Although organized activities (OAs) have been established as important contexts of development, limited work has examined the role of OAs across the high school transition in buffering adolescents' social adjustment by providing opportunities for visibility and peer affiliation. The transition to high school is characterized by numerous…

Borrowing a framework used to study adolescent peer groups, this chapter relates key findings from chapters in this volume to the status or reputation that peers accord a given organized activity, the tendency of activities to channel adolescents toward some relationships and away from others, and the context for peer interactions created within…

There are important lessons to be learned from taking a comparative perspective in considering migration. Comparative examination of immigration experiences provides a way to glean common denominators of adaptation while considering the specificity of sending and receiving contexts and cultures. Equally important is a historical perspective that…

In this introduction, the editors give an overview of the ways the volume addresses the growing individual and institutional calls for increased clarity and rigor in methodological, ethical, and practical research policies and guidelines for conducting research with immigrant individuals, families, and communities. In addition to summarizing the…

This chapter provides a guide to research logistics and ethics in studying immigrant families. The authors outline major pragmatic issues in research design and data collection to which all scholars must attend, although current practices often do not respond to the idiosyncratic issues related to vulnerable immigrant populations (e.g.,…

Research on immigrant communities has often been reductionist, stereotypical, and simplistic, and even the most well-intentioned researchers are susceptible to using cultural deficit models. This chapter critically evaluates some of the dominant tensions and problem areas with respect to researching immigrant communities. Specifically, we analyze…

This chapter uses moral psychology to illustrate why exemplar methods are essential for building a valid, complete understanding of key domains of human development. Social psychological, economic, and biological-evolutionary paradigms for studying morality rely on samples drawn from the general population. This research reveals a bleak picture of…

We write from our own experience as researchers on the integration of immigrants and their children, describing several ethical and research considerations that we addressed. In one study we examined the use of public benefits among immigrant families. This study posed issues regarding the selection of which "benefits" should be…

Nearly 5.5 million children in the United States grow up in the shadows of undocumented status. We review the ecological domains of influence in children's and adolescents' lives and briefly consider health, cognitive, socioemotional, educational, and labor market outcomes ripe for study. We also reflect upon the ethical policy…

This chapter reviews the research on environmental exemplars, or activists. General themes that have been identified in the literature include early experiences in nature, the influence of other people and organizations, opportunities for environmental education, environmental self and identity formation, and generativity. With these themes in…

This chapter specifically addresses how exemplar methods are especially relevant to examining cultural and contextual issues. Cross-cultural, cultural, and indigenous psychologies are discussed in order to highlight how studying actual exemplars in their unique and complex developmental contexts has the potential to identify themes that either…

The field of developmental psychology has produced abundant theory and research about the physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development of children; however, to date there has been limited use of this wealth of knowledge by developers creating games for children. This chapter provides an overview of key theoretical observations and…

Children and adolescents in the United States and in many countries are projected to have shorter life spans than their parents, partly because of the obesity crisis engulfing the developed world. Exposure to electronic media is often implicated in this crisis because media use, including electronic game play, may promote sedentary behavior and…

It is increasingly common for an educational media project to span several media platforms (e.g., TV, Web, hands-on materials), assuming that the benefits of learning from multiple media extend beyond those gained from one medium alone. Yet research typically has investigated learning from a single medium in isolation. This paper reviews several…

Children's and adolescents' cognitive, affective, and behavioral states of engagement enhance or impede enjoyment of, and performance with, educational games. We propose a comprehensive model of engagement states and apply it to research on educational game development and research on the role of various aspects of engagement on game play and…