Melanie J Zimmer-Gembeck
Biographic Data
| ID | 327493 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Melanie J Zimmer-Gembeck |
| GIVEN NAMES | Melanie J |
| FAMILY NAME | Zimmer-Gembeck |
| SIGNATURE | ZIMMER-GEMBECK M J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Griffith University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9100-010X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 88 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 305 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 87 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
“Teenagers are a reflection of your parenting – everyone is judging”
Parents face unique challenges as their children leave secondary school and advance into the emerging adulthood years. This study explores parents’, primarily mothers’, experiences of parenting as their children (16 – 19 years) were in their last months of school. Thirty Australian parents (28 mothers and 2 fathers) were individually interviewed. Reflexive thematic analyses revealed two overarching themes with seven subthemes. Overarching themes …
Youth’s Experience of Mindful Parenting
Vulnerability to appearance-based social media use and preoccupation
Intrusive Parenting and Adolescent Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms
Multilevel random effects meta-analyses were performed to produce a summary effect size from 231 studies (2000 to 2025) that contributed 482 effect estimates for intrusive parenting and youth’s (age 13–25) internalizing ( N = 152,280) and 232 effect estimates for intrusive parenting and externalizing symptoms ( N = 85,711). Intrusive parenting subtype (psychological control, overprotective, helicopter, autonomy support-reversed), youth symptom su…
Adolescent Reports of Demanding and Responsive Features in Helicopter and Overprotective Parenting
INTRODUCTION: Research collecting data from parents has found that helicopter parenting (HP) and overprotective parenting (OP) of their adolescents can be reformed to identify two features: demanding and responsive overparenting (Ryan et al. 2024). The correlations of these features with other measures were also found to differ, with demanding overparenting uniquely correlated with parent reports of less positive parenting and poorer youth adjust…
Psychosocial factors related to women’s persistent or recurrent vulvovaginal pain
OBJECTIVE: Vulvovaginal pain is a prevalent condition that can be accompanied by psychological and social difficulties. This review summarised studies of vulvovaginal pain as related to women's psychological and social adjustment. METHOD AND MEASURES: A systematic search identified 35 studies of vulvovaginal pain as related to women's psychological and social adjustment. RESULTS: Most identified studies investigated anxiety, depression, sexual di…
Eating for emotion regulation
Food consumption can be an attempt to regulate negative emotion, positioning eating as a strategy for emotion regulation ( EER ). Given adolescents' developmental changes, such as sensitivity to stress and still maturing emotion regulation skills, adolescents may often rely on an accessible emotion regulation strategy, such as EER, when they experience stress. However, there are few studies of stress, emotion, and emotional eating in adolescents,…
Overprotective Parenting
Background and Objectives Overprotective parenting (OP) is defined as parents' inclination to take over children's tasks, overinvolvement in children's self‐direction and decision‐making, and interfering in age‐appropriate autonomy. Past studies have focused on impacts of OP on child mental health and well‐being, but few have considered what social circumstances could produce parents' OP. The aim of the current study was to investigate parents' p…
Seeking support or concealing? A longitudinal study of adolescents’ friendships, peer victimization, depression, and coping with peer relationship stressors
Friends are often a source of emotional and informational support, which suggests that friends can directly assist adolescents to more effectively cope with stressful experiences, reducing emotional distress. In this longitudinal study, we examined the direct impact of friendship on adolescents' use of help seeking, comfort seeking, concealment, and rumination to cope with peer stressors. We used path modeling with two waves of data to consider t…
A scoping review of the role of mindful parenting in youth’s emotional, behavioral, and social adjustment, coping, and emotion regulation
Mindful parenting involves parents’ moment-to-moment awareness during parent–child interactions and nonjudgemental acceptance of children. There is not yet an extensive history of research on the impact of mindful parenting on youth’s adjustment and well-being, but the last decade has seen an increase in attention. This growth suggests the need for a scoping review to summarize the current state of the research, to identify research gaps, and to …
Youth's Experience of Mindful Parenting
INTRODUCTION: Mindful parenting is associated with youth's better psychological adjustment, suggesting it could also relate to the ways youth cope with stress. This study investigated how youth's experience of their parents' mindful parenting (or their perceived mindful parenting) related to their ways of coping with academic and social stressors directly, while also estimating indirect associations via three interlinked skills of dispositional m…
Adolescents' Compassion is Distinctively Associated With More Prosocial and Less Aggressive Defending Against Bullying When Considering Empathic Emotions and Costs
INTRODUCTION: Adolescents who witness bullying often stand by passively rather than supporting their victimized peers with prosocial defending. In this study, we investigated whether compassion, as unique from empathic distress and anger and social costs, related to more prosocial and less aggressive defending and passivity. METHOD: = 14.66, SD = 1.11, age range = 13-17 years; 56% girls) completed surveys that also included embedded film clips po…
Online appearance preoccupation in and beyond adolescence
The Effects of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy on Parent Feeding Practices and Children’s Problematic Mealtime Behaviors
Difficulties with mealtime disruptive behavior are common in early childhood. • Little evidence-based supports are widely available to treat these concerns. • Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) reduced children’s mealtime behaviors. • Improvements were also found for parent’s feeding practices. • Unmodified PCIT can support families struggling with problematic mealtime behavior. Many children are fussy or demanding about food, and managing t…
Sexual Minority Men's Mental Health
Heterosexist discrimination is a known predictor of poorer mental health among sexual minority men (SMM), but it may not be the only social stressor influencing mental health. This study examined if intragroup marginalization within the gay community contributes to SMM's mental health after accounting for experiences of heterosexist discrimination. Study participants were 283 Australian SMM (Mage = 32.12, SD = 10.81) who completed an online surve…
Appearance-related teasing, rejection sensitivity, acceptance, and coping as risks and resources associated with online appearance preoccupation over one year
Online appearance preoccupation is a known correlate of poorer body image, social problems, and mental health symptoms among youth. Yet, this study is the first to investigate individual and social risks and resources expected to explain the level of concurrent, as well as change in, online appearance preoccupation across one year. We focused on two risk factors of appearance teasing online by peers and appearance-based sensitivity to rejection, …
Daily use of digital technologies to feel better
INTRODUCTION: Adolescents report using digital technologies for emotion regulation (digital ER), with the aim of feeling better (i.e., improving emotions and reducing loneliness). In this 7-day diary study, we investigated associations of digital ER, emotions, and loneliness, and tested whether prior emotional problems moderated these associations. METHOD: = 13.91, SD = 1.52; 44% boys). Daily surveys measured digital ER; end-of-day happiness, sad…
Parental Involvement in Programs to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse
This systematic review is the first to synthesize knowledge of parental involvement in child sexual abuse (CSA) prevention programs. Guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) criteria, 24 intervention evaluations met the inclusion criteria of aiming to change parental knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, behavioral intentions, self-efficacy, response-efficacy, or capabilities for prevention of CSA. Incl…
Reaching Young People in Urban and Rural Communities with Mental Health and Wellbeing Support Within a Youth Sports Development Program
Embedding mental health and wellbeing programs within youth sports development programs can help provide more young people with mental health support. However, delivering such programs in multiple locations across metropolitan, regional, and rural areas requires novel solutions to overcome geographic and logistical barriers. We examined the delivery of an integrated system delivered within an Australian junior rugby league program. The program in…
Manifestations and harms of intragroup marginalization within the male gay community
Gay and bisexual men (GBM) are at risk of marginalization from outside and inside the gay community. Research consistently shows that biased societal attitudes and interactions with individuals outside the gay community (e.g., heterosexist discrimination) undermine well-being of GBM, but it has been unclear whether social interactions ‘within’ the gay community also affect well-being. It was recently recognized that some GBM perceive the gay comm…
Provision of gender affirming care among medical and allied health practitioners
Gender diverse patients (including gender diverse, transgender, and non-binary people) deserve quality health care, which has been referred to as gender affirming care. Given that practitioners' attitudes and competence can influence their provision of gender affirming care, this study used a lens of transnormativity (Bradford & Syed, 2019; Johnson, 2016) to develop a measure of practitioners' transnormative beliefs. The aim of the study was to d…
The Relations Between Parents' Gender Equality Values and (co)parenting
In most Western societies, parents' gender roles and values have shifted significantly over the past decades. However, it is not yet clear whether parents' gender-related values impact both their own and their partners' coparenting and parenting practices. This study examined the relations between parents' gender equality values, their coparenting, and parental warmth and hostility. Drawing 6745 families from an ongoing Australian panel study, we…
The Cambridge Handbook of the Development of Coping
Despite broad interest in how children and youth cope with stress and how others can support their coping, this is the first Handbook to consolidate the many theories and large bodies of research that contribute to the study of the development of coping. The Handbook's goal is field building - it brings together theory and research from across the spectrum of psychological, developmental, and related sciences to inform our understanding of coping…
Development, psychometric validation, and cross-cultural comparison of the “Instagram Motives Questionnaire” (IMQ) and the “Instagram Uses and Patterns Questionnaire” (Iupq)
Adolescents’ online appearance preoccupation
Online behaviors, especially those concerning appearance preoccupation, have been related to poorer mental health, but early risk factors for online appearance preoccupation are not well understood. In this study, data were collected in the first years of adolescence (age 10–13 years) to investigate correlates of later online appearance preoccupation (ages 15–18 years). Drawing data from a longitudinal study, 261 Australian adolescents (48% male;…
Relational and Physical Aggression, Prosocial Behavior, and Peer Relations
In this 3-year prospective study (N = 458) spanning a transition to middle school, bidirectional associations between children’s relations with schoolmates (social preference andimpact)and behaviors (physical and relational aggression, prosocial behavior) were examined using structural equation modeling. Gender moderation of all estimated paths was examined. There was no gender difference in relational aggression in Grade 3; girls were more relat…
The Female Sexual Subjectivity Inventory
Three studies were conducted to develop and validate a theoretically derived multidimensional inventory of females' sexual self-conceptions ( sexual subjectivity). Study 1 revealed five factors on the Female Sexual Subjectivity Inventory (FSSI): sexual body-esteem, three factors of conceptions and expectations of sexual desire and pleasure (self, partner, and self-efficacy), and sexual self-reflection. A shorter revised version of the FSSI was te…
Female sexual subjectivity and well-being
Parent feeding restriction and child weight. The mediating role of child disinhibited eating and the moderating role of the parenting context
Associations of Sexual Subjectivity with Global and Sexual Well-Being
A Prospective Study of Intraindividual and Peer Influences on Adolescents' Heterosexual Romantic and Sexual Behavior
Popularity
We investigated the contribution of popularity, popularity prioritization, and gender to the explanation of bullying and defending behavior. Participants were 191 early adolescents (124 girls and 67 boys), aged from 10.9 to 13.6 years. Results revealed that adolescents high on popularity were more likely to bully others. Greater popularity prioritization was also associated with more bullying among boys with high levels, and girls with low levels…
A Prospective Study of Young Females’ Sexual Subjectivity
Low birthweight in a public prenatal care program
Stability, Change and Individual Differences in Involvement with Friends and Romantic Partners Among Adolescent Females
Sexual Partners and Contraceptive Use
Antecedents and correlates of sexual behavior among 167 (46% female) adolescents were examined in this multi‐informant longitudinal study. Data were collected at birth through middle adolescence. Data on number of sexual partners and contraception use at age 16 defined sexual abstinence (SAs, n =73), high‐risk sexual behavior (HRTs, n =45) and low‐risk sexual behavior (LRTs, n =49) groups. Moffitt's (1993) antisocial behavior taxonomy, problem be…
Friendship Conflict, Conflict Responses, and Instability
Rejection sensitivity (RS) instigates conflict and prompts maladaptive conflict responses within romantic relationships. We tested whether RS had similar effects within friendships ( N = 262, X age = 11.7) by investigating whether (a) RS was associated with more frequent conflict, (b) two RS forms prompted different conflict responses, and (c) conflict and responses mediated associations of RS with friendship instability. Adolescents higher in an…
Connected and Isolated Victims of Relational Aggression
Intuitive, mindful, emotional, external and regulatory eating behaviours and beliefs
Relational Victimization, Loneliness and Depressive Symptoms
Peer Group Rejection in Childhood
This study examined the reactions of 6 to 12 year old children (N = 144) to in‐group members who accepted or rejected them, and assessed whether their reactions were influenced by their rejection sensitivity (RS) and social acumen (SA). After completing measures of RS and SA, children participated in an intergroup simulation in which they were accepted or unambiguously versus ambiguously rejected by their group. Findings indicated that whereas am…
Pretty Pressure” From Peers, Parents, and the Media
Drawing from the tripartite sociocultural model of body image, the researchers examined whether direct messages and modeling from peers, parents, and media were concurrently and prospectively associated with appearance-based rejection sensitivity (appearance-RS) in young adolescents (M age = 12.0 years). Appearance-RS was higher among those who concurrently reported more appearance-related teasing and pressure by peers, more parent teasing, and g…
Parental Support and Adolescents’ Coping with Academic Stressors
Adolescents face many academic pressures that require good coping skills, but coping skills can also depend on social resources, such as parental support and fewer negative interactions. The aim of this study was to determine if parental support and parental negative interactions concurrently and longitudinally relate to adolescents’ ways of academic coping, above and beyond the impact of three types of academic stress, students’ achievement at s…
Transactional Associations Between Adolescents’ Emotion Dysregulation and Symptoms of Social Anxiety and Depression
Emotion dysregulation has been associated with increased risks for psychopathology. During adolescence when the onset of mental illnesses peak, emotion dysregulation may be particularly problematic. In this study, we examined transactional associations between young adolescents’ self-report of their emotion dysregulation and symptoms of social anxiety and depression at three assessments over 3 years. Participants were 391 Australian students (56%…
Longitudinal Relations of Parental Influences and Adolescent Career Aspirations and Actions in a Collectivist Society
Using social cognitive career theory as a framework, we examined the longitudinal effects of proximal parental contextual influences on career aspirations and actions in a collectivist context. We used a sample of 954 Indonesian high school students and measured parental career expectations, adolescent‐parent career congruence, self‐efficacy, outcome expectations, career aspirations, planning and exploration, twice, 6 months apart. The best‐fitti…
Intercorrelations of Intimacy and Identity Dating Goals with Relationship Behaviors and Satisfaction among Young Heterosexual Couples
Goals indicate what individuals are working towards in their present lives and what they want to achieve or avoid. In this study of 87 young, unmarried couples (age 17 to 25 years), intimacy and identity dating goals were assessed to investigate couple similarity in goals, associations between personal goals and relationship behaviors, and whether goals and behavior were associated with relationship satisfaction. Couples were similar in their int…
Relation of Depression and Anxiety to Self‐ and Peer‐Reported Relational Aggression
The primary purpose of this multimethod and multimeasure study was to identify how the peer relationships of Australian adolescents (ages 9–15 years; N = 335) at school, including relational aggression and victimization, correlated with their symptoms of depression and anxiety. Moreover, relational aggression and victimization were measured via both self‐ and peer report, and discrepancies between reports were considered as correlates of symptoms…
Manifestations and harms of intragroup marginalization within the male gay community
Gay and bisexual men (GBM) are at risk of marginalization from outside and inside the gay community. Research consistently shows that biased societal attitudes and interactions with individuals outside the gay community (e.g., heterosexist discrimination) undermine well-being of GBM, but it has been unclear whether social interactions ‘within’ the gay community also affect well-being. It was recently recognized that some GBM perceive the gay comm…
The Relations Between Parents' Gender Equality Values and (co)parenting
In most Western societies, parents' gender roles and values have shifted significantly over the past decades. However, it is not yet clear whether parents' gender-related values impact both their own and their partners' coparenting and parenting practices. This study examined the relations between parents' gender equality values, their coparenting, and parental warmth and hostility. Drawing 6745 families from an ongoing Australian panel study, we…
Friends and Education
Effect of the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA ??88) on the Incidence of Invasive Cervical Cancer
The Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act of 1988 (CLIA '88) mandates strict, new quality-control measures for laboratories that interpret cervical cytology smears. Proposed regulations include proficiency testing of cytotechnologists and remediation for technologists and laboratories that fail to meet proposed proficiency standards. Proponents of the new regulations argue that these measures will reduce deaths from cervical cancer by reducing the …
Low birthweight in a public prenatal care program
Practice Variation and the Risk of Low Birth Weight in a Public Prenatal Care Program
OBJECTIVES: Use of antepartum tests of fetal well-being is widespread even though effectiveness in preventing fetal damage or stillbirth has not been established. The study objective was to examine whether aggressive use of these tests might contribute to increased rates of other birth outcomes, including low birth weight (LBW). METHODS: A total of 3,235 low-income women receiving care from 28 clinic sites were studied. All women were eligible fo…
Individual Differences and the Development of Perceived Control
Research on individual differences demonstrates that children's perceived control exerts a strong effect on their academic achievement and that, in turn, children's actual school performance influences their sense of control. At the same time, developmental research shows systematic age-graded changes in the processes that children use to regulate and interpret control experiences. Drawing on both these perspectives, the current study examines (1…
Stability, Change and Individual Differences in Involvement with Friends and Romantic Partners Among Adolescent Females
Diverse aspects of dating
A Prospective Study of Intraindividual and Peer Influences on Adolescents' Heterosexual Romantic and Sexual Behavior
Female sexual subjectivity and well-being
Relational and Physical Aggression, Prosocial Behavior, and Peer Relations
In this 3-year prospective study (N = 458) spanning a transition to middle school, bidirectional associations between children’s relations with schoolmates (social preference andimpact)and behaviors (physical and relational aggression, prosocial behavior) were examined using structural equation modeling. Gender moderation of all estimated paths was examined. There was no gender difference in relational aggression in Grade 3; girls were more relat…
The Female Sexual Subjectivity Inventory
Three studies were conducted to develop and validate a theoretically derived multidimensional inventory of females' sexual self-conceptions ( sexual subjectivity). Study 1 revealed five factors on the Female Sexual Subjectivity Inventory (FSSI): sexual body-esteem, three factors of conceptions and expectations of sexual desire and pleasure (self, partner, and self-efficacy), and sexual self-reflection. A shorter revised version of the FSSI was te…
Behavioral Outcomes of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy and Triple P—Positive Parenting Program
The Development of Coping
Research on coping during childhood and adolescence is distinguished by its focus on how children deal with actual stressors in real-life contexts. Despite burgeoning literatures within age groups, studies on developmental differences and changes have proven difficult to integrate. Two recent advances promise progress toward a developmental framework. First, dual-process models that conceptualize coping as “regulation under stress” establish link…
Sexual Partners and Contraceptive Use
Antecedents and correlates of sexual behavior among 167 (46% female) adolescents were examined in this multi‐informant longitudinal study. Data were collected at birth through middle adolescence. Data on number of sexual partners and contraception use at age 16 defined sexual abstinence (SAs, n =73), high‐risk sexual behavior (HRTs, n =45) and low‐risk sexual behavior (LRTs, n =49) groups. Moffitt's (1993) antisocial behavior taxonomy, problem be…
Ten years of longitudinal research on U.S. adolescent sexual behavior
The Daily Social and Emotional Worlds of Adolescents Who Are Psychologically Maltreated by Their Romantic Partners
Parent feeding restriction and child weight. The mediating role of child disinhibited eating and the moderating role of the parenting context
It’s “Mean,” But What Does It Mean to Adolescents? Relational Aggression Described by Victims, Aggressors, and Their Peers
Early adolescent girls and boys ( N = 33) with known histories of relational aggression and/or victimization gave detailed accounts of the nature, frequency, intensity, course, and impact of relational aggression among their peers. They also described reasons for, and forms of, aggression after being prompted by a series of hypothetical vignettes. Despite identifying many forms of aggression that were similar for girls and boys, some sex differen…
Development and Initial Validation of the Children's Optimistic and Pessimistic Expectations of Relationships Scale
Theory suggests that children's developing conceptions and views of relationship are important outcomes of social experiences, which can affect later relationships and mental health. However, research has been limited because no measure is currently available that captures children's pessimistic and optimistic expectations of relationships. Two studies were conducted with children (aged 9 to 12 years) with the purpose of developing such ameasure …
A Prospective Study of Young Females’ Sexual Subjectivity
Connected and Isolated Victims of Relational Aggression
Anticipated Coping With Interpersonal Stressors
The same stressor can evoke different emotions across individuals, and emotions can prompt certain coping responses. Responding to four videotaped interpersonal stressors, adolescents ( N = 230, X ̄ a g e = 10 years) reported their sadness, fear and anger, and 12 coping strategies. After identifying emotion patterns using cluster analysis, associations with coping were examined. Intensity of emotion, and emotion and stressor type were associated …
Relation of Depression and Anxiety to Self‐ and Peer‐Reported Relational Aggression
The primary purpose of this multimethod and multimeasure study was to identify how the peer relationships of Australian adolescents (ages 9–15 years; N = 335) at school, including relational aggression and victimization, correlated with their symptoms of depression and anxiety. Moreover, relational aggression and victimization were measured via both self‐ and peer report, and discrepancies between reports were considered as correlates of symptoms…
Anxious and Angry Rejection Sensitivity, Social Withdrawal, and Retribution in High and Low Ambiguous Situations
OBJECTIVE: Rejection sensitivity (RS) is a tendency to expect, perceive, and overreact to rejection. Our objective was to examine whether anxious and angry RS have specific associations with negative social reactions, and whether responses are intensified in situations of high rejection ambiguity. METHOD: In two studies, youth (N = 464 and N = 371) reported their RS and anticipated responses to social scenarios. In Study 1, all scenarios portraye…
Young Women’s Satisfaction With Sex and Romance, and Emotional Reactions to Sex
In this study of 364 young women (18–25 years old), self-efficacy theory and social interactionist perspectives were drawn upon to identify personal and situational factors that could account for sexual and romantic satisfaction and positive and negative emotional reactions to sex. As expected, young women were more satisfied and reported more positive emotional reactions and fewer negative reactions to their most recent sexual encounters, when t…
The Role of Friends and Peers in Adolescent Body Dissatisfaction
We review the research conducted in the past 15 years concerned with the role of friends and peers in adolescent body dissatisfaction. A number of friend and peer group characteristics have been associated with heightened body dissatisfaction both concurrently and longitudinally. Most widely studied and more consistently linked to body dissatisfaction are appearance teasing and perceived pressure from friends to be thin. Other interactions betwee…
Psychology (71 works) · Developmental psychology (63 works) · Social Psychology (43 works) · Clinical Psychology (42 works) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development (30 works) · Medicine (28 works) · Psychiatry (25 works) · Social Psychology (24 works) · Anxiety (21 works) · Clinical Psychology (18 works)