Stanley Hall's (1904) description of adolescence as a time "suggestive of some ancient period of storm and stress when old moorings were broken and a higher level attained" is arguably one of developmental psychology's most vivid and powerful metaphors. Its relatively insignificant contribution to Hall's treatise (Arnett, 2006), the early demise…

Children born into poverty in the United States are at higher risk for a number of nonresilient outcomes. An extensive body of work examines and then confirms the qualities of resilient children, emphasizing the importance of four social-psychological characteristics--social competence, problem solving, autonomy, and sense of purpose--and three…

The future of civil society in the world rests on the promotion of positive development and a commitment to positive and socially just community contributions by the young (Lerner, 2004). Adolescents represent, at any point in history, the generational cohort that must be prepared to assume the quality of leadership of self, family, community, and…

This article provides an overview of the origins and use of relational data analysis (RDA). RDA is a multidimensional, multiphasic framework for unifying data analytic strategies across dimensions (quantitative/qualitative, causal/structural, observation/interpretation, etc.) and phases of analyses (conceptual, theoretical, and research analyses).…

The Miami Youth Development Project (YDP) had its beginnings in the early 1990s as a grassroots response to the needs of troubled (multiproblem) young people in the community (Arnett, Kurtines, & Montgomery, 2008, this issue). YDP is an important outcome of efforts to create positive youth development interventions that draw on the strengths of…

The efforts of the Miami Youth Development Project reported in this special issue illustrate how Developmental Intervention Science (DIS; a fusion of the developmental and intervention science) extended to include outreach research contributes to the development of community-supported positive youth development programs. In the process, the…

This paper describes work directed toward creating community-supported positive youth development interventions that draw on a developmental intervention science outreach research approach. With respect to developmental interventions, this approach focuses on creating evidence-based longitudinal change intervention strategies for promoting…

Encouraging a teenager to have a conversation in a semistructured research interview is fraught with difficulties. The authors discuss the methodological challenges encountered when interviewing adolescents of European Canadian, African Canadian, and Punjabi Canadian families who took part in the Family Food Decision-Making Study in two regions of…

To further explore central developmental themes of emerging adulthood, the authors conducted a study that combines qualitative and quantitative data about the types of personal growth and decline reported by a sample of emerging adults, who also described the life events and other experiences that brought about these personal changes. After…

This article examines the lessons learned by youths confined to a maximum-security juvenile correctional facility. Using data from an ethnographic study of a cottage of violent offenders in one state's end-of-the-line training school, the author describes the lessons the institution and its staff members hoped to teach the young people in their…

Trends in ecstasy use in America during the past decade were reflected in mainstream, American rap-music lyrics between 1996 and 2003. Drawing on communication and cultural studies theory, this article provides a content analysis of 69 rap songs mentioning the club drug ecstasy. The songs are coded according to whether they contain positive, mixed…

This review summarizes end-of-program quit rates from 6 controlled and 10 field-based Not on Tobacco (NOT) evaluations. Approximately 6,130 youth from 5 states and 489 schools participated. Intent-to-treat and compliant quit rates were calculated at 3 months postbaseline (end-of-program). Results from controlled evaluations revealed an aggregate…

Although previous findings indicate that frequent television viewing is associated with holding more stereotypical attitudes about gender, no studies have examined this connection among Latino youth, who are frequent viewers of both English- and Spanish-language programming. The present study attempted to rectify this situation by examining…

This article examines the possible implications of reintegrating the concept of context into identity theory. Through the analysis of a case study of one individual attempting to form an identity within the larger juxtaposed sociocultural contexts of premodernity, modernity, and postmodernity, the article demonstrates how diversity of…

Despite the growing popularity of the harm reduction approach in the field of adolescent alcohol and substance abuse, a harm reduction approach to prevention and treatment of youth problem gambling remains largely unexplored. This article poses the question of whether the harm reduction paradigm is a promising approach to the prevention of…