Publications by authors named "Gregory S Longo"

Prior research has documented robust associations between adolescent religiousness/spirituality (R/S) and psychopathology outcomes including externalizing and internalizing symptomatology, yet no previous studies have examined these associations with adolescent R/S profiles using a person-centred approach. We examined whether there are identifiable subgroups characterized by unique multidimensional patterns of R/S experiences and how these experiences may be related to externalizing and internalizing symptomatology. The sample consisted of 220 Appalachian adolescents between 12 and 18 years old who were primarily White and primarily Christian.

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Religiousness is important to adolescents in the U.S., and the significant link between high religiousness and low substance use is well known.

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Prior research indicates that religiousness is related negatively to adolescent health risk behaviors, yet how such protective effects operate is not well understood. This study examined the longitudinal associations among organizational and personal religiousness, delay discounting, and substance use initiation (alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use). The sample comprised 106 early adolescents (10-13 years of age, 52% female) who were not using substances at Time 1.

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While research on the psychology of religion and spirituality has examined religious conversion, little research has examined social and familial variables that might play a role in conversion in adolescence. Longitudinal work examining concurrent conversion experiences - as opposed to retrospective reports - is particularly rare. In an examination of 209 parent-adolescent dyads, findings suggested that those who became religious at Time 2 had higher social competence at Time 1 than did apostates, whereas adolescents who were religious at both times had higher social competence, parent communication, and parent trust than apostates.

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Extant literature suggests that religiousness is inversely related to adolescent substance use; yet, no systematic investigation has examined whether religiousness may be a protective factor against substance use in the presence of risk factors. We examined whether religiousness moderates the links between parents' psychological and physical aggression and adolescent substance use directly and indirectly through adolescent self-control. The sample comprised adolescents (n = 220, 45% female) and their primary caregivers.

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Empirical evidence suggests that religiousness is related negatively to adolescent substance use; yet, we know little about how such protective effects might occur. The current study examined whether parents' and adolescents' religiousness are associated positively with parental, religious, and self-monitoring, which in turn are related to higher self-control, thereby related to lower adolescent substance use. Participants were 220 adolescents (45 % female) who were interviewed at ages 10-16 and again 2.

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Parents generally take pains to insure that their children adopt their own religious beliefs and practices, so what happens psychologically to adolescents who find themselves less religious than their parents? We examined the relationships among parents' and adolescents' religiousness, adolescents' ratings of parent-adolescent relationship quality, and adolescents' psychological adjustment using data from 322 adolescents and their parents. Adolescent boys who had lower organizational and personal religiousness than their parents, and girls who had lower personal religiousness than their parents, had more internalizing and externalizing psychological symptoms than did adolescents whose religiousness better matched their parents'. The apparent effects of subparental religiousness on adolescents' psychological symptoms were mediated by their intermediate effects on adolescents' ratings of the quality of their relationships with their parents.

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Prior investigations have demonstrated that parents' religiousness is related inversely to adolescent maladjustment. However, research remains unclear about whether the link between parents' religiousness and adolescent adjustment outcomes--either directly or indirectly via adolescents' own religiousness--varies depending on relationship context (e.g.

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Objective: Research using normative and high-risk samples indicates a significant link between problems with self-regulation and child maladjustment. Nevertheless, little is known about the processes that may modify the link between self-regulation and maladjustment. This longitudinal study examined the joint contributions of child self-regulation and positive parenting behaviors to the development of externalizing and internalizing symptomatology spanning from preschool to 1st grade.

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