This election factsheet highlights the following points: (1) It isn't always possible to say with certainty from looking at a country's rank in the PISA educational league tables alone whether one country or economy has definitely performed better than another; (2) England's position in the league tables is dependent on which countries and…

In this brief, authors Kent Scovill and Corinna Jenkins Tucker describe Coös youths' mentor relationships using data from the Carsey Institute's Coös Youth Study collected in 2007. They report that, in 2007, a majority of Coös youth in seventh and eleventh grade (60.2 percent) report having a mentor. In addition, 68 percent of Coös youths' mentors…

Using effect size results from Erford et al.'s (2011) meta-analysis for treatment of depression in school-age youth, the authors analyzed 6 commonly used instruments for practical and technical strengths and weaknesses. Effect size estimates from these 6 instruments were compared to indicate likely results when used in future depression outcome…

This Data Point uses data from the 2012 administration of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) financial literacy assessment. PISA is an international assessment that measures 15-year-old students' reading, mathematics, and science literacy and, in 2012, general problem solving and financial literacy. PISA is coordinated by the…

For many adolescents today, the most common form of substance use is nonmedical prescription drug use. Fittingly, many researchers, policy makers, and people who work with youth are concerned about the serious problems associated with nonmedical prescription drug use (NMPDU). In this article, authors Jason Ford and William Watkins provide an…

The paper introduces a set of four studies focused on adolescents in the Czech Republic. In the first part, authors reflect on the cultural background, the political, social, and psychological factors that have had influence on several generations of adolescents in the period of the communist totalitarian regime. They also describe the social…

Since the 1970s, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has monitored the academic performance of 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students with what have become known as the long-term trend assessments. Four decades of results offer an extended view of student achievement in reading and mathematics. Results in this report are based on the…

The primary theoretical framework for the study of human physical attraction is currently Darwinian sexual selection. Not only has this perspective enabled the discovery of what appear to be strong universals in human mate choice but it has also facilitated our understanding of systematic variation in preferences both between and within…

Attributional style models of depression in adults (Abramson et al. 1989, 1978) have been adapted for use with children; however, most applications do not consider that children's understanding of causal relations may be qualitatively different from that of adults. If children's causal attributions depend on children's level of cognitive…

With a focus on the United States, this paper addresses the basic social indicators question: How are we doing? More specifically, with respect to children, how are our kids (including adolescents and youths) doing? These questions can be addressed by comparisons: (1) to "past historical values", (2) to "other contemporaneous units" (e.g.,…

This article examines citizenship education and pedagogies for learning to be a citizen in the interwar years in Australia. These discussions bore the influence of progressive education and its emancipatory promises. Against this, I explore the "dividing practices" of citizenship education and the ways normative descriptions of the…

This article responds to sociologist Christian Smith's claim that many teenagers today have lost traditional religious faith and instead espouse a new and erroneous faith in God the "Cosmic Therapist." The author challenges this claim by comparing two of Smith's chief complaints vis-a-vis teen faith to established portraits of adolescent faith.…

A lot of children are suffering--from bullet wounds, car crashes, gashes in legs, and great tears in the social fabric. There are wounds to heal, hopes to foster, and scar tissue to form. Public school teachers and leaders, wherever we are, this is our work. And we can do a good job of it, if the school community is strong, and if we always work…

The place of popular and multifunctional media in the musical life of young people has been addressed in several studies. Music can aid in understanding youth cultures through the identification of musical preferences: inform about new lifestyles, fashions, ways of acting, work as motivation for personal dreams and aspirations, and build…

Unlike in the adult criminal justice system, where domestic violence policies hold perpetrators accountable for their violence, the juvenile justice system rarely addresses teenage dating violence. Although the adult criminal justice system has pursued policies toward intimate partner violence grounded on a "zero tolerance" ideology, the juvenile…