Using data gathered from a multi-year field study, this article identifies specific life-course events shared by gang-affiliated women. Gangs emerge as a cultural adaptation or pro-social community response to poverty and racial isolation. Through the use of a social-network approach, data show that violence dramatically increases in the period…

In general, most women are familiar with the need to stop smoking when they are pregnant. In spite of this, many women find it difficult to stop. Using a phenomenographic approach, this study explored Swedish pregnant and post-pregnant women's ways of making sense of smoking during pregnancy. A total of 17 women who either smoked throughout…

We tested a social-cognitive intervention to influence contraceptive practices among men living in rural communes in Vietnam. It was predicted that participants who received a stage-targeted program based on the Transtheoretical Model (TTM) would report positive movement in their stage of motivational readiness for their wife to use an…

Other than postpartum depression, little is known about women's emotional responses to childbirth and subsequent stressors. Anger was explored on the basis of theory and evidence that it is a likely emotional response in this context. During their third trimester of pregnancy and approximately six weeks after delivery, 163 participants completed…

The complexities of neurobehavioral assessment of the fetus, which can be neither directly viewed nor manipulated, cannot be understated. Impetus to develop methods for measuring fetal neurobehavioral development has been provided by the recognition that individual differences in neurobehavioral functioning do not originate with birth and…

The present study investigated sexual at-risk behaviors of sexually abused adolescent girls. Variables of interest were presence of consensual sexual activity, age at first consensual intercourse, number of sexual partners, condom use, and pregnancies. Participants were 125 sexually abused adolescent girls aged 12 to 17 years. Results showed that…

The purpose of this study was to use qualitative evaluation techniques to explore the perceptions of students enrolled in undergraduate human sexuality classes regarding their expectations for the course as well as outcomes. One hundred forty-eight students were surveyed at the beginning and again at the end of the semester long course. While…

The purpose of this report is to assemble in a single volume the latest available data on current trends and projections of births and enrollments made by various agencies such as the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Center for Health Statistics, the U.S. Bureau of the Census, and others to assist school management in…

This paper proposes a strategic federal investment of $3 billion in the relatively small number of social interventions (i.e., programs, practices, strategies) shown in scientifically-rigorous studies to produce sizeable, sustained improvement in the lives of children and youth. Careful analyses show that the benefits of these interventions in…

Problem: Priority health-risk behaviors, which are behaviors that contribute to the leading causes of morbidity and mortality among youth and adults, often are established during childhood and adolescence, extend into adulthood, are interrelated, and are preventable. Reporting Period Covered: January-December 2007. Description of the System: The…

This study attempts to answer the following research question: What are the factors that prevent students from completing high school? The participants in this study included 228 current and recent students from General Educational Development (GED) programs across the state of Texas. In an effort to gain a clearer picture of circumstances faced…

This article is a comparison study that investigates how teachers view the academic performance of and the future opportunities available to pregnant and parenting students, while also analyzing how these teenagers perceive their own abilities and opportunities. Responses given by teachers at a school with a high rate of students who are pregnant…

One of the variables that could explain the considerable variety of ways that adult couples handle the transition to parenthood is whether the pregnancy was planned or not. However, very little is known about the impact of pregnancy intendedness on the conjugal life of couples during this transition. The aim of this study was to address this gap…

This study was conducted to investigate the disposition of students and parents towards the inclusion of sex education in the school curriculum in Cross River State. Using a random sampling technique, 602 secondary school students and 180 parents from Calabar, were selected for the study. Data were collected with the aid of self-administered…

Rational choice models of teenage sexual behaviour lead to radically different predictions than do models that assume such behaviour is random. Existing empirical evidence has not been able to distinguish conclusively between these competing models. I use regional data from England between 1998 and 2001 to examine the impact of recent increases in…