Using a population-based sample of 1,311 seventh graders in an urban school district in the South Central United States, we examined the associations between early-life trauma, anger regulation, and early adolescent perceptions about sex and parenthood. Girls and boys with more trauma exposure were more likely to perceive adolescent parenthood as…

As researchers and practitioners begin to take a bystander approach toward preventing bullying, which involves a power imbalance between two students, it is important to acknowledge that predictors of bystander intervention may look different in various groups of students. Though school connectedness has been suggested as a predictor, previous…

The Bystander Intervention Model proposed by social psychologists Latané and Darley has been used to examine the actions of peer bystanders in bullying. The five-stage model consists of notice the event, interpret event as an emergency, accept responsibility for intervening, know how to intervene, and implement intervention decisions. The current…

Youth who receive services from public mental health, child welfare and delinquency, and homeless systems are often exposed to a number of overlapping child, family, school, and community risk factors. Minimal research, however, has focused on the extent to which single- or multiple-system involvement influences school dropout. Relying on an…

Given the frequent comorbidity of anxiety and depression, it is important to study the effects of depression interventions on anxiety and the impact of comorbid anxiety on depression outcomes. This article reports on pooled anxiety and depression data from two randomized trials of Interpersonal Psychotherapy-Adolescent Skills Training (IPT-AST), a…

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (Department) created the grades 1-12 Early Warning Indicator System (EWIS) in response to district interest in the Early Warning Indicator Index (EWII) that the Department previously created for rising grade 9 students. Districts shared that the EWII data were helpful, but also…

This study examined the Response Styles Theory in a large, racially and ethnically diverse sample (N = 722) of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. We examined the role of response styles (rumination, distraction, and problem-solving) as predictors of changes in depressive symptoms over a seven-month period. Higher levels of rumination and lower levels of…

The high school dropout rate in a southern U.S. state is 22.1% and students who fall behind in reading and math in middle school are more likely to fail 9th grade. This specific failure is one of the strongest predictors that a student will ultimately drop out of school. The research questions of this study addressed the relationship between math…

This study assessed whether characteristics of individuals that are predictors of youth problem behavior such as substance use, delinquency, and violence also predict academic achievement. Longitudinal data from 576 students participating in the Raising Healthy Children (RHC) project were analyzed. The RHC project is a study of students recruited…

The nation's youth are increasingly affected by violence, both as its perpetrators and as its victims. Many violence prevention programs aim to reverse this trend, but few have been rigorously evaluated, and even fewer have been shown to work. To devise better programs, researchers need more information. To that end, RAND researchers identified…