence and demands appropriate educative attention. Inclusive education is the best way to achieve this in that involvement and participation of all people in transforming schools is the only way to achieve and fine-tune coexistence in each educational centre. However, this reality justifies the need for teachers training to meet the challenges of achieving success for all the students. For the current study, an ad hoc survey was developed to assess the perceived training needs of teachers for promoting inclusion. A sample of 400 teachers working in Castilla y León schools was utilized. The results showed several perceived training needs for teachers. These needs related to issues for participating in the processes of transforming schools into inclusive settings. Additional perceived needs related to inclusive methodologies to be implemented in the schools and strategies to improve their coexistence. Full article

The aim of this study is to assess the potential impact of extracurricular activities on the academic performance of elementary school students. Attendance or not attendance, type of extracurricular activities (recreational, cognitive or both) and the number of hours a week have been taken into account. The final sample consisted of a total of 721 elementary school students (366 boys and 355 girls) from various schools in the counties of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. Parents of the students were provided with a questionnaire asking for the pupils’ grades in different academic subjects (mathematics, Catalan, Spanish and English languages, gymnastics and arts) and information about type and amount of extracurricular activities. The results show that performing any kind of extracurricular activity improves academic performance. More specifically, performance of some activity (whether recreational or cognitive, or a combination of both) significantly accounts for improvement in academic results, except for math, gymnastics and arts. Also, the study shows that a high number of hours of extracurricular activities (more than 10 hours a week) negatively affect the performance in all subjects except in gymnastics. Full article

The platform Familiasenred.es emerged as one strategy within Canary Training Plan for the Family, which offers an alternative to parents training through ICT. Mounted in a Moodle in 2009, 168 training activities (62 online, 30 semi and 76 face) have been offered in 2012, activities that result in more than 1680 hours of training on different topics related to family and children education. The objective of the study will be to compare the results obtained in the study of García, Castro, Junco and Hernández (2011) about the influence of student participation on the levels of satisfaction, with how this influence is modulated by the participation. The study population will be the 5083 users of the Familiasenred.es platform in 2012. To this end, a self-developed satisfaction scale will be employed, limiting the original composed of eleven items Likert. This scale will be administered during the month of December, 2012, voluntarily and after the training proposal 2011-2012. According to the data obtained from the test, comparative analysis between the levels of student satisfaction, the participation in the platform and the teacher participation will be conducted. Full article

The situations of bullying and cyberbullying are, sadly, increasingly present events in the school community, especially favored in the case of cyberbullying, by the boom of social networking taking place in our society. The factors that attempt to explain these peer violence situations have revealed aspects of the individuals involved in them, but we must not forget other variables, such as family type, are crucial at this stage of the life cycle and thus may play also an important role. The aim of this paper is to analyze whether belonging to some of the different family groups existing in our society could be related to the incidence of bullying situations and cyberbullying. Participants were 1684 students from 22 secondary schools (IES and IESO) of the Autonomous Community of Extremadura being 50.9% of the sample women and 49.1% men. The results confirm that there are more victims and aggressors among non-nuclear families (single parent families, blended families, parenting by grandparents,...) than nuclear families, however this relationship was not found among observers. Full article

The main purpose of this research was to analyze the prevalence and diversity of reading comprehension difficulties in Spanish students of primary and secondary schools. We evaluated a large sample of students from the Canary Islands region that stretched from second grade of primary until the final year of secondary education. Once the percentage of students with reading comprehension difficulties was determined, we classified them in different categories: students with low intelligence, students with specific reading comprehension (poor comprehenders), students with deficit on reading words/pseudowords, absentee students and inmigrants. The results show that 20.2% of the student population present serious problems in understanding a text and 6.7% of the total is included in the category of poor comprehenders. Also we found a group of students with difficulties in decoding skills but whose performance on comprehension tasks was normal, showing that not all learning disability students have poor comprehension. Full article

This study analyses ways of using violence in the classroom by teachers to students (VPA) and students to teachers (VAP), according to the students` perception of secondary obligatory education (ESO). The sample is composed of 4943 adolescents whose ages range from 12 to 17 years old. The questionnaire of school violence (CUVE3-ESO) used in our study has a Cronbach`s alpha of .90 (high reliability), and the split-halves method has an alpha of .82 (items VPA) and .84 (items VAP), confirming that the instrument has high reliability. From factorial analysis was extracted two factors (F₁: VPA; F₂: VAP) that explain 44.8% of the variance. The results show a similar percentage of violent behavior in both directions (VPA: 18.9%; VAP: 15.9%), being the conducts most used by teachers: the use of ratings as pressure behavior (31%) and preference for certain type of students (29.5%). And being the conducts most used by students: to speak during the class (46.6%) and inadequate behavior (39%). Full article

Adolescence is a transitional process between childhood and adulthood (Antona, Madrid and Alaez, 2003), which involves physical, cognitive and social changes (Johnson, Roberts and Worrell, 1999). During this stage, risky behaviours are often developed, including alcohol and tobacco consumption. Alcohol is the most psychoactive substance consumed among adolescents, aged 14-18, followed by tobacco in Spain (DGPNSD, 2009). The teenagers who use alcohol and tobacco have a higher probability of having problems of aggresiveness and violence and it is also related to health problems (Bellis et al., 2005; Gil and Gil-Lacroix Lacroix, 2006; Room, Babor and Rehm, 2005). Several studies (Bond, Carlin, Thomas, Rubin and Patton, 2001; Cangas, Gázquez, Perez-Fuentes, Moldes and Rubio, 2007; Piñero-Ruiz, López-Espín, Cherry and Torres-Cantero, 2012) have linked the presence of violence at school disturbing the environment and having negative consequences for the health and behaviour to a higher frequency in the consumption of alcohol and tobacco. In this study, 2552 questionnaires were collected with ages among 12-16 years from the Murcia Region. The results showed that students with aggressive behaviours at school have a higher frequency of alcohol and tobacco consumption. Full article