Emerging research highlights the role of self-regulation in the treatment of sexual offenders. Safe Offender Strategies (SOS) is a manualized sex offender treatment program that emphasizes the role of self-regulation and self-regulatory skills development in sex offender treatment, particularly for offenders with serious mental illness and intellectual/developmental disabilities. The current study involves 156 adult male sexual offenders in an inpatient psychiatric setting who received SOS treatment for a period ranging from 6 months to 1 year. Participants’ baseline and treatment data were obtained from archival medical records describing 1 year pre-treatment and up to 2 years of treatment participation. Dependent variables included monthly count rates of verbal and physical aggression and contact and noncontact sexual offending, as well as sexual deviancy attitudes, self-regulatory ability, and cooperation with treatment and supervision, as measured by the Sex Offender Treatment Intervention and Progress Scale (SOTIPS). Data were examined via paired-samples t tests, regression, and multilevel modeling, examining the impact of overall percentage of SOS groups attended over time, comparing participants’ baseline measures to data from 2 years of treatment. The impact of predicted risk was also evaluated. Significant treatment dose effects were identified for improvements in aggression, sexual offending, and indicators of treatment compliance and change. These findings suggest that the skills-based, self-regulation approach utilized in SOS may be effective in improving clients’ aggressive and sexual behaviors, attitudes toward their offenses and treatment, and self-regulatory ability over time. Implications for further research and treatment generalizability are discussed.

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Intelligibility is one of the major concerns among ESL learners due to its impact on their ability to communicate with native speakers of English (Derwing & Munro, 2005). Even though pronunciation is often addressed in classrooms, it is difficult to tackle all intelligibility issues relevant for each student. Therefore, it is crucial for ESL learners to spend some extra time outside of class improving their pronunciation. Faced with a daunting task of regulating and taking charge of their own learning, they often have questions with respect to what exactly they need to work on, what activities will help them achieve their goals, how they need to organize those activities, and how long they should practice until they can see results. In such an endeavor, issues like motivation to persist and put forth great effort arise and influence outcomes. In sum, many factors are in play when ESL learners strive to improve their intelligibility. The main purpose of creating Sofia’s ESL Pronunciation Lab is to guide ESL learners in improving intelligibility, while helping them feel confident and motivated about what they are doing. Thirty students participated in the pilot-testing phase of this project. They participated in six weeks of self-regulated instruction followed by the completion of a survey at the end of that period. The results show that Sofia’s ESL Pronunciation Lab accomplished its purpose. Students thought that the website guided them well in the creation and implementation of their own improvement plan. They also thought that the online guide was professional and informative. Several students gave constructive feedback to further enhance the website. Most suggestions were related to including more graphics and visuals as well as adding more content, such as examples and activities. Overall, students believed that the online guide was a helpful addition to the current instruction they were receiving as part of an intensive English language program of study.

Scale development in psychological studies is an area of intense growth (Clark & Watson, 1995). This report builds upon academic interest in the value of producing viable measurement tools. The purpose of this research project was to evaluate a self-efficacy measurement scale intended to determine individual music students' perceptions of capability. The areas of interest were four self-regulatory skill domains: strategy use, planning, monitoring, and evaluating in two music environments: independent practicing and performance. This report describes the development and analysis of the Self-efficacy for Musical Studies (SEMS) scale. The report includes statistical analysis of the response data from formative evaluation, field testing, and content evidence of validity. The discussion section examines the strengths and weaknesses of the scale and its development decisions. Finally, recommendations for the future development of self-efficacy scales for self-regulatory skills and instruction in the area of music education are suggested. In providing both a preliminary instrument and a measurement evaluation of this instrument, we hope to further academic interest in the usefulness of scale production to enhance music instruction and the value of the relatively untouched connection between the social cognitive concept of self-efficacy, self-regulatory skills, and the study of music.

The general purpose of this study was to understand differences in one's ability to implement relationship self-regulation (RSR) based on the predictor variables of parental marital satisfaction, parent-child relationship quality, and neuroticism. Participants were 380 married couples (760 individuals) in their first marriage who completed the RELATionship Evaluation (RELATE) between 2006 and 2008. This sample was used to test a structural equation model of the study variables. Results were mixed, indicating that proximal factors may have a larger effect on RSR than more distal family-of-origin factors. There was no direct relationship between perceived parental marital satisfaction and RSR for males or females. Likewise, there was no direct relationship between parent-child relationship quality and RSR, with the exception of female mother-child relationship quality and female RSR. Both perceived self-neuroticism and partner-neuroticism had statistically significant negative associations with self-RSR, with self-neuroticism being the strongest. Additionally, male mother-child relationship quality and female father-child relationship quality had statistically significant negative associations with male and female self-neuroticism, respectively. The relationship between male mother-child relationship quality and male RSR was fully mediated by male neuroticism. The same was true for females, with female neuroticism fully mediating the relationship between female father-child relationship quality and female RSR. Implications for couple therapists and educators based on these findings are discussed.

The concept of relationship self-regulation (RSR) has been shown to be related to relationship satisfaction, yet the differences in RSR ability based on couple type have yet to be examined. This study compared first married, remarried, and cohabiting individuals on their self-reported ability to implement RSR in their relationship, along with their report of satisfaction, positive communication, and negative communication in their relationships. Data was derived from 6,591 participants who were part of the RELATionship Evaluation (RELATE) questionnaire data set. Multiple Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) statistics were used, and results showed that while mean differences in RSR were small across couple types, remarrieds reported significantly lower RSR levels than any other group, while first marrieds reported significantly higher RSR levels than any other group. Implications for relationship education programs and couple therapy are discussed with particular emphasis placed on ensuring that RSR related programs are being delivered to remarried individuals and couples.

This two wave panel study examined child self-regulation as a potential mediator of the relationship between marital attachment security in parents and anxiety in their adolescent child. Data for this study were taken from the two parent families in waves three and four of the Flourishing Families project which included 335 two-parent families with children between the ages of 14 and 16. Both parents and child completed the Novak and Clayton (2001) Self-regulation Scale with the child's self-regulation as the target, and both husbands and wives completed a modified version of the Experiences in Close Relationships Questionnaire (Fraley, Waller, & Brennan, 2000) for their attachment security in their marriage. Children completed the generalized anxiety subscale of the Spence Anxiety Inventory (Spence, 1998) at both waves. Findings showed that child self-regulation was a process through which wife insecure attachment in her marriage indirectly influenced child anxiety in both boys and girls. Self-regulation also mediated the relationship between husband insecure couple attachment and child anxiety for boys but not for girls. Only the mother insecure marital attachment was directly related to both boys' and girls' anxiety. Implications of the findings for family therapy are discussed.

This project investigates the benefits and practicality of applying Zimmerman's (1994) dimensions of self-regulated learning to co-curricular activities so as to increase students' willingness and opportunities to communicate in English in the hallways of intensive English programs. Three of these dimensions (social environment, motivation, and physical environment) work together to create a semi-structured liaison between in and out of class communicative environments and give students an occasion, location, and motivation to speak English with one another. To evaluate the effectiveness of such activities and conceptualize a means in which to assist intensive English programs effectively incorporate co-curricular activities in their curricula, the principal researcher designed and conducted a co-curricular activity based self-regulated learning. She obtained student feedback using surveys and interviews and found that the majority of students spoke mostly English, made new friends, practiced listening and speaking skills, and enjoyed themselves at this activity. As a result of this data, the principal researcher created a booklet to assist in the planning of future co-curricular activities. While only a preliminary study, this data and resulting booklet have great potential to fill the hallways of intensive English programs with English and thus create a holistic learning environment.

Adolescent self-regulation follows a developmental trajectory over time with ups and downs during maturation. This paper uses growth curve analysis to look at change in self-regulation over time. Although self-regulation scores may increase during latency, adolescents differ in levels of self-regulation due to biological and socialization factors. In addition, exposure to couple conflict has been shown to affect levels of self-regulation. The current study examined the role of attachment to parents as a mediator between couple conflict and adolescent self-regulation outcomes, controlling for gender of child. Participants were 681 families with a child between the ages of 11 and 13 at time 1 (M age of child at time 1 = 11.33, S.D. = 1.02, 47.9% female) who took part in the Flourishing Families survey at times 1, 2, 3, & 4. Structural equation modeling confirmed that self-regulation was negatively related to couple conflict overall, although self-regulation in the group of adolescents experiencing the lowest level of conflict increased as couple conflict increased. Self-regulation was also positively related to attachment to father (but not to mother), while gender of adolescent was not significantly related to self-regulation or attachment. There was also evidence that father attachment partially mediated the relationship between couple conflict and adolescent self-regulation outcomes. The discussion focuses on the importance of continued research examining the mechanisms through which the father attachment bond influences the development of adolescent self-regulation.

The purpose of this study was to examine how implicit family process rules are related to observed child emotional responsiveness with child self regulation as a possible mediating variable. Data from Wave 1 of the Flourishing Families project was used and included 337 two parent families and a target child between the ages of 10 and 13. Mother and father perception of family implicit rules were used to measure family implicit rules; child and mother report of the child's self regulation were used to measure self regulation, and child's emotional responsiveness to mother and father were taken from coding data. The Iowa Family Interaction Rating Scales (Melby, et. al., 1998) were used to code the behavior of the child with mother and with father. Multiple Group Comparison using AMOS 16 was used to compare differences based on child gender. Results showed that family implicit rules were positively related to emotional responsiveness to mother for both sons and daughters and to emotional responsiveness to father for sons but not for daughters. Family implicit rules were positively related to child self regulation for both sons and daughters, and self regulation was related to both emotional responsiveness to mother and to father. Results indicated child self regulation significantly mediated the relationship between family implicit rules and emotional responsiveness to mother as well as the relationship between implicit rules and emotional responsiveness to father. Implications for family therapy are discussed.