Sara Pedersen

Intensity of Participation in Organized Youth Activities during the High School Years: Longitudinal Associations with Adjustment.

The goal of this study was to explore the longitudinal associations between youth activity participation and adjustment over the high school years by examining (a) correlations between participation and adjustment growth curves, and (b) bidirectional links between participation and adjustment from one year to the next. Participation was operationalized as the total number of hours spent in sports, performance and fine arts, and youth clubs over a school year. Indicators of adjustment included school grades, alcohol use, and depressive symptoms. Youth (n = 362; mean age = 13.38, SD = 0.42; 59% girls) were surveyed annually from grades 7 to 10 using questionnaires and phone interviews. Growth curve results revealed that: (a) sports were positively associated with alcohol use; (b) performance and fine arts were negatively linked to depressive symptoms, and (c) youth clubs were positively associated with school grades, and negatively linked to alcohol use and depressive symptoms. The bidirectional analyses revealed few significant links from one year to the next, with the exception of performance and fine arts and grades.

Perceived Family and Peer Transactions and Self-Esteem among Urban Early Adolescents

This research extends previous work that identified groups of youth characterized by profiles of perceived family and peer transactions. Predictions derived from self-enhancement and self-consistency theories concerning how such transactions might relate to self-esteem in a diverse sample of early adolescents (N = 635) were investigated. Both theories indicate independent contributions of family and peer transactions to self-esteem. The theories differ, however, with regard to implications for how the two microsystems might interrelate in their linkages with self-esteem, with self-enhancement theory implying a moderational model and self-consistency theory a mediational model. As predicted, family and peer profiles each made independent contributions to the prediction of self-esteem. Consistent with self-consistency theory, the relations of family transactions to self-esteem were mediated in part by their associations with peer transactions, with particularly strong linkages evident between qualitatively similar profiles of family and peer experiences. Support for a moderational model, however, was not found.

Creating Neighborhood Typologies of GIS-Based Data in the Absence of Neighborhood-Based Sampling: A Factor and Cluster Analytic Strategy

This article describes an innovative means of identifying a neighborhood typology that can be used for analyses of individual-level data that were not obtained through neighborhood-based sampling. A two-step approach was employed. First, exploratory factor analysis was used to reduce the number of neighborhood indicators to five clear factors of neighborhood characteristics. Second, a cluster analytic procedure was used to identify neighborhood types based on the five factors. These analyses resulted in a parsimonious solution of five distinct neighborhood clusters, or types, that constituted a manageable number of categories that could be used for future analyses of individuals grouped within neighborhood types. This method is a promising way to conduct neighborhood impact analyses that maximize the ability of researchers to characterize neighborhoods accurately (without sampling at the neighborhood level) while retaining the ability to conduct analyses of participants grouped within types of neighborhoods.

Changing Children's Trajectories of Development: Two-Year Evidence for the Effectiveness of a School-Based Approach to Violence Prevention

Awareness of youth violence has increased in recent years, resulting in more interest in programs that can prevent violent and aggressive behavior. Although overall rates of violence among young people have declined since the mid-1990s, rates of some forms of youth aggression, violence, and crime remain high. National data reveal that, each year, about 15 percent of high school students are involved in a physical fight at school and 8 percent are threatened or injured with a weapon. Urban youth are at particular risk for exposure to violence and victimization.