Adolescent life changes and illness: A comparison of three models

This article examines how stressful life-events relate to the occurrence of illness in a nonclinical random sample of adolescents and what processes intervene in this relationship. Three alternative models of the life events and illness relationship are compared. Data support a “direct stress and illness model” as opposed to either a “sick role behavior model” or a “mental health model.” Social support from parents appears to mediate the life events-illness relationship. Undesirable and ambiguous life events have more impact on illness than desirable events do. Results are discussed in terms of adolescence as a unique developmental stage.     

Gifted adolescents: An analysis of their psychosocial development

A model for viewing adolescent psychosocial development is outlined. The model assumes that basic changes in adolescents' biological, cognitive, and social capacities reciprocally interact with the social settings of the family, peer group, and school/work to influence transformations in six areas of psychosocial development (attachment, friendship, sexuality, achievement, autonomy, and identity). The model is then used as a framework for reviewing literature regarding gifted adolescents' psychosocial adjustment. On the whole, the literature provides a positive view of the psychosocial adjustment of gifted adolescents. While adjustment problems seem to exist in certain areas (e.g., friendship), unequivocal conclusions cannot be drawn because of methodological limitations and the narrow scope of existing research.     

From trust on intimacy: A new inventory for examining erikson's stages of psychosocial development

A new inventory for examining the first six of Erikson's psychosocial stages is described. The self-report questionnaire, developed in a pilot study of 97 adolescents and tested in a study of 622 adolescents, has 12 items for each subscale. Measures of reliability and validity are reported. It is concluded that the Erikson Psychosocial Stage Inventory (EPSI) is a useful measure for researchers interested in development from early adolescence and in mapping changes as a function of life events.This research was supported by a grant from the Education Research and Development Committee.Received Ph.D. from University of Melbourne. Current research interests are adolescent adjustment, ethnicity, and sex-role psychology.Received Ph.D. from University of Melbourne. Current research interests are effects of unemployment and adolescent adjustment.Received Ph.D. from Florida State University. Current research interests are sex-role psychology and adolescence.     

The development of autonomy among learning handicapped and nonhandicapped adolescents: A longitudinal perspective

Factors that influence the development of adolescent autonomy were examined in a longitudinal study of 30 learning handicapped and 30 nonhandicapped adolescents. Autonomy was represented by three separate measures: distance from parental supervision, responsibility, and deviance. Findings suggest that handicapped adolescents lag behind their nonhandicapped peers in achieving separation from parental supervision, in part because of more restrictive parental rules. But the gap appears to be shrinking as the handicapped adolescents are making strides to catch up during the high school years. In both groups, the families where autonomy is achieved with the least amount of discord are those where parents relax control gradually during the period of adolescence.This research was supported by Grant No. HD23097 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.Received Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the University of California, Irvine. Current interests include adjustment problems of learning handicapped young adults.Received Ed.D. from Columbia University. Current interest is social competence and family relations of learning handicapped populations.     

Adolescent males with urogenital anomalies: Their body image and psychosexual development

Three midadolescent males with major congenital urogenital anomalies and multiple surgical repairs are described. Each patient had suffered repeated profound insults to body image concepts and gender identity from infancy onward, now clearly reflected in his psychosocial behavior and in figure drawings. Of major importance is the total lack at any time of counseling and emotional support as a part of comprehensive management. A plea is made for awareness of the psychological effects of such disorders and the need for long-range therapeutic planning from early childhood through adolescence to develop sound compensatory modes of coping with this stress.Formerly fellow in adolescent medicine, New York University Medical Center, at the time the material for this report was collected. Received his M.D. and pediatric training at Boston University School of Medicine and Boston City Hospital. Research interests include comprehensive health care for adolescents and the effects of illness on adolescent psychological development.Received his Ph.D. in psychology from Heed University, Miami, Florida, and training in psychology and child development at New York University. Research interests include the psychological effects of hospitalization on children and youth, minimal brain dysfunction, and developmental assessment in infancy.Received her M.D. from the University of Rochester, pediatric training at University of Minnesota Hospitals and Babies Hospital, New York City, and training in adolescent medicine at Beth Israel Hospital, New York. Research interests include psychological effects of illness and hospitalization in adolescents, legal rights of minors, and adolescent sexuality.     

A communist perspective on development strategy for rural India

This article examines the Communist Party of India (Marxist)'s strategy for ‘developing’ rural India. The term ‘development strategy’ is, of course, not one that the CPI(M) itself uses to characterise its plans for maturing the revolution in India's countryside. As a matter of fact, its use in the title of this paper is intended primarily to emphasise the point that ‘development’ can mean many different things. It is not the intention of this paper to endorse or deny either the merits of the CPI(M)'s purposes or the sincerity of its revolutionary intent. The limited purpose is to portray, and attempt to understand, Us positions. While differences with these positions are duly recorded, the critique is intended to be ‘immanent’, rather than ‘transcendental’, that is, is intended to be a critique from within the given frame of reference, rather than a critique of its ‘validity’.     

Perceived Parental Monitoring,Adolescent Disclosure,and Adolescent Depressive Symptoms: A Longitudinal Examination

Parental monitoring has long been stressed as an important parenting practice in reducing adolescents’ susceptibility to depressive symptoms. Reviews have revealed, however, that measures of monitoring have been confounded with parental knowledge, and that the role of adolescent disclosure has been neglected. In the present study, adolescents (N = 2,941; 51.3% female) were surveyed each year from grades 9–12. To disentangle parenting factors, bidirectional associations among parental knowledge, adolescent disclosure, and parental monitoring (i.e., solicitation and control) were examined. Higher parental knowledge was associated with lower adolescent depressive symptoms over time. Adolescent disclosure and parental control also predicted lower adolescent depressive symptoms indirectly through knowledge. Conversely, higher adolescent depressive symptoms predicted lower parental knowledge, adolescent disclosure, and parental solicitation over time, highlighting the bidirectional nature of associations among parenting factors and adolescent depressive symptoms. Importantly, these effects were invariant across gender and grade, suggesting that interventions can be broadly based.     

Career development of adolescents: An ecological perspective

Bronfenbrenner's ecological model of human development is used as a framework for examining the research on the career development of adolescents. The examination of the four contexts — the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, and the macrosystem — provides an additionalperspective to the ontogenic (individual) approach that has predominated the research literature in this field. Among the four contexts examined, some research on the influence of microsystem, including family, school,peer group, and workplace is identified. The amount of developmentally based research drops off quickly for the other systems, although there are other pertinent research and social issues for each system. Research and intervention implications of this perspective are indicated.This research was supported by grants from the Humanities and Social Science Grants Committee of the University of British Columbia and Youth Employment Program of British Columbia.Received Ed.D. from McGill University. Current research interest is career development and counseling of adolescents.     

Adolescent Sexuality and Positive Well-Being: A Group-Norms Approach

The link between adolescent sexual activity and psychological well-being is a controversial issue in developmental psychology. This cross-sectional study investigated the association between three aspects of teenage sexuality (genital sexual experience, age of sexual onset, and number of sex partners) and positive well-being (hedonic, eudaimonic, and overall) in a sample of 475 high school seniors (48% female; 89% White) from a single school district in a rural upstate New York community. Based on a group-norms perspective, we expected higher well-being in adolescents whose sexual behaviors followed group-normative patterns. As expected, sexually experienced and on-time (at age 16) students reported higher well-being than sexually inexperienced or late-onset (17 or older) students. Contrary to expectations, a high number of sex partners and an early sexual onset (15 or younger) were not related to lower well-being. Early-onset girls reported higher levels of well-being than normative-onset peers. Findings are discussed in relationship to theoretical perspectives and past empirical findings of teenage sexuality as a developmental asset versus risk.     

The learning disabled adolescent: Eriksonian psychosocial development,self-concept,and delinquent behavior

Using a developmental perspective, this study contrasted learning and nonlearning disabled adolescents on three variables: Erikson's stages of psychosocial development, self-concept, and delinquent behavior. It was predicted that learning disabled adolescents would show significantly less resolution of Erikson's fourth state, industry versus inferiority, manifest lower overall self-concept, and report more delinquent behavior than their nondisabled peers. The results indicated that the learning disabled subjects, due to years of failing at school tasks, were unable to develop a sense of industry and competence. While these adolescents felt unpopular and inferior about their academic skills, the overall self-concept of the learning disabled sample was not significantly different than that of the comparison subjects. Finally, among nonadjudicated youths, learning disability was not found to be significantly associated with juvenile delinquency. Taken together, the results of this study show the utility of a developmental framework for a better understanding of the psychosocial adjustment of adolescents with learning handicaps.Recived Ph.D. from the California School of Professional Psychology, Berkeley, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Menninger Foundation, Topeka, Kansas. Current research interests include psychological testing and prediction of psychology in hospitalized adolescents and adults.Received Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky. Current research interests include psychotherapy methods and psychometrics     

Feminism and mothering: A Kleinian perspective

There has been a tendency within recent feminist theory to celebrate the early mother-daughter relationship as a basis of women's unity as a sex. In this respect the work of the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein is relevant to feminism in that it draws attention to the hatred as well as love that inheres in the early mothering relation, and explains the prevalent neglect of the contradictory and ambivalent aspects of mothering—a neglect that contributes to its idealization.     

Relationships between psychosocial development and personality disorder symptomatology in late adolescents

The present study investigated the extent to which psychosocial development through the first five stages of Erik Erikson's theory of personality development is associated with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (third edition, revised; DSM-III-R) Axis II personality disorder symptomatology in a late adolescent sample of undergraduate students. The Inventory of Psychosocial Development (IPD) and the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire—Revised (PDQ-R) were administered to a mixed-sex sample of 106 undergraduate students. The results of this research were that IPD scores assessing negative resolutions of the first five Eriksonian developmental stages consistently predicted scores on the PDQ-R composite scale and the PDQ-R impairment/distress index—both measures of overall personality disorder symptomatology. The IPD subscales varied substantially in the extent to which they predicted scores on the 13 PDQ-R subscales that assess symptoms of specific DSM-III-R personality disorders—ranging from the trust vs. mistrust subscale, which predicted scores on 12 of the 13 PDQ-R subscales, to the initiative vs. guilt subscale, which predicted scores on only 6 of the 13 PDQ-R subscales. Implications of these findings for our understanding of the relationship between psychosocial development and psychopathology are discussed in the context of previous research in this area, and suggestions for future research are offered.Received Ph.D. from Temple University. Research interests include personality disorders, depression, and life events.     

Adolescent Participation in Structured and Unstructured Activities: A Person-Oriented Analysis

The current study used a person-oriented approach to examine the participation of adolescents in both constructive, organized activities as well as relaxed leisure activities. The goal of this research was to identify different profiles of involvement in activities and the relations to psychosocial indicators for these differing groups. Activity profiles were created using cluster analytic techniques for 918 adolescents' responses in 11 activity domains. The groups were found to be both statistically and substantively unique and consistent with findings from previous research. Further, the groups showed meaningful and consistent differences across a range of psychosocial indicators, including academic performance, problem behavior, and mental health. Results indicated that adolescents' activity involvement was related to their psychological and behavioral functioning and that the profiles of participation across activity settings provide a more holistic view of teens' choices than do single variable models.     

Adolescent pubertal status and affective family relationships: A multivariate assessment

This research attempted to more adequately dimensionalize the study of affective family relations during adolescent pubertal maturation by employing a multivariate approach. Fifty-one families responded to an assessment battery consisting of a series of questionnaires designed to measure affective relations between parents and their adolescent children. Families were classified into prepubertal, transpubertal, or postpubertal groups according to their modal response on pubertal status criteria. A stepwise discriminant analysis was performed to identify measures that maximize between groups differences. Based on this analysis, a correct classification rate of 70% was achieved for all families. The two significant discriminant functions that emerged indicate that differences in family relationships are due to the transformation of mother-adolescent and father-adolescent relations. The pattern of results replicate those of other researchers and provide elaborations concerning the affective nature of family relations during adolescence.Received his Ph.D. in Life-span Developmental Psychology from West Virginia University in 1984. Research interests in dialectical models of adolescent development.Received his Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas in 1979. Research interests in decision-making in adolescence and adulthood.     

School-Based Extracurricular Activity Involvement and Adolescent Self-Esteem: A Growth-Curve Analysis

Research on adolescent self-esteem indicates that adolescence is a time in which individuals experience important changes in their physical, cognitive, and social identities. Prior research suggests that there is a positive relationship between an adolescent??s participation in structured extracurricular activities and well-being in a variety of domains, and some research indicates that these relationships may be dependent on the type of activities in which adolescents participate. Building on previous research, a growth-curve analysis was utilized to examine self-esteem trajectories from adolescence (age 14) to young adulthood (age 26). Using 3 waves of data from National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n = 5,399; 47.8% male), the analysis estimated a hierarchical growth-curve model emphasizing the effects of age and type of school-based extracurricular activity portfolio, including sports and school clubs, on self-esteem. The results indicated that age had a linear relationship with self-esteem over time. Changes in both the initial level of self-esteem and the growth of self-esteem over time were significantly influenced by the type of extracurricular activity portfolio. The findings were consistent across race and sex. The results support the utility of examining the longitudinal impact of portfolio type on well-being outcomes.     

Contextual Socioeconomic Disadvantage and Adolescent Suicide Attempts: A Multilevel Investigation

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Multilevel research on whether and how contextual socioeconomic disadvantage affects adolescent suicidal behaviors is scarce. Using data from the first two waves...     

Adolescent conceptions of the homeland: A cross-cultural study

Irish (135) and United States (123) subjects, aged from 8 to 17 years, wrote essays on their respective homelands. A content analysis revealed that American subjects, as they grow older, identify the homeland increasingly with its political ideals, while Irish subjects identify theirs with certain psychological ideals which they associate with the rural culture and landscape. Irish essays tended to be longer and more varied, and they showed a higher level of affective development. Profiles of the homeland on 7 semantic differential scales showed the break-up of a halo effect in the Irish sample. Adolescents in both countries showed a transition from concrete to abstract topics with age. The implications of these findings for research on the adolescent self-image are discussed.