Research and data on youth and delinquency is critical for identifying opportunities and developing strategies to support positive development through prevention and intervention. Responses to youth misbehavior by youth-serving systems -- including education, child welfare, behavioral health, and justice systems -- can play an important role in…

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced children to reckon with the causal relations underlying disease transmission. What are children's theories of how COVID-19 is transmitted? And how do they understand the relation between COVID-19 susceptibility and the need for disease-mitigating behavior? We asked these questions in the context of children's…

Objective: College students play a major role in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the viral agent responsible for COVID-19. We aim to understand risk perceptions, self-efficacy, and adoption of prevention behaviors in this population to inform prevention strategies. Participants: Undergraduate students attending a large public university. Methods:…

The study examined gender and age differences in the relationship between sensation seeking and sexual risk behaviors among secondary school students in Kenya. The study was conducted in Kisumu Municipality. Kisumu was chosen as it is one of the leading regions in HIV prevalence, estimated at 15%. The HIV prevalence was assumed to indicate a…

High-risk sexual behaviors (HRSBs; e.g., having sex without protection against pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections) are a public health problem. HRSBs disproportionally impact college students and are associated with numerous negative outcomes, such as unwanted pregnancies. Alcohol use has been strongly linked to HRSBs in college…

Objective: To identify the lifetime prevalence and correlates of appearance- and performance-enhancing drugs and substances (APEDS) use among a national sample of US college and university students. Participants: Student participants from the 2020-2021 Healthy Minds Study (N = 7,401; ages 18-30 years). Methods: Lifetime prevalence of five forms of…

Background: Early sexual reproductive health (SRH) education is linked to a reduction in risky sexual behaviors. Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are rising at alarming rates. Risky sexual behaviors, including initiation of sex before age 13, having more than four sexual partners, and lack of use of condoms, increase the chance of infection…

This study examined the role religiosity and parents play in regular alcohol use among Christian college students. Responses from a health risk behavior survey given on an alcohol-abstinent Christian campus in 2012 and 2018 were analyzed. Stepwise logistic regression analysis was used to develop a model that explains the frequency of regular…

Despite empirical and epidemiological research indicating that risk taking propensity increases across adolescence, it is unknown whether this is true for positive risk taking. Additionally, adolescents' decisions are heavily influenced by their social environment, but it is unclear to what extent social influences are associated with positive…

Health risks, when presented as ratios (e.g., two out of seven people), are challenging to understand, but visual displays can foster accurate understanding. We conducted three experiments to test how characteristics of numbers (Experiment 1), icon arrays (Experiments 1, 2, and 3), and number lines (Experiments 1 and 3) influenced people's ability…

Purpose: This study is a formative evaluation of an adolescent online e-cigarette prevention program (Clearing the Vapor) giving attention to identifying higher risk adolescent populations, confirming the theory of change, and assessing short-term outcomes. Design/methodology/approach: The evaluation was conducted using online pre-test and…

Multidimensional causes of insufficient sleep among adolescents are not fully explored, particularly, the association between substance use and sleep duration. The 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) of high school students (N = 14,638; 51% female, 14-18 years old) was used to examine the association between substance use, namely…

This systematic review aimed to understand the effects of self-esteem on risky sexual behavior (RSB) among adolescents and young adults. We followed the procedures outlined in the Cooper's five-step approach, and used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 reporting requirements. Published studies were…

Objectives: Evaluate the association between perceived risk of harm and self-reported binge drinking, cigarette smoking, and marijuana smoking among college students. Participants: Participants were 599 students (ages 19-28) at a large Midwestern university recruited from October 2015 to December 2017. Methods: Hurdle regression was used to test…

Legalization of non-medical cannabis in Canada was intended to protect youth health and safety by limiting access and raising awareness of safety and risks. The purpose of this qualitative research was to explore youths' perceptions of their cannabis health literacy and future educational needs. A convenience sample of youth aged 13 to 18 residing…