The predictive relations between social capital depth (high-quality relationships across contexts) and breadth (friendship network extensivity) and early-adult life adjustment outcomes were examined using data from a prospective longitudinal study. Interviews at age 22 yielded (a) psychometrically sound indexes of relationship quality with…

This study examined how the manifestation of overt aggression changes during early adolescence using Hierarchical Linear Modeling. The distinct courses of physical and verbal aggression identified in this study provide support for developmental transformations in overt aggression, which would have been obscured unless aggression had been defined…

Reports a study that examined social factors which might predict adolescent smoking transition from nonsmoking or experimental to more advanced stages. Data from teens who participated in the Teenage Attitudes and Practices Survey indicated that best friends' smoking status was the only factor that consistently predicted adolescent smoking…

Adults with mental retardation (n=22,740) were studied to investigate age-related changes in functioning and their relation to subsequent mortality. Individuals with Down syndrome, compared to non-Down syndrome individuals with mental retardation, were at earlier and higher risk for adaptive regression whether prevalence, incidence, or mortality…

Changes from the expected life course can arise from at least three different reasons in longitudinal work: developmental novelty, errors in diagnosis, and errors in expectation. This longitudinal study examined the social development of 220 fourth graders and 475 seventh graders over a period of 10 years with over 98 percent of the original…