What we're currently studying.

Justin McNeil

Children's Assessments of Hypothetical Community Service Programs in High Schools

Many have argued that people have a universal psychological need to exercise their own free will. Many people also place great value in helping others. In this study, we sought to explore the extent to which youth were willing to give up some of their freedom to choose in order to contribute to the greater good. To do this, we assessed their reasoning when presented with a number of different hypothetical community service programs in high schools. Youth were asked to choose between five different programs, which differed in the amount of choice offered, from a purely voluntary program to a mandatory program in which the government assigned the tasks for the students to complete. Children and youth were also asked to judge whether the addition of a structured reflection component, where they were asked to discuss what they had learned, would contribute to their education about the moral issues encountered in this volunteer program. The results demonstrated that personal choice was an important factor in their evaluation of a program; participants evaluated a program in which the government assigned a task more negatively than a program in which they were allowed choice, indicating that personal choice was important even though both programs were designed to teach students to help others. However, youth did indicate that the government and other authority figures can legitimately regulate students' personal choice if it means helping society as a whole; youth tended to favor a mandatory program in which students are forced to help over a purely voluntary program in which students could elect not to help.

Children's Perceptions of Civic Responsibility

Drawing from the results of our work on children's balance between the need for personal choice and the need to contribute to the greater good, future work will explore other areas of political and civic responsibility. While youth seemed willing to surrender some decision-making power to a government-mandated program designed to help others, the extent to which this applies to other types of helping and civic engagement domains is currently unknown. Future research will seek to address this gap, exploring the extent to which youth feel that the government can legitimately regulate an individual's personal choice in the name of a broader social responsibility.

Sarah Watson

Children's Conceptions of Homosexuality Study

In this study we will be exploring young children's understanding of homosexuality. Some of the factors we will be assessing include children's beliefs about the rightness/wrongness of homosexuality, their beliefs about fairness and justice (i.e, exclusion and punishment), as well as their views on the origin of these differences (i.e., innate or learned).

Relationship between Children's, Adolescents', and Adults' Epistemological Development and their Evaluation of Different Teaching Methods

This study assessed children's, adolescents', and adults' epistemological development (i.e., beliefs about knowledge) and its relationship with their evaluations of different teaching methods. The domain (scientific or moral) and nature (controversial or noncontroversial) and method (lecture or discussion) were varied to determine if this affected participants' rating of the teaching methods. Epistemological development was assessed in three domains: aesthetic, value (moral), and physical truth (science). In general, it was discovered that older participants preferred discussion methods, while younger participants did not discriminate between lectures or discussions. However, all participants took the domain, nature, and method into consideration. Epistemological development was predictive of preference for certain teaching methods, but only in the value domain.

Sharon To

Parenting study

In this study, we look at children and adolescent's evaluations and justifications about different types of parenting communications in three settings: urban Canada, urban China, and rural China. We presented four types of discipline methods (comparing autonomy supportive vs. psychologically controlling methods) to the participants and investigated the emotion aroused, understanding, as well as the "effectiveness" of these methods through semi-structure interviews. We found that children are not merely passive recipients of parental discipline, but they actively think about and even evaluate these practices in ways that may determine their effectiveness and the outcomes for the child.

Children's Rights and Wellbeing study

In this study, we investigate how conceptions of children's rights develop in urban and rural China. We examine the role of both parental and teacher autonomy support and responsiveness, as well as perceptions of the roles of democratic school and family environments, in facilitating Chinese adolescents' endorsement of their own rights. These are features of adolescents' experiences and perceptions which are considered to be related to the development of the concept of rights but have not been previously examined in comparative cross-cultural research. Furthermore, we also examine correlates between these features of adolescents' experiences and their psychological well-being.