Pstudy investigated the effects of baseline levels of academic achievement and longitudinal trends in normative beliefs on adolescent substance initiation across a 42-month time period. Participants were 272 rural adolescents who were an average of 12.3 years old at the baseline assessment. Academic achievement positively predicted the intercept…

Empirical research suggests that the first few months of community reentry are a critical time period for youth offenders to establish routines and support systems that can reduce the likelihood of recidivism. However, little is known about youth's perceptions of the various challenges involved in their transition or their coping strategies. This…

University undergraduates (84 women, 80 men: M age=19.1 years old) reported school mission and value perceptions, life and/or school mentor relationships, and social desirability tendencies. No significant social desirability effect was obtained. Proteges with mentors at school and in life (n=52) reported greater cognitive and informational…

This article examines the nature and influence of peer group perceptions on pupils' attitudes to learning German and French. It begins with an overview of key findings from the literature, before reviewing selected results from a large PhD attitudinal survey using a multi-stage qualitative research design. The article focuses on the perceptions of…

Adults condemn violence but teach children to fight back. The message that aggression is legitimate causes grave harm to untold numbers of children and youth in our violent culture. Children are literally losing their lives trying to gain "respect" and preserve their "dignity." The author draws on extensive direct professional work with violent…

A study analyzed family decision-making style, peer group affiliation, and academic achievement in 10th grade as predictors of academic achievement of African American students in 12th grade. Findings indicated that though peer groups were known to influence academic performance, affiliation with learning oriented peers in 10th grade did not…

Analysis was made of the common sense explanations of 60 Mexican teenage illicit drug users in rehabilitation to determine their drug use debut. The explanatory model was separated into three blocks, two of which contained common sense aspects: interaction between subject's plane and the collectivity; and relationship between subject's interior…

This qualitative study conducted in urban Miami, Florida, explored the essence of juvenile delinquency and recidivism: its causes, its relations to communities, the roles of families, and the myriad roles of residential treatment programs at rehabilitating young offenders. Data were collected from nine young adult participants who had satisfied…

HIV-related behaviors, self-reported using Web-delivered or paper-pencil modes, were collected from two convenience samples of college students at a major university in the southeastern U.S. To enhance the equivalence of the comparisons, a subset pool of participants from each group, proportionally matched on key demographic variables including…

This paper reports the results of developing and evaluating a classification of 315 arrested youth processed at the Hillsborough County Juvenile Assessment Center from September 1, 1994 to January 31, 1998. Youth were characterized as physically or sexually abused if they reported abuse or if they had been referred to juvenile court for abuse.…

Black and Latino students are still underepresented in upper-level math classes in the United States, a fact which has serious implications for their academic achievement and futures. Walker provides six suggestions for how educators can encourage more black and Latino students to successfully take higher level math courses: (1) Expand our…

This research examined the "mental health literacy" of adolescents concerning eating-disordered behavior. A vignette describing a fictional 16-year old female meeting diagnostic criteria for bulimia nervosa was presented to 522 female high school students, followed by a series of questions concerning treatment of and treatment-seeking…

This study examines how a wide variety of diverse friendship group attributes affect changes in indicators of school performance, social behavior, and mental health between early seventh and late eighth grade. Nine hundred and one middle school students named their friends. Independent data from these friends were used to construct friendship…

This study compared alternative hypotheses (from general deviance, life course, and developmental psychopathology perspectives) regarding the effects of early adolescent delinquency on psychosocial functioning in family, school, and peer contexts, and on alcohol use. Analyses also examined parent-child negative affective quality, prosocial school…

Strategies to address the problem of work and family balance have begun emerging in recent years. Many American college and universities have begun to adopt this "family-friendly policies," such as tenure-clock extensions. Each of the policies to enable work and family balance, however, is situated within the broader academic culture.…