Improving education and labor market outcomes for low-income students is critical for advancing socioeconomic mobility in the United States. We explore how Massachusetts public high schools affect the longer-term outcomes of low-income students, using detailed longitudinal data. We estimate school value-added impacts on four-year college…

The current study examines whether peer victimization experienced in early adolescence is associated with compromised social functioning 14 years later in young adulthood. The sample involved 1533 young adults (65.1% female, M[subscript age] = 27.06) who had participated in a large research project as middle school students (7th and 8th graders,…

Background/Context: Parents and policymakers have long believed that some schools are more effective than others. State testing requirements under No Child Left Behind helped publicize the widely understood fact that schools differ substantially in their students average test scores and treated such scores as key proxies for school quality. More…

There is evidence that student-selected reading of compelling, relevant young adult literature helps address the problem of low reading engagement among adolescents, but schools rarely take up this option as a curricular priority. A major source of apprehension for adults is fear that students might be placed at risk by exposure to realistic…

Guided by the life course perspective, this study investigated the developmental antecedents of contact, closeness/warmth, and negativity in young adults' relationships with their parents. Taking the developmental systems approach, we considered interindividual differences in not only initial levels of parenting quality in early adolescence (Grade…

Monitoring the Future (MTF) is an ongoing research program conducted at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research under a series of investigator-initiated research grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse beginning in 1975. The integrated MTF study includes annual surveys of nationally-representative samples of 8th, 10th,…

In this article we present a new method for estimating children's total vocabulary size based on a language corpus in German. We drew a virtual sample of different lexicon sizes from a corpus and let the virtual sample "take" a vocabulary test by comparing whether the items were included in the virtual lexicons or not. This enabled us to…

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) has become an increasingly worrying phenomenon among adolescents and young adults. This study sought to address the paucity of data about the prevalence, nature, and functions of NSSI in the South African context. The Inventory of Statements about Self-harm and the Beck Depression Inventory-II were administered to…

Objective: Racial discrimination experiences are common among youth with an ethnic minority background, and such experiences affect health. Stress-sensitive systems like the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis have been proposed as one mechanism. HPA-axis activity, measured through daily patterns of salivary cortisol, is altered among…

The potential importance of depending on others during adolescence to establish independence in young adulthood was examined across adolescence to emerging adulthood. Participants included 184 teens (46% male; 42% non-White), their mothers, best friends, and romantic partners, assessed at ages 13-14, 18, 21-22, and 25. Path analyses showed that…

Although early sexual initiation has been linked to negative outcomes, it is unknown whether these effects are causal. In this study, we use propensity score methods to estimate the causal effect of early sexual initiation on young adult sexual risk behaviors and health outcomes using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to…

Introduction: Based on internal and external assets, the positive youth development approach aims to increase the capacity among adolescents to overcome challenges as they transition to adulthood. Developmental assets have been found to be positively associated with academic achievement, a variety of health promoting behaviors, and improved…

The present study was conducted to explore the potential positive influence of a short strategy training on metacognitive monitoring competencies covering a life-span approach. Participants of four age groups (3rd-grade children, adolescents, younger and older adults) concluded a paired-associate learning task. Additionally, they gave delayed…

Monitoring the Future (MTF) is a long-term study of substance use and related factors among U.S. adolescents, college students, and adult high school graduates through age 55. It is conducted annually and supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. MTF findings identify emerging susbstance use problems, track substance use trends, and…

Recent advances in positive youth development theory and research explicate complex associations between adaptive functioning and risk behavior, acknowledging that high levels of both co-occur in the lives of some adolescents. However, evidence on nuanced overlapping developmental trajectories of adaptive functioning and risk has been limited to 1…