The purpose of the current investigation was to examine the associations between a variety of measures of extracurricular participation and indicators of youth development. We use data from the Childhood and Beyond Study, a larger longitudinal study of adolescent development. The sample is primarily White middle-class adolescents in Grades 7…

This study examined the relations among activity participation, expressive identity, and wellness in a sample of 115 high school students. Results indicated that most adolescents identify several activities as self-defining. Within-person variation in identity scores across self-selected activities was substantially greater than between-person…

The question of how youth become engaged or motivated is vital to youth development programs, because engagement influences not only program retention but the likelihood of youth gaining the benefits that programs offer. This article reports on an in-depth study aimed at generating grounded theory about the change process through which youth who…

A growing body of research shows school connectedness to be a powerful predictor of adolescent health and academic outcomes. This study advances a theoretically grounded definition of school connectedness and triangulates qualitative and quantitative methods to assess contextual correlates to school connectedness in 8th, 10th, and 12th grade…

This study focused on the role of school-based required community service in promoting adolescents' prosocial behavior and intended future civic involvement when service is differentiated by types and by adolescents' perceived experience. A longitudinal data set of high school students (N = 603) was analyzed to investigate the developmental steps…

The relations among observed ecological assets in youth's families, schools, and neighborhoods with positive and negative developmental outcomes were assessed with a sample of 646 fifth-grade youth. The majority of participants were Latino (37.5%) or European American (35.5%) and lived in 2-parent families. Ecological asset indicators were…

One hundred twenty-eight Latina and African American girls from high-risk environments (e.g., poverty, family history of teen parenting, etc.) were studied from age 13 through age 19 to prospectively identify the protective factors that might guard against teenage pregnancy. Results indicated that involved and strict parenting during early…

This article examines family, friend, and media influences on competent and problem behaviors in a sample of 1,174 urban minority youth followed over 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. Students completed annual surveys at their schools. Each of the contextual factors investigated was significantly associated with concurrent aggression and delinquency as…

This study examined how time spent caring for a teenage sister's child and experiences in providing care related to youths' young adult outcomes. Latino and African American youths (N = 108) were studied during middle and late adolescence. Results indicated that youths who provided many hours of child care were more stressed and had lower school…

This article describes a developmental systems approach to applied developmental science (ADS), which provides a framework to design and evaluate technology-rich programs that promote positive development by emphasizing the strengths and assets of young people instead of focusing on diminishing or preventing risk-taking behaviors. Until now, most…

This study examined the role of language, attention/impulse control, and mother-child play in predicting later peer competence by assessing 252 children at ages 3 and 8 years. Children born term (n = 90) or preterm (n = 162) were included to examine the question of how variability in skills influenced social outcomes and whether relations were…

This article addresses pragmatic issues regarding the assessment of puberty in research on adolescent health and development. Because pubertal processes have a major effect on physical, psychological, and social development, we posit that the assessment of pubertal status is at least as important as the specification of age for characterizing…

This study draws from the National Center for Early Development and Learning's Multi-State Pre-Kindergarten Study to examine the extent to which program, classroom, and teacher attributes of the program ecology predict observed quality and teacher-child interactions in a sample of 238 classrooms representing 6 states' pre-kindergarten programs.…

A conceptual model was tested in which mentoring relationships were hypothesized to reduce substance use both directly and indirectly through improvements in adolescents' self-perceptions and close relationships. The study included 928 young adolescents (M age = 12.25), all of whom applied to Big Brothers Big Sisters programs. The adolescents were…

This study applied individual growth trajectory analyses and person-oriented analysis to identify common profiles of out-of-school activity engagement trajectories among racially and ethnically diverse inner city teens (N = 1,430). On average, teens exhibited declining trajectories of participation in school-based and team sports activities and…