Firearm-related violence is the leading cause of death for adolescents and can have lifelong ramifications, including to one's mental health and well-being. Through a scoping review of existing literature published since 1980, the current study describes nuanced pathways through which exposure to firearm violence (direct or indirect) can…

Using a three-wave (mean age 14.4, 17.4, and 20.4 years) longitudinal design (N = 1,834; 55.6% females), we set out to map direct and indirect effects of adolescent peer victimization and mental health on academic achievement in early adulthood, and the buffering effect of positive family relations. Data was collected in Sweden 2012 to 2018. We…

Violence is a major public health concern that particularly impacts Black young adults living in under-resourced, urban communities. There is limited research on promotive and protective factors that mitigate the impact of violence exposure on aggressive behavior. This study aims to address this gap by exploring positive factors across the…

Establishing a coherent meaning in life has long been considered to be a protective factor of well-being, but this construct has been understudied in early adolescent development. The current study investigated the relationships between family allocentrism and depressive symptoms as well as the mediation effect of meaning in life in 214 Chinese…

Given large variations in the etiology and developmental trajectories of violent and nonviolent delinquency, this study examines whether educational outcomes of violent and nonviolent offenders might differ. In particular, this study attempts to remove environmental influences such as family background and neighborhood effects from the effects of…

Although increasing numbers of youth are seeking help to reduce or abstain from marijuana use, little research has investigated the contextual facilitators and barriers to doing so among urban youth utilizing primary care. We qualitatively investigated contextual facilitators and barriers to marijuana reduction/abstinence in an ethnically diverse…

Latino youth are the fastest growing group of ethnic minority adolescents in the United States, but their educational needs remain underserved. Although research exploring academic engagement has expanded in recent years, the majority of research examining academic engagement among Latino youth has been cross-sectional. Using data from the…

Prosociality, conceptualized as a willingness to help, to be fair, and to be friendly to others, is essential to the maintenance of a civil society and has been linked with multiple measures of individual well-being. This study examines how individual, family, and neighborhood factors affect adolescents' level of prosociality and tests for…

This study examined the circumstances under which family adults in Ghana were aware of their adolescent children's involvement in premarital relationships. It was hypothesized that factors related to the seriousness and social acceptability of the relationship would influence the likelihood of family adults' awareness in gender-specific ways. Data…

Adolescent employment during high school has become the norm in the United States, but studies of associated outcomes have yielded mixed results. These discrepant findings may be partly attributable to study methods, including differences in how adolescent employment is measured and how selection factors are taken into account. The present study,…

We argue that adolescent friendships flourish, or wither, within the "linked lives" of other salient social network ties. Based on structural equation modeling with data from two time points, we find that young people tend to be in high-quality friendships when they are tightly embedded in their social network and receive social support…

Public health practice involving adolescents is largely focused on preventing or delaying the initiation of risk behavior. However, given the experimental and exploratory nature of this developmental period, this is often impractical. This article focuses on behavioral transitions and the ways in which youth involved in risk behaviors shift to…

The present study used nationally representative data from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) merged with census-track data from the American Community Survey (ACS) to model race-ethnic disparities in overweight, obesity, and obesity-related disease among children and adolescents as a function of neighborhood race-ethnic segregation,…

Siblings have been shown to influence youth substance use and violent behavior. However, limited research has examined sibling-influences on sexual activity, particularly among urban Black youth. The current qualitative research was an exploratory study to describe discussions among siblings about sex and sexual health. Individual interviews were…

There are strong reasons to assume that early onset of puberty accelerates coital debut among adolescent girls. Although many studies support this assumption, evidence regarding the putative causal processes is limited and inconclusive. In this research, longitudinal data from the 1986 Northern Finland Birth Cohort Study (N = 2,596) were used to…