The authors introduce the Preparation in STEM Leadership Program at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. This NSF-Funded program and research study creates a centralized training program for peer leaders that includes a battery of assessments to evaluate peer leaders' content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, communication skills, and…

Background: Despite previous research indicating an adolescents' alcohol, tobacco, and other drug (ATOD) use is dependent upon their sex and the sex composition of their social network, few social network studies consider sex differences and network sex composition as a determinant of adolescents' ATOD use behavior. Methods: This systematic…

The purpose of the research is to explore the development of peer-observation programme for the use of an extension language school in Hong Kong. The research objectives were to explore teachers' perceptions on a peer observation programme as a means to improve teaching practice, examine how teachers make sense of the peer observation programme…

Would you like to help your students adjust to university life? Perhaps you are simply interested in allowing them to feel more integrated into a department right from the start of their first year? These were the types of issues that we were hoping to address when we founded the MySci Advisors Program, a peer-mentoring group for first year…

Orienting and welcoming first-year students to campus and to honors programs are often key components of program development. At an institutional level, successful orientation programs can positively affect retention rates from the first to second year. The greater a student's involvement and integration into the life of the university, the less…

The overarching goal of this special issue is to consider peer victimization involvement and corresponding interventions for youth with disabilities from a social dynamics perspective that situates risks for being a victim, perpetrator, or both within a person-in-context framework. The focus here is not on a specific age range or type of…

Predictors of adolescent gambling behavior were examined in a sample of 436 males and females (ages 13-16). A biopsychosocial model was used to identify key variables that differentiate between non-gambling and gambling adolescents. Logistic regression found that, as compared to adolescent male non-gamblers, adolescent male gamblers were older,…

This article reviews the extant literature on the links between peer victimization and academic performance and engagement among children and adolescents. Although most of the research on this association is based on cross-sectional investigations, research using longitudinal designs is starting to point to the fact that peer victimization does…

Family-to-family services are emerging as an important adjunctive service to traditional mental health care and a vehicle for improving parent engagement and service use in children's mental health services. In New York State, a growing workforce of Family Peer Advocates (FPA) is delivering family-to-family services. We describe the development…

Affinity groups are places where students build connections and process "ouch" moments from their classes. Children talk about the isolation they sometimes feel. The relationships students gain through race-based affinity groups enable them to feel less alone with their emotions and help them build a stronger sense of self. At the same…

First Nations youth in Canada demonstrate disproportionately high rates of negative behaviors such as violence, substance abuse, and leaving school early. An understanding of historical context and current environment helps explain these patterns. Providing culturally relevant opportunities for youth to build healthy relationships and leadership…

This study was designed to examine the causal paths that predict antisocial behavior and the consumption of legal and illegal substances (drugs) in adolescents. The sample comprised 1,629 adolescents, 786 males and 843 females, between 14 and 18 years old. All participants provided reports of family, school, personality, and peer-group factors…

Community colleges operate under much scrutiny these days, and these institutions have experienced a growing emphasis on performance indicators as paths to institutional accountability. California's system of 109 community colleges recently developed and implemented an innovative accountability program that used peer group comparison as one of its…

Mentoring has become increasingly popular during recent years and particularly so in the provision of leadership development, including the mentoring of school principals. In New Zealand, many of these mentoring programmes are developed and funded by central government and are mostly designed to meet the needs of those in their initial years of…

Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate disclosure rates and disclosure patterns and to examine predictors of non-disclosure in a sample of male and female adolescents with self-reported experiences of sexual abuse. Method: A sample of 4,339 high school seniors (2,324 girls, 2,015 boys) was examined with a questionnaire concerning…