The aims of the current study are twofold. First, we examine the relationship between specific modalities of career interventions and initial employment in IT. Specifically, we take a skills and social learning perspective to distinguish between direct and vicarious experiences of career interventions and relate these experiences to IT…

Using a sample of college graduates from the NLSY97, we introduce a new approach to assessing wage benefits of STEM training, STEM jobs, and the match between the two: rather than classify individuals dichotomously as STEM or non-STEM, we measure the STEM-intensities of both their college coursework and their occupational requirements. While the…

We investigated how family characteristics and experiences during early adolescence predicted timing of sexual initiation. In addition, we investigated adolescent sex and race/ethnicity as potential moderating factors. As part of the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979 (CNLSY-79), 799 adolescents aged 12 to 15 years provided…

Today, many undergraduates are themselves raising children. But does college-going by parents improve their offspring's educational attainment? I address this question using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth--1979 and linked Children and Young Adults Survey. I first model postnatal college enrollment and bachelor's completion by…

This study uses a developmental perspective and focuses on examining whether the impact of adolescent dating is age-sensitive. Dating at earlier ages is hypothesized to have a stronger effect on adolescent criminal behavior or substance use, but the effect would be weaker as one ages. The data obtained from the National Longitudinal Survey of…

The present study sought to extend empirical inquiry related to the role of parenting on adolescent sexual risk-taking by using latent class analysis (LCA) to identify patterns of adolescent-reported mother responsiveness and autonomy-granting in early adolescence and examine associations with sexual risk-taking in mid- and late-adolescence.…

Economic theories predict that women are more likely to exit the labor force if their partners' earnings are higher and if their own wage rate is lower. In this article, I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 2,254) and discrete-time event-history analysis to show that wives' relative wages are more predictive of their exit than are…

This study introduces an item response theory-zero-inflated Poisson (IRT-ZIP) model to investigate psychometric properties of multiple items and predict individuals' latent trait scores for multivariate zero-inflated count data. In the model, two link functions are used to capture two processes of the zero-inflated count data. Item parameters are…

The gateway drug model is a popular conceptualization of a progression most substance users are hypothesized to follow as they try different legal and illegal drugs. Most forms of the gateway hypothesis are that "softer" drugs lead to "harder," illicit drugs. However, the gateway hypothesis has been notably difficult to…

Are economic resources related to relationship quality among young couples, and to what extent does this vary by relationship type? To answer these questions, we estimated regression models predicting respondent reports of conflict and affection in cohabiting and married partner relationships using the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, 1997…

Recent studies have found a large earnings premium to attending a more selective college, but the mechanisms underlying this premium have received little attention and remain unclear. In order to shed light on this question, I develop a multidimensional signaling model relying on college grades and selectivity that rationalizes students' choices…

Two theoretical perspectives, role incompatibility and stress proliferation, suggest that age at first birth is associated with alcohol use, but each theory offers distinct predictions about the effect of relatively early parenthood on alcohol use. This study examines the applicability of these perspectives using data spanning over twenty years…

Duncan et al. (2007) examined associations between early behavioral and cognitive skills with later achievement. These associations were examined in 6 different data sets and results converged to suggest that early behavioral competences or problems had little, if any, prediction to later achievement and that attentional competences had small…

Using data from the 1994-1998 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth merged Mother and Young Adult file, this article examines the relationship between depressive symptoms and body mass index (BMI) in adolescence. The authors also examine whether this relationship varies by race and gender. Their findings indicate that over a 4-year…

The authors examined intergenerational family predictors of the Black-White achievement gap among 4,406 adolescents from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. An intergenerational model of the process by which family factors contribute to the achievement gap was also tested. The results showed that the ethnic gaps in socioeconomic status…