Emerging evidence suggests that variants of specific genes may influence some youths to seek out or associate with antisocial peers. Using genotypic data (N = 1,816) from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (J. R. Udry, 1998, 2003), the authors tested this possibility. They found that the 10R allele of the dopamine transporter…

In middle school, counselors should promote optimal development as students navigate the formative stage of puberty. A search for identity is an important developmental task in early adolescence, but school counselors often neglect racial identity development. Through an actual case of an 8th-grade student, both individual and systemic strategies…

Rising juvenile crime rates during the 1970s and 1980s spurred state legislatures across the country to exclude or transfer a significant share of offenders under the age of eighteen to the jurisdiction of the criminal court, essentially redrawing the boundary between the juvenile and adult justice systems. Jeffrey Fagan examines the legal…

Preterm birth is associated with greater difficulty with transitions from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. Adolescents and young adults born preterm have higher rates of cerebral palsy, intellectual disability, cognitive impairment, learning disability, executive dysfunction, attention deficit disorder, and social-emotional difficulties than…

Background: Whereas much attention has been focused on adolescent risk behaviors such as substance use, much less has been devoted to self-injury in the general adolescent population. Purpose: This study had two purposes: (1) describe the prevalence of self-injury among early adolescents in the general middle school population, and (2) identify…

Increased voter turnout among youth in recent national elections notwithstanding, youth engagement in political life in the U.S. has been shown to be on the decline in recent years. This trend, as well as relatively low voter turnout in the U.S. among all age groups, makes this collection of articles on youth civic engagement and political…

Agnes Tellings rightly observes that adolescents, if compared with pre-pubescent children, are much more capable of making their own choices and therefore should be granted much more freedom to arrange their own lives. However, the capacity of adolescents to make prudent choices still seems to be below the threshold of competence. Therefore,…

One of the primary aims of education in the United States is to prepare youth to contribute to civic life in a democracy. Urban youth have daily school and community experiences with poverty, violence, and injustice that complicate their relationship with civic life. In this article the authors explore the ramifications of these experiences for…

Using data from Grades 5 to 7 of the longitudinal 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development (PYD), this research assessed the structure and development of PYD. Building on Grade 5 findings, that "Five Cs" (Competence, Confidence, Connection, Character, and Caring) could be empirically defined as latent constructs converging on a second-order…

This article explores how a curriculum of film becomes organized by the teacher's worries about what film may open up in class. The author focuses on her own worries about showing Gus Van Sant's (2003) film, "Elephant," an elliptical and dreamlike study of the murders in 1999 of twelve students and a teacher at Columbine High School, to a class of…

Data from 2008 Monitoring the Future were used to test how well religious, family, and cultural social capital influenced 8th and 10th grade student aspirations, future plans, and prior academic experience. This study focused only on a sample of 4,273 African American students. Results indicated a strong association between family social capital…

What enables one student to persist in the face of adversity while another chooses to quit? To answer this question, I captured the lived experiences of 3 female and 3 male postsecondary students who self-identified as either gay, lesbian, or bisexual, all of whom were successfully completing their undergraduate degrees. Utilizing a life history…

Mentoring is often considered a gift of time and resources that a mentor gives to a mentee. However, research suggests that mentoring has benefits specifically for the mentor. This study analyzes written reflections of twenty-five mentors who took part in a National Science Foundation-funded program that encouraged middle-school girls to engage in…

When the Commission on Children At Risk--a group of 33 children's doctors, research scientists, mental health and youth service professionals--presented to the Nation its report on the crises of deteriorating mental and behavioral health of children in the US, the 83-page report was entitled "Hardwired to Connect: The New Scientific Case for…

This paper describes work directed toward creating community-supported positive youth development interventions that draw on a developmental intervention science outreach research approach. With respect to developmental interventions, this approach focuses on creating evidence-based longitudinal change intervention strategies for promoting…