School truancy among teenagers remains a serious national problem, as evidenced by its significant association with school performance, psychological, and behavioral problems. Truancy is also positively associated with substance abuse. This study presents 18-month outcome data from a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded controlled trial…

The issue of delinquency among truant youths is insufficiently documented in the literature. There is a need to elucidate this issue, and assess the efficacy of interventions to reduce this problem behavior. The present National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded study addressed this gap by examining the impact of a Brief Intervention (BI),…

Research on samples of truant adolescents is limited, with little known about mental health problems among truant youths. This study provided an exploratory, multilevel examination of mental health problems for a sample of 300 truant adolescents. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated a single factor of multiple mental health problems at the…

Substance use and sexual risk behaviors are common among adolescents, but research has focused attention on alcohol use. Much less is known about the relationship of marijuana use and sexual risk behavior among high-risk, especially truant, youths. We report interim findings from a NIDA-funded experimental, brief intervention (BI) study involving…

Data was collected on arrested youths processed at a centralized intake facility, including youths released back to the community and those placed in secure detention. This article reports the results of a test of a structural model involving newly arrested male and female youths' sexually transmitted diseases (STD) test results, urine analysis…

Reports the results of a study examining the preliminary screening, assessor staff service recommendations, and service utilization outcomes of 143 youths processed at the Hillsborough County, Florida Juvenile Assessment Center. Results indicate that assessors were making recommendations that were meaningfully associated with the youths' potential…

Compared non-users and users of alcohol and/or marijuana (N=1,020) in an inner city junior high school. Separate subcultures were strongly indicated with differences in attitudes, behavior, peer group, and significant adults. Almost any activity was seen as appropriate for a drug abuse prevention program. (JAC)

Young people with records of involvement in the juvenile justice system were studied in Florida, primarily in the inner city of Tampa. The study is part of a longitudinal study of predictors of drug use, delinquency, and criminality. Overall, 32 percent of the 297 adolescents interviewed reported engaging in drug sales in the year preceding their…