Objective: Adolescence is a vulnerable age for emerging mental health problems, but also a time at which the foundations for a healthy lifestyle are established. Attitudes towards mental health problems and the ability to recognise them can be affected at this age. The aim of this study was to describe a psychoeducative intervention aimed at…

Purpose: This study aims to introduce the concept of communities of social media practice where more experienced users provide guidance to female novice users, enacting a form of legitimate peripheral participation to "onboard" newcomers. Design/methodology/approach: Through surveys with 968 early adolescents (average age was 13), the…

Home-school relationships and communication play an important role in promoting children's and adolescents' development and learning. This study investigated the relations between school-initiated and family-initiated contact regarding school events and concerns regarding adolescents' academic, behavioral, and health issues and adolescents'…

Despite the use of various anti-bullying programs, bullying continues to plague middle schools. However, there is an approach to bullying that complements other programs and can be easily integrated into course curriculum. This approach uses young adult novels to encourage adolescents to use perspective taking and empathy building through…

For children and youth, summertime presents a unique break from the traditional structure, resources, and support systems that exist during the school year. For some students, this time involves opportunities to engage in fun and enriching activities and programs, while others face additional challenges as they lose a variety of supports,…

The skills, knowledge, attitudes, motivations, and personality traits that lead to creative thinking and creative behavior do not exist--and do not develop--in a vacuum. They are inextricably tied to content, to domains, in particular, and they therefore vary by domains. The more we learn about creativity, the more we discover how domain specific…

Contemporary research about purpose suggests that adolescents benefit in multiple ways when they develop purpose, and at the same time, that many adolescents are not purposeful. Adolescents in Catholic high schools may receive a unique set of contextual supports that help them develop a sense of purpose and understand what that purpose is. This…

Objectives: The sexuality and sexual development of individuals with autism-spectrum disorder (ASD) and an accompanying intellectual disability is a neglected area, despite the fact that this group have the same sexual desires as their typically developing peers. Due to the socially marginalized position these individuals are often placed in,…

Children who experience severe early life stress show persistent deficits in many aspects of cognitive and social adaptation. Early stress might be associated with these broad changes in functioning because it impairs general learning mechanisms. To explore this possibility, we examined whether individuals who experienced abusive caregiving in…

Purpose in life (PIL) promotes positive development and is associated with decreased substance use. However, to our knowledge, researchers have not investigated how different categories of PIL are associated with substance use behavior among youth. Therefore, we sought to explore categories of PIL and how they are related to substance use in a…

We investigated adolescent responsibility across 2 developmental contexts, home and an afterschool program. Longitudinal data were collected from 355 ethnically diverse 11-20-year-old adolescents (M = 15.49; 55.9% female) in 14 project-based programs. Youth rated their responsibility in the program and at home at 4 time points; parents and leaders…

Identity formation is a key developmental task in adolescence. Although many adolescents in modern societies face issues of identity, there are substantial individual differences in identity exploration and commitment. Little is known about the origins of these individual differences. The current study investigated the genetic and environmental…

The relationship between ethnic socialization by parents, peers, and ethnic identity development was examined over a 7-year time span in a sample of 116 internationally adopted Korean American adolescents. Parent report data was collected in 2007 (Time 1 [T1]) when the adopted child was between 7 and 13 years old and again in 2014 at ages 13 to 20…

Relationships are the foundation upon which all youth development rests. Young people grow, learn, and develop through relationships. Relationships socialize youth and subsequently encourage identity development. Relationships provide connection, a necessity for all humans. Supportive relationships promote positive academic, behavioral, and…

This study focused on early adolescents' stress of language brokering and examined the moderating role of family cumulative risk in the relation of language brokering to adjustment problems. Data came from self-reports of 604 low-income Mexican American adolescent language brokers (54% female; X[bar] [subscript age]= 12.4; SD = 0.97; 75% born in…