Background: More and more children are experiencing what have been termed adverse childhood experiences. An individual's response to these stressful events determines whether or not they are considered traumatic -- whereby the experience is so overwhelming that it engulfs their coping mechanisms leading to lasting negative effects on wellbeing.…

Experiencing stress at high levels during pivotal developmental years can have a detrimental impact on adolescents' overall development and well-being (Rahdar & Galvan, 2014; Romeo, 2013). Extensive research has shown the positive effects a strong student-teacher relationship has on students' resiliency to counteract the negative effects of…

This paper addresses a validation study focusing on the process of adapting the EPOCH measure of adolescent well-being (Kern et al. in Psychol Assess 28(5):586-597. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000201, 2016) to the school context and translating it into German--resulting in the EPOCH-School model (EPOCH-S) with the corresponding measure EPOCH-G-S…

The proportion of teenagers engaging in sex has declined in recent decades, and rates of teen births in the United States have reached a historic low (Osterman et al., 2022). However, risky sexual activity, which can result in teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), remains a concern. To help reduce teen pregnancies and STIs…

Early adverse experiences can hold lasting influence on later life outcomes, particularly during formative developmental periods such as adolescence. The current study evaluates the impact of different kinds of adolescent trauma on later sense of purpose in adulthood, using data from the Hawaii Longitudinal Study of Personality and Health.…

Introduction: Positive parenting and Extracurricular Activities are contextual assets for enhancing Personal Positive Youth Development. However, these assets have not been studied simultaneously or in students of different ages. This paper analyzed these associations, by testing a mediator model in students with different academic trajectories.…

This study aims to find an effect between parenting and empathy for adolescent prosocial behavior. The type of research used throughout this study is ex post facto, researchers tried to take the effect of the dependent variable and examine it retrospectively to establish causes, relationships, associations, or their meanings. In this study,…

Adolescent mental health has implications for current and future wellbeing. While a link exists between poverty and mental health, little is known about how experiencing material hardship, such as insecurity of food, housing, utilities, and medical care, throughout early childhood affects adolescent mental health. We examine the relationship…

Background: Personal characteristics of troubled adolescents are affected by psychological deprivation, which contributes to the manifestation of deviant and delinquent behavior in individuals. Aim: This study comprehensively examines structural units of self-consciousness, higher mental functions, and the emotional sphere of troubled adolescents…

In this study, we explored the longitudinal linkages among Chinese early adolescents' unsociability, peer rejection, and loneliness. Participants were N = 445 primary school students in Shanghai, P.R. China followed over 3 years from Grades 6 and 7 to Grades 8 and 9. Measures of adolescents' unsociability, peer rejection, and loneliness were…

Previous research has demonstrated that individual religious beliefs and practices are associated with educational outcomes. However, less is known about the manner in which the overall religious cultural influence of a religion can affect an individual's educational aspirations. Using multilevel analyses on two waves of the National Study of…

The adolescent brain is malleable, which makes adolescents particularly vulnerable to the impact of trauma. Yet this malleability also presents an opportunity. Since the brain undergoes dramatic changes during adolescence, this period of development offers the chance to heal from trauma experienced early in life when young people receive targeted…

This study investigated attitudes toward restrictive gender norms among adolescents in Côte d'Ivoire and Sierra Leone (pooled N = 1,793, M[subscript age(baseline)] = 10.3, M[subscript age(follow-up)] = 11.6, 50% boys/girls). We examined individual and contextual predictors of gender attitudes, assessed change in gender attitudes over 2 years, and…

As researchers and school stakeholders determine ways to best support Black and Latino adolescent boys from low-income communities in actualizing their postsecondary future ambitions, more attention is needed on the types of futures these boys imagine and how family members influence this process. Guided by "future orientations" and…

We used latent growth curve analysis to extend research on associations between early puberty and adverse peer relations by examining the role of pubertal timing in the developmental trajectories of peer victimization and offending from early- to mid-adolescence. We made use of three-wave longitudinal data collected annually from a cohort of…