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…

Virtual charter schools are increasingly popular, yet there is no research on the long-term outcomes of virtual charter students. We link statewide education records from Oregon with earnings information from IRS records housed at the U.S. Census Bureau to provide evidence on how virtual charter students fare as young adults. Virtual charter…

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…

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…

Thriving is a developmental process that is shaped by previous and current interactions within developmental contexts. We hypothesized that academic performance in the school context will positively predict thriving in young adulthood. Data of N = 2,043 students from Zurich were assessed with standardized tests in Grades 1, 3, 6, and 9. Results…

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…

Background: Many "dropout" studies use the concept of risk as a framework for understanding the persistent problem of high school noncompletion among students of color in urban schools. This research, which frames risks as statistical probabilities and largely focuses on static and individual risk factors, does not account for the myriad…

Organized afterschool activities present great potential to support individuals' positive development. Despite the general findings on the positive role of organized afterschool activities on individual development, existing studies have been limited in multiple ways. They have often focused on the quantity of participation or the amount of time…

This study explores the longitudinal effect of adolescent volunteering behaviour on young adult volunteering and the completion of secondary school. Utilising data from the Australian sample of the International Youth Development Study, frequency of volunteering in Grade 9 (mean age = 15 years) and in young adulthood (mean age = 21 years), and…

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…

This study presents descriptive analysis of young adults' use of multiple representations in the context of science news reporting. Across one semester, 71 high school students, in a socioeconomically diverse suburban secondary school in Midwestern United States, participated in activities of researching science topics of their choice and…

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…

Parents play an important role in influencing adolescent health behaviors and parenting practices may be an important pathway through which social disadvantage influences adolescent health behaviors that can persist into adulthood. This analysis uses the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine how parenting practices mediate…

Solving simple arithmetic word problems is a major ability that children must acquire throughout the primary-grade mathematics curriculum. However, this skill is often challenging for them. For instance, "unknown referent problems" are more difficult to solve than "unknown compare problems." In unknown compare problems, the…

The results of a nationwide study of the citizenship competences of adolescents in the Netherlands are presented from the perspective of democratic citizenship in this article. Citizenship competences are defined as the knowledge, skills, attitudes and reflection needed by young people in a democratic and multicultural society to adequately fulfil…