A Mixed-Methods Approach to Refining and Measuring the Construct of Positive Risk-Taking in Adolescence.

Adolescence is a peak period for risk-taking, but research has largely overlooked positive manifestations of adolescent risk-taking due to ambiguity regarding operationalization and measurement of positive risk-taking. We address this limitation using a mixed-methods approach. We elicited free responses from contemporary college students (N = 74, M  = 20.

Distress Tolerance as a Mechanism Linking Violence Exposure to Problematic Alcohol use in Adolescence.

Adolescents exposed to violence are at elevated risk of developing most forms of psychopathology, including depression, anxiety, and alcohol abuse. Prior research has identified emotional reactivity and difficulties with emotion regulation as core mechanisms linking violence exposure with psychopathology. Scant research has examined behavioral responses to distress as a mechanism in this association.

Defining and achieving permanency among older youth in foster care.

Permanency is a key child welfare system goal for the children they serve. This study addresses three key research questions: (1) How do older youth in foster care define their personal permanency goals? (2) How much progress have these youth made in achieving their personal permanency goals and other aspects of relational permanency, and how does this vary by gender, race, and age? and (3) What transition-related outcomes are associated with relational permanency achievement? Surveys were conducted with 97 youth between the ages of 14 and 20 currently in care. Over three-fourths of participants had an informal/relational permanency goal; however, only 6.

Peer effects on self-regulation in adolescence depend on the nature and quality of the peer interaction.

Adolescence is a critical period for the development of self-regulation, and peer interactions are thought to strongly influence regulation ability. Simple exposure to peers has been found to alter decisions about risky behaviors and increase sensitivity to rewards. The link between peer exposure and self-regulation is likely to vary as a function of the type and quality of peer interaction (e.

Adolescent Offenders' Qualitative Reflections on Desistance From Crime.

Although many young offenders desist from crime during adolescence, little is known about this process. This study used a qualitative approach to elucidate adolescent offenders' experiences in desisting from crime. Thirty-nine male adolescent offenders (M  = 16.

Disruptions in Emotion Regulation as a Mechanism Linking Community Violence Exposure to Adolescent Internalizing Problems.

Although community violence is an established risk factor for youth aggression, less research has examined its relation with internalizing psychopathology. This study examined associations of community violence exposure with internalizing symptoms, and state and trait emotion dysregulation as mechanisms underlying these associations, in 287 adolescents aged 16-17 (45.6% male; 40.

Trajectories of Violent Behavior Among Females and Males.

Both the psychological and criminological fields have long hypothesized the mechanisms that influence desistance from violent offending, but few studies have focused on violent females. This study identifies patterns of violent behavior across 7 years among 172 females and 172 matched males ages 15-24, testing if heterogeneity in violent offending is linked to (a) developmental change in impulse control and (b) attainment of adult milestones. Fewer females persist in violence (25%) than males (46%); 19% of males increase in violent behavior.

Severe Violence During Adolescence and Early Adulthood and Its Relation to Anticipated Rewards and Costs.

This report compares the effects (concurrent and lagged) of the anticipated rewards and costs of violent crime on engagement in severe violence in a sample of male juvenile offenders (N = 1,170; 42.1% black, 34.0% Hispanic, 19.

The Communities That Care Brief Depression Scale: Psychometric Properties and Criterion Validity.

For community-level approaches to preventing depression, measures of depression that are brief as well as valid are needed, particularly given competing demands in surveys for assessment of other outcomes including substance use, delinquency, and their associated risk factors. This study examined the validity of a four-item adolescent depression measure, the Communities That Care Brief Depression Scale (CTC-BDS). Data were from a survey of adolescents (N = 3,939) participating in the Community Youth Development Study (CYDS), a community-randomized trial involving 24 U.

Differential associations of threat and deprivation with emotion regulation and cognitive control in adolescence.

Research on childhood adversity has traditionally focused on single types of adversity, which is limited because of high co-occurrence, or on the total number of adverse experiences, which assumes that diverse experiences influence development similarly. Identifying dimensions of environmental experience that are common to multiple types of adversity may be a more effective strategy. We examined the unique associations of two such dimensions (threat and cognitive deprivation) with automatic emotion regulation and cognitive control using a multivariate approach that simultaneously examined both dimensions of adversity.

Parsing apart the persisters: Etiological mechanisms and criminal offense patterns of moderate- and high-level persistent offenders.

Longitudinal investigations that have applied Moffitt's dual taxonomic framework to criminal offending have provided support for the existence of adolescent-limited and life-course persistent antisocial individuals, but have also identified additional trajectories. For instance, rather than a single persistent trajectory, studies have found both high-level and moderate-level persistent offenders. To inform theory and progress our understanding of chronic antisocial behavior, the present study used a sample of serious adolescent offenders (N =1,088) followed from middle adolescence to early adulthood (14-25 years), and examined how moderate-level persistent offenders differed from low-rate, desisting, and high-level persistent offenders.

Deflected Pathways: Becoming Aggressive, Socially Withdrawn, or Prosocial with Peers During the Transition to Adolescence.

Although research has suggested strong continuity in children's adaptive or maladaptive behavior with peers across the transition to adolescence, less is known about deflected developmental pathways of peer social competence across this transition. This study investigates how mother-child and best friend relationship quality predict the deflection of youth from adaptive to maladaptive behavior with peers or the reverse. Using data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (=1055), high-quality friendships were associated with changes in peer social competence from 3 to 6 grade.

Psychometric properties of the Transitions from Foster Care Key Leader Survey.

This study summarizes the development and piloting of the Transitions from Foster Care Key Leader Survey (TFC-KLS), an instrument designed to measure change in systems serving young people transitioning from foster care to adulthood. The Jim Casey Youth Opportunity Initiative's logic model was used as a basis for instrument development. The instrument was piloted with 119 key leaders in six communities.

The effects of violence exposure on the development of impulse control and future orientation across adolescence and early adulthood: Time-specific and generalized effects in a sample of juvenile offenders.

Impulse control and future orientation increase across adolescence, but little is known about how contextual factors shape the development of these capacities. The present study investigates how stress exposure, operationalized as exposure to violence, alters the developmental pattern of impulse control and future orientation across adolescence and early adulthood. In a sample of 1,354 serious juvenile offenders, higher exposure to violence was associated with lower levels of future orientation at age 15 and suppressed development of future orientation from ages 15 to 25.

Adolescent Pathways to Co-Occurring Problem Behavior: The Effects of Peer Delinquency and Peer Substance Use.

Delinquency and substance use are more likely to co-occur in adolescence compared to earlier and later developmental periods. The present study examined developmental pathways to co-occurring problem behavior from 6th-10th grade (N=2,002), testing how peer delinquency and substance use were linked to transitioning between abstaining, delinquency, substance use, and co-occurring problem behavior. Developmentally, most youth transition from abstinence to delinquent behavior, and then escalate to co-occurring problem behavior.

Sleep problems across development: a pathway to adolescent risk taking through working memory.

Problematic sleep can be detrimental to the development of important cognitive functions, such as working memory, and may have the potential for negative behavioral consequences, such as risk-taking. In this way, sleep problems may be particularly harmful for youth-whose cognitive abilities are still developing and who are more susceptible to risky behavior. Using data from a large, national, longitudinal study, continuity and change in sleep problems were examined from 2 to 15 years of age and associated with deficits in working memory at age 15 and risk taking behaviors at age 18.

Bad Romance: Sex Differences in the Longitudinal Association Between Romantic Relationships and Deviant Behavior.

The current study investigates how romantic relationships are related to antisocial behavior longitudinally among delinquent males and females (n=354; ages 14-25). While being in a relationship or not is unrelated to antisocial behavior, romantic partner characteristics (antisocial behavior and antisocial influence) are associated with greater antisocial behavior. As males age, they become increasingly resistant to romantic partner characteristics.

The Relation Between Risk and Protective Factors for Problem Behaviors and Depressive Symptoms, Antisocial Behavior, and Alcohol Use in Adolescence.

Both externalizing and internalizing psychopathology increase throughout adolescence and a similar set of risk and protective factors may underlie depressive symptoms, antisocial behavior, and alcohol use. Analyses test how risk and protective factors for externalizing behavior in community, school, family, peer and individual domains are related to depressive symptoms, antisocial behavior, and alcohol use concurrently and longitudinally in a sample of 2002 students assessed in 8 and 10 grades (52% male; 58% Caucasian). Findings indicate that risk and protective factors for antisocial behavior and alcohol use are also associated with depressive symptoms, both concurrently and longitudinally.

From the school yard to the squad car: school discipline, truancy, and arrest.

Since the 1990's, implementation of zero tolerance policies in schools has led to increased use of school suspension and expulsion as disciplinary techniques for students with varying degrees of infractions. An unintended consequence of zero tolerance policies is that school suspension or expulsion may increase risk for contact with the juvenile justice system. In the present study, we test how forced absence from school via suspension or expulsion and chosen absence from school (truancy) are associated with the likelihood of being arrested.

Variation in the Effect of Communities That Care on Community Adoption of a Scientific Approach to Prevention.

Tested and effective approaches are available to prevent mental, emotional, and behavioral problems in youth, but such approaches are underused. Communities That Care (CTC) is a coalition-based strategy that aims to increase the use of tested and effective programs by combining the use of scientific evidence and stakeholder consensus to support the community adoption of a scientific approach to preventing mental, emotional, and behavioral problems in youth. A community-randomized trial of CTC was conducted with a sample of 24 communities matched in pairs and assigned randomly to a control or an intervention condition.

Psychosocial (im)maturity from adolescence to early adulthood: distinguishing between adolescence-limited and persisting antisocial behavior.

In the psychological tradition, desistance from antisocial behavior is viewed as the product of psychosocial maturation, including increases in the ability to control impulses, consider the implications of one's actions on others, delay gratification in the service of longer term goals, and resist the influences of peers. The present study investigates how individual variability in the development of psychosocial maturity is associated with desistance from antisocial behavior in a sample of 1,088 serious juvenile offenders followed from adolescence to early adulthood (ages 14-25). We find that psychosocial maturity continues to develop to the midtwenties and that different developmental patterns of maturation are found among those who desist and those who persist in antisocial behavior.

Age differences in the impact of employment on antisocial behavior.

While research suggests that working more than 20 hr weekly is associated with greater antisocial behavior among middle- and upper-class youth, some have argued that employment benefits at-risk youth and leads to desistance from crime among youthful offenders. This study investigates the relation between hours worked, school attendance, and employment characteristics on antisocial behavior in a sample of approximately 1,300 juvenile offenders (ages 14-17 at baseline) tracked over 5 years. The combinations of high-intensity employment and irregular school attendance, unemployment and irregular school attendance, and unemployment and not being enrolled in school are associated with significantly greater antisocial behavior, particularly during early adolescence.

The application of meta-analysis within a matched-pair randomized control trial: an illustration testing the effects of communities that care on delinquent behavior.

Use of meta-analytic strategies to test intervention effects is an important complement to traditional design-based analyses of intervention effects in randomized control trials. In the present paper, we suggest that meta-analyses within the context of matched-pair designs can provide useful insight into intervention effects. We illustrate the advantages to this analytic strategy by examining the effectiveness of the Communities That Care (CTC) prevention system on 8th-grade delinquent behavior in a randomized matched-pair trial.

Individual differences in the development of self-regulation during pre-adolescence: connections to context and adjustment.

Difficulties with self-regulation are implicated in the development of emotional and behavioral problems during adolescence. Although children's ability to regulate their behaviors continues to improve throughout childhood and adolescence, it remains unclear how contextual risk factors might influence this development during the transition to adolescence, or how variation in the development of self-regulation predicts adjustment. Using a community sample of 214 8-12 year-olds (T1 M = 9.