Data from current study suggest adolescents worry about what other people think because there are real personal and social consequences. Such concerns are seen as being based in social reality and are not imaginary as suggested by Elkind. Advocates new methodologies which place young people at the center of analysis. (Contains 34 references.)…

Children were tested to discover their rules for predicting the movement of a balance beam. The children worked with a partner who used the same rule or a rule evidencing more or less competence. Rules discovered in posttests were equally likely to show advances or declines in competence from pretest rules. (BC)

Peer interaction is examined as a source of behavior change in children and adolescents. The dynamics of peer influence are discussed in terms of six issues: characteristics of the influence source; characteristics of the child or adolescent being influenced; the relationship existing between influence source and the individual being influenced;…

The goal of this study was to investigate the extent to which aggressive-disruptive peers contribute to the development of externalizing and internalizing problems in children, while controlling for children's own behavior. We examined 2 sets of peers: (1) those that the child nominated as friends, and (2) those that nominated the child as a…

Adolescents with high sensation-seeking tendencies often seek out thrill seeking experiences to satisfy their need for stimulation and sensation. In many cases, sensation-seeking adolescents fulfill their need for stimulation and sensation by using illicit substances. However, not all high sensation seekers use drugs, although the factors that…

Children's social relationships have been linked with various indicators of their school engagement. This overview of the current literature examines evidence concerning the processes through which children's relationships with teachers, parents, and peers positively or negatively contribute to children's engagement in school. In this paper, we…

Physical changes that occur during puberty alter the body image. Girls formerly had more difficulties accepting physical changes than boys. In this longitudinal study (three family visits; time interval: 1 year), pubertal development, body satisfaction, and desired body changes of 106 boys and 108 girls were assessed. The adolescents were between…

Theories explaining delinquency have been examined primarily using quantitative methods. The current study used interviews to gain insight into the lives of delinquent male adolescents. Results indicate that no single theory best explains delinquency, but a combination of theories provides comprehensive representation. (Contains 1 table.)

This article reviews research conducted on social comparison processes in the classroom since Festinger proposed his theory of social comparison. It covers the theoretical framework of social comparison theory, and it is organized around the following themes: motives for social comparison, dimensions of social comparison, direction of social…

The present study investigated the extent to which peer group similarity in school burnout is due to peer group influence and the extent to which it is due to peer group selection. Moreover, the roles of academic achievement and gender in school burnout were examined. A total of 611 ninth graders were examined at the beginning of the final term of…

As neocolonial institutions designed to assimilate American Indians to European American cultural and religious values, social institutions, and economic practices, most schools run by the federal government and missionaries during the first part of the twentieth century sought to suppress all or most aspects of their young students' Indian…

The current investigation examined how homophobic and aggressive social climates of adolescent peer groups accounted for students' use of homophobic epithets and engagement in homophobic banter using multilevel modeling. Results indicated that aggressive peer group social climates accounted for increased use of epithets, over and above…

This research used a structured storytelling narrative methodology to capture the lived experience of youth participants to identify effective factors that helped them in three programs in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, California. Thirty-nine youth aged 8-17 participated in two storytelling protocols at their home sites; one was a written…

The impact of countervailing social network influences (i.e., pro-social, anti-social or HIV risk peers) on problem behaviors (i.e., HIV drug risk, HIV sex risk or anti-social behaviors) among 696 homeless youth was assessed using structural equation modeling. Results revealed that older youth were less likely to report having pro-social peers and…

This paper reports the results of the first academic study of the use of a major social networking website, MySpace, by children. The study examined the degree of, and reasons for, information disclosure by children in high schools in Sydney, Australia. Social networking sites such as MySpace are a huge Internet phenomenon, some with hundreds of…