Substance abuse among adolescents is modeled and reinforced by the peer culture. Experimentation with drugs seems to have become a typical part of normal adolescent development. The solution to adolescent substance abuse will only be arrived at through gathering facts and designing intervention programs based on those facts. Since the two most…

Efforts to fight drug abuse must occur in the schools, as well as in homes and the community, since schools provide one major influence in transmitting values, standards, and information to children. This digest discusses the extent of drug abuse among youth, why drug abuse occurs, the effects of drug abuse, what schools can do to combat the…

Since principals are chiefly responsible for school improvement and effectiveness, professional development opportunities must be provided throughout their administrative careers. Research has identified certain behavior patterns causally related to principals' effectiveness. Since the summer of 1984, the North Central Regional Staff Development…

The purpose of this study was to measure the effects of day care and preschool experience on children's measured honesty, and to compare program participants' honesty scores with those of children cared for exclusively at home. It was hypothesized that children who had been in a child care program for several months would score lower when asked to…

It is important to examine the correlates of drug use and abuse among early adolescents to identify common patterns and factors of the beginning stages of drug abuse. The relationships between personal substance use, health beliefs, peer use, stated intention to use drugs in the future, sex, and religion were examined using data collected from 265…

A study of college students who dropped out of sport programs found that while many students ended their sport careers between their freshman and senior years, a large number of them became involved in sport after college. This paper examines the sociological factors that have an impact upon participation or non-participation in sport programs.…

Patterns of drug use among teenagers indicate they are highly influenced by peers. To examine the influence of Say It Straight, an alcohol/drug abuse prevention program aimed at teaching adolescents to deal with peer pressure, sixth, seventh and eighth graders (N=509) created and role played situations in which they wanted to say "no" to…

The variables that distinguish between deans characterized by colleagues and superiors as "most influential" and deans who were "least influential" among colleagues were studied. The sample of deans managed academic units in five public universities in the west, all meeting the Carnegie classification of "Research I"…

This study examined the effects of gender, attitudes toward computers, and presentation of individual or paired female peer talent on adolescent learners' perceptions of talent credibility in the context of media presentations on computer utilization. Subjects were 96 eighth grade students (56 females, 40 males) enrolled in careers and…

This volume contains materials to supplement existing driver education programming offered by high schools to youthful (16- to 18-year old) drivers. Section I contains three drinking/driving modules: an information-only module, a self-image module, and a three-unit peer intervention module. An instructor's guide provided for each module includes…

Sources in this annotated bibliography are compiled for investigators in speech communication and social sciences interested in the influence of the group on the individual member (conformity and deviation), and for those interested in group consensus formation and the consequences of pressure to uniformity (polarization). The 34 citations include…

This study investigated preschool children's awareness of the nature of pictorial representation and their understanding of their own efforts to depict. Seventy-six subjects participated in drawing sessions held at 2-week intervals throughout the 8-month school year. Children's spontaneous comments during small-group drawing sessions were…

A nomothetic assessment of the drive-by shooting in inter-barrio gang violence was conducted. Available data on drive-by shootings were organized using the model of behavioral assessment suggested by Kanfer and Saslow (1969). The model included seven areas of analysis: initial assessment, clarification of the problem, motivation, development,…

This article reports on the relationship between the informal behavior of teachers and the formal organization of the school. A field study was conducted over a six month period at one high school. Research questions focused on patterns of behavior which were created by teachers to sustain individuals on the job and to promote continuation of…

Despite the exponential growth in online learning, student retention rates in the online environment remain a concern to educators. Online learning @ UniSA is a learning object aimed at laying foundations for online learning for prospective students. It uses the voices of student peers to explore the qualities needed to succeed. Through the…