Attitudes formed in adolescence create a foundation for family-formation decisions in adulthood. Drawing on qualitative interviews with fifty American adolescents, this article details five relationship-relevant factors that emerge in the teens' discussions of their relationship views. These are personal communication style, divorce acceptance,…

Mother-daughter communication plays an influential role in adolescent development. The impact of maternal HIV infection on family communication is not clear. This study explores how living with HIV impacts sexual risk communication between mothers and daughters and whether maternal HIV status influences adolescent choices about engagement in HIV…

Having a noble purpose in life is an important component of positive youth development; however, little is known about how noble purposes develop over time. Therefore, using three waves of interviews over a 5-year period with 9 adolescents (N = 9) who demonstrated intense commitments to various noble purposes, the present study developed a…

This study considered the impact of the SERVE Program at Ignatius University upon participating students' expected political involvement. The SERVE Program is a community service learning program sponsored jointly by Ignatius University's philosophy and theology departments. Through a mixed methods research design, the authors found that Ignatius…

Although peer status has been studied extensively in childhood and adolescence, little is known about social status in peer groups of emerging adults. The current study filled this gap by testing whether preference and popularity are distinct dimensions of peer status and uniquely associated with social behavior in emerging adulthood. Participants…

This article examined the future plans constructed by Latina adolescent girls and their mothers within a lower income urban community. Seventeen high school juniors and their mothers were interviewed about the girls' pursuit of a trade during high school and anticipated postsecondary pathways in the nursing field. Thematic content analyses…

The study examined the extent to which a service trip to Nicaragua affected college students' narrative understanding of themselves and their commitment to volunteer service. College students who went on a spring break service trip to work with poor citizens of Nicaragua wrote narrative accounts of three important experiences on the trip shortly…

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…

The present study employs a mixed methods approach to understanding the psychological functions and contexts of music use. Seventy-six emerging adults selected a single piece of music that they considered personally significant and elaborated on the reasons for this significance in response to written prompts. A constant comparative analysis of…

American college housing is beginning to introduce gender-neutral housing, or the housing of students in the same room regardless of gender. This study provides a descriptive overview of gender-neutral housing from 148 universities and documents central areas of debate in current policy discussions. Information regarding gender-neutral housing…

Social network websites are widely used by adolescents, but disclosing in this environment has inherent risks, as does connecting with others online. In a sample of 256 adolescent "Facebook" users, the authors explore the relationship between having a negative experience, privacy knowledge, and behavior. Their reports of bad experiences on…

Social changes in indigenous Maya communities in Chiapas, Mexico toward increasing levels of formal education, commercialization, and urbanization are transforming traditional Maya developmental pathways toward adulthood. This mixed-methods study is based on interviews with a sample of 14 first-generation Maya university students who have also…

This article examines depressive symptoms over a 4-year period in a racially diverse community sample of 1,143 18- to 22-year-old emerging adults using latent growth and mixture modeling and data collected at three time points. Participants were high school seniors randomly chosen from nine public schools in a metropolitan region in the…

The data drawn from interviews with 55 second-generation Iranian American adolescents revealed that pride in ancient Persian culture, the adolescents' physical characteristics, perceived stereotypes, and community point of reference all combined to affect ethnic identity as well as to reinforce a sense of ethnic loyalty. The contextual factors…

Grounded theory principles were systematically employed to reveal key differences in pregnancy risk and underlying disparities in contraceptive use in (a) never-pregnant (b) pregnant-terminated and (c) pregnant-continued teenagers. Analysis of 69 semistructured interviews revealed a bicausal model of pregnancy protection that accounted for…