Linda L. Caldwell

Participation in School-Based Extracurricular Activities and Adolescent Adjustment

This paper examines the association between participation in school-based extracurricular activities (ECAs) and adolescent adjustment (drinking, marijuana use, grades, academic attitudes and academic aspirations) among students from six high schools. Three major issues were addressed: the potential confounding of selective EGA participation by better adjusted students and measures of adjustment, variability in the strength of the association between ECA participation and adjustment as a function of adolescent demographic characteristics and activity type, and the role of peers as mediators of the association between ECA participation and adjustment. Adolescents who participated in ECAs reported higher grades, more positive attitudes toward schools, and higher academic aspirations once demographic characteristics and prior adjustment were controlled. Alcohol and marijuana use were not independently associated with ECA participation. The ECA-adjustment association did not vary by demographic characteristics and did not appear to be mediated by peer characteristics. Those who participated in non-sport ECAs reported consistently better adjustment than those who did not participate in ECAs and those who participate in sports.

Leisure and health: why is leisure therapeutic?

The purpose of this article is to examine the empirical evidence and describe theoretical perspectives that address under what conditions and why leisure can be therapeutic and contribute to health and well-being. This review of the literature provides empirical evidence that leisure can contribute to physical, social, emotional and cognitive health through prevention, coping (adjustment, remediation, diversion), and transcendence. After examining this empirical evidence, the article addresses why leisure is therapeutic and concludes by presenting two concepts useful to practitioners who desire to provide leisure guidance to help people avoid risk and maximise the therapeutic possibilities of leisure.

Preliminary effects of a leisure education program to promote healthy use of free time among middle school adolescents.

This paper documents the development and first year evaluation of the Time Wise: Learning Lifelong Leisure Skills curriculum, which aims to increase positive free time use, and mitigate or prevent the initiation of substance use and abuse. The sample was comprised of 634 school youth attending nine middle schools in a rural area in eastern United States. Results from self-report data indicate that students who received the Time Wise curriculum reported being less amotivated and more motivated by identified and introjected forms of motivation. Students in Time Wise reported being better able to restructure boring situations into something more interesting; having higher levels of decision making skills, initiative, community awareness; and participating in new interests, sports, and nature-based activities.

LEISURE CONTEXT, PARENTAL CONTROL, AND RESISTANCE TO PEER PRESSURE AS PREDICTORS OF ADOLESCENT PARTYING AND SUBSTANCE USE: AN ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Using an ecological model we explored factors that contributed to the amount of time adolescents spent partying and consequent substance use. This study derived from secondary data analysis on self...

Why are you bored?: an examination of psychological and social control causes of boredom among adolescents.

The purpose of this study was to better understand the causes of boredom using psychologically based and social control models of boredom. For this study, 82 8th grade students completed two questi...

Inconsistent Reports of Sexual Intercourse Among South African High School Students

PURPOSE This study aims to describe patterns of inconsistent reports of sexual intercourse among a sample of South African adolescents. METHODS Consistency of reported lifetime sexual intercourse was assessed using five semiannual waves of data. Odds ratios related inconsistent reporting to demographic variables and potential indicators of general and risk-behavior-specific reliability problems. RESULTS Of the sexually active participants in the sample, nearly 40% reported being virgins after sexual activity had been reported at an earlier assessment. Inconsistent reporting could not be predicted by gender or race or by general indicators of poor reliability (inconsistent reporting of gender and birth year). However individuals with inconsistent reports of sexual intercourse were more likely to be inconsistent reporters of substance use. CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that researchers need to undertake efforts to deal specifically with inconsistent risk behavior data. These may include modification of data collection procedures and use of statistical methodologies that can account for response inconsistencies.

Development of the Free Time Motivation Scale for Adolescents

A new self-report measure of adolescent free time motivation (FTMS-A) based in self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) has been developed. The scale measures five forms of motivation (amotivation, external, introjected, identified, and intrinsic motivation) and is appropriate for use with young adolescents (ages 12–15). Using confirmatory factor analysis, examination of each of the motivation subscales indicated minimally acceptable levels of fit. The test of the overall model without modification was also minimally acceptable. The deletion of two items improved the fit and provides preliminary evidence of the validity of the FTMS-A, however, future replication of this finding is needed.

Substance Use and Sexual Risk Prevention in Cape Town, South Africa: An Evaluation of the HealthWise Program

Sexual behavior and substance use represent major threats to the health and well-being of South African adolescents, especially in light of the high prevalence of HIV infection in this population. However, there is currently a lack of evidence-based school programs designed to address health risk behaviors. The current study details the evaluation of HealthWise South Africa, a leisure, life skills, and sexuality education intervention for eighth and ninth grade students. We hypothesized that, compared to controls, HealthWise participants would have delayed sexual initiation, reduced rates of current sexual activity, increased use of and perceived access to condoms, and lower rates of lifetime and past use of multiple substances. Longitudinal data were analyzed using logistic regression of multiply imputed data. Results indicate that HealthWise was effective in increasing the perception of condom availability for both genders (OR = 1.6). As compared to HealthWise participants, control participants also had steeper increases in recent and heavy use of alcohol (OR = 1.4 [95% C.I. = 1.1–1.8], 1.6 [1.2–2.2], respectively) and recent and heavy cigarette use (OR = 1.4 [1.1–1.7], 1.4 [1.1–1.8], respectively). There were also several significant gender by treatment interactions, which are discussed. These results suggest that HealthWise is a promising approach to reducing multiple health risk behaviors among the population of school-going South African adolescents.

Leisure as a Context for Youth Development and Delinquency Prevention

This article highlights the importance of leisure as a context for human development as well as for prevention of risky behaviour, including crime and delinquency.We offer a brief review and synthesis of current criminology literature that examines leisure activity and then describe leisure research that may provide additional insight into why leisure may be an important context for understanding and preventing delinquent behaviour.We end with a brief description of an intervention that teaches youth to make healthy decisions in their leisure and describe a set of post hoc analyses from a data set from 628 rural youth in the United States used to evaluate the leisure based intervention. Although the data we report were not collected to examine delinquent behaviour, we tentatively conclude leisure-related variables can serve as risk and protective factors to property damage and by extension other delinquent behaviours. We suggest that helping youth become more intrinsically motivated by having goal-oriented leisure pursuits and decreasing levels of a motivation, learning to overcome peer pressure, and becoming more aware of leisure opportunities may reduce the risk of damaging property. Additionally, having parents who are aware of leisure interests, activities and friends is also a protective factor.We also found evidence to suggest that some form of leisure education intervention may be effective in preventing delinquent acts.

Health Wise South Africa: Development of a Life Skills Curriculum for Young Adults

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of an international collaborative effort that aims to reduce risky behavior (e.g., substance use, risky sexual behavior) that leads to outcomes such as HIV/AIDs, pregnancy, and addictions among a sample of South African youth. Because many of these risky behaviors occur in free time, a major part of the effort was leisure education to promote positive use of free time. The program described has been pilot tested and is currently underway as a larger-scale, randomized trial in the Province of the Western Cape in South Africa. This paper describes the conceptualization and revision of the HealthWise curriculum, working with the Western Cape Education Department, and the on-going randomized trial.