Counselors who want to offer culturally meaningful services to Puerto Rican, single-parent women should concentrate on providing educational services. Teaching them to read and write English is most important, followed by career and vocational training for those with competence in English. (Author)

Using 1968 data collected from junior and senior high school students in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, substance usage patterns for heroin and alcohol were predicted for 1975-6. A sample of 1,000 of the initial 5,000 students were selected for re-interview; half were selected to be at high risk of substance abuse and half were selected randomly. Some 657…

Examined the influence of family relationships and support, religion, and education on the Puerto Rican pregnant teenager's decision to carry or to abort. Found girls who carried were more significantly influenced and supported by family and friends, especially by mothers, than were those in abort group. Abort group girls reported greater…

Experimental measures to identify individuals at high risk of drug use can be developed from study data. Negative side effects of identification efforts can be lessened or eliminated by the use of unobstrusive measures in the monitoring process. Regarding heroin use, different measures are suggested to monitor the following variables: academic…

Knowledge gained from the theoretical and empirical literature on social support theory, family systems theory, and social ecology provide the foundation for a model which studies stress, support systems, and coping patterns within the family. Puerto Rican (N=87) and Italian (N=49) families were interviewed to identify stress factors and coping…

This study examined the effects of family size on a sample of some 5000 students in Bayamon, Puerto Rico and examined the effects of family size and spacing on some 537 families in four suburban towns near Boston. It was found that there were major effects of both socio-economic status and religion on family size, but that the direction of the…