Suggestions are provided for parents and teachers cooperatively planning an exciting drug and alcohol prevention program, particularly geared toward senior high school students. Activities include a video contest, drinking-party alternatives, awareness weeks, posters, film festivals, and parenting sessions. (CB)

Examined individual differences in friendship characteristics and their cross-sectional and longitudinal interrelations with adolescent problems. Assessed four salient friendship characteristics: reciprocity of relations, overt hostility, covert hostility, and self-disclosure. Suggests that adolescent problem behaviors have a more potent…

Two studies involving 331 children ages 9 to 11 years examined the proposal that the functions served by children's attention to peers' work differ in informational focus and in goal focus. Goal condition affected goal, but not informational, functions of looking at peers' work. Implications for social comparison theory are discussed. (SLD)

Summarizes the journal's theme issue on school-based group interventions designed to promote students' social and academic success. Information is organized to assist service providers in utilizing this modality. Contributors share intervention techniques, with particular consideration given to multicultural influences on group interventions and…

Examined children's social status, friendship, and adjustment. Found that peer relationships contributed uniquely to children's socioemotional adjustment, academic performance, and self-concept. Peer status also affected adjustment, with peer rejection and neglect being significant negative predictors. Effects of friendship appeared positive, with…

Examined changes in influences on adolescent girls' sexual behavior. As expected, influence of parents and friends varied with the girls' ages. Effects of discussion with mother were strongest in 9th and 10th grades. Indirect influence of friends' approval varied across age groups, peaking in 11th and 12th grades; direct effect of peer approval…

Differences in the emotional reactions of male and female adolescents to their most recent occasion of sexual intercourse were studied with 932 Australian secondary school students. Most reported positive emotions, but females were more likely to report negative emotions. Guilt responses and peer and parental influences are also discussed. (SLD)

Examined interactive nature of age in predicting alcohol, marijuana, and drug use among 435 seventh and eleventh graders. Found statistically significant interaction terms for age with peer and social control factors for each type of usage. Findings suggest that many factors commonly associated with adolescent usage may be conditioned by age.…

Discusses how the computer can be used to help students learn to revise their writing through peer review, rereading their writing, and reacting and reshaping their writing in response to their peer's comments. (MG)

Evaluation with over 4,000 seventh and eighth graders in California and Oregon showed that Project ALERT, a curriculum to curb drug use by teaching resistance to pressures, successfully dampened cognitive risk factors for cigarette and marijuana use but had limited impact on beliefs about alcohol. (SK)

Analysis of survey data from 6,096 students in 31 colleges and universities found that academic dishonesty was associated with the existence of a campus honor code, student perceptions of the certainty of being reported, severity of penalties, and cheating among peers. (Author/MSE)

Sampled 1,004 eighth and tenth graders in 23 rural communities to examine peer influence and drug use. Students who perceived higher degree of drug use among friends and who received more information about drugs from friends used drugs more frequently. Findings support theory that peer pressure is related to drug abuse. (Author/NB)

Two studies explored factors relating to children's willingness to perform tasks that are not traditional to their gender. More untraditional behavior was elicited with male than with female examiners. Mechanisms that may underlie this effect are discussed. (BC)

Eleven learning-handicapped students (ages 8-13) worked in dyads during a microcomputer-based writing activity, and their behaviors were coded as initiations/responses, verbal/nonverbal. Overall, student interactions had a negative impact on story production. Students exhibited higher levels of assertive, demanding behavior than requests for peer…

A longitudinal sample of 3,454 urban and rural school students in grades 6 through 8 at baseline was used to examine developmental changes in peer factors and their influence on marijuana initiation. Friends' drug-related behaviors, rather then attitudes, were more strongly related to respondents' likelihood of initiating drug use. (TJH)