Athletic directors in North Carolina (n=215) completed a questionnaire that broadly examined substance abuse of high school student athletes. Results were compared with the general student body and with a national survey of athletic directors' perceptions. Drug abuse among student-athletes was perceived to be of lesser magnitude regionally than…

A sample of 20 father-present and 20 father-absent middle school boys rated each other on peer adjustment and self-image. Results indicate that father-absent boys evidence a poorer sense of masculinity as well as poorer interpersonal relationships than do father-present boys. (JPS)

Examines the relationship between adolescent self-esteem and smoking among a large cohort (n=3,567) of adolescents between the 6th and 10th grades. Findings suggest that self-esteem may be a factor in the smoking behavior of female adolescents in grades six through eight, but not for males in any grade. This suggests that females may have…

Sixteen 17-year-old kibbutz members, including 7 hashish smokers and 9 nonsmokers, assessed the probability that a young person of similar background would use drugs. It was found that hashish smokers assigned meaningful importance to a combined influence of personal predisposition and group pressure, while the nonsmokers considered only group…

Dutch adolescents, ages 12 to 14, completed the Utrect-Groningen Identity Development Scale, which encompasses separate scales for commitment in exploration for relational, school, and occupational identity. Results show that relational identity becomes consistently stronger as adolescents age, and that for girls, relational identity is much more…

Korean American students (n=207) participated in a survey to identify special concerns. Although the majority of these students are well-adjusted and their self-concept appears to be highly positive, 78% were concerned about their parents' limited English proficiency, 56% were not happy with their school work, and approximately a third expressed…

Physicians and residents (n=53) at a southeastern rural teaching hospital were surveyed with regard to their counseling of adolescents about sexuality, including abstinence. More than 60% of physicians reported regularly addressing the issues of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), sexually transmitted disease (STD), pregnancy prevention, and…

Twelve focus group discussions on attitudes toward tattoos, health beliefs, and awareness of the long-term consequences of tattooing and stigmatization were conducted with 80 volunteers, 6 to 17 years of age. Attitudes toward tattoos were generally negative, although a more favorable attitude toward small tattoos was discernible among early…

In studies of the usefulness of psychotherapy with children and adolescents, clinical therapy has markedly poorer outcomes than laboratory studies. Proposals to bridge the gap include enriching the data base on treatment effects by clinical practitioners, identifying the features of research therapy that account for positive outcomes, and…

Uses work with anxiety-disordered youth as an example of potentially transportable manual-based treatment. Examines client factors, service-clinic therapist factors, and researcher factors that may contribute to the reported gap between research and practice outcomes. (JPS)

Proposes two theory- and empirically-based explanations for the emergent success of multisystemic therapy (MST) in community settings. First, MST may have demonstrated success because it bridges the gap between university-based psychotherapy studies and their community-based counterparts. Second, its favorable outcomes may exemplify the successful…

Alternative methodologies are proposed to examine how treatment effectiveness may vary as a function of degree of treatment structure, treatment protocol compliance, psychotherapy integration into an overall treatment regimen, participant selection and composition, and variations in treatment parameters. (JPS)

In a national telephone survey of youths 10-16 years (n=2,000), over one-third reported having been the victims of assault. Victimized respondents displayed significantly more psychological and behavioral symptomology than nonvictims, even after controlling for other possible sources of distress. Findings suggest substantial mental health…

Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) have advantages over other methods for predicting violent behavior recidivism because they are independent of the base rate for violence in the populations studied and of particular cutoff score chosen to classify cases as likely to be violent. Shows how ROC methods can be used to compare performance of…

Parents' marital functioning and adolescent psychopathology were investigated in two studies. Results indicate that parents of inpatients reported less marital satisfaction and more conflicts over child rearing than parents of control-group adolescents, and that marital conflicts over child rearing were associated with a less active…