Longitudinal Associations of Electronic Aggression and Victimization with Social Standing During Adolescence

Prior empirical work has documented that the dynamics of social standing can play a critical role in the perpetration and receipt of aggression during adolescence. Recently, investigators have emphasized the emergence of new, electronic modalities for aggressive acts. Our longitudinal project therefore considered electronic forms of aggression and victimization as correlates of social standing. We recruited 415 ninth grade students (53 % female) from a high school in Southern California. In the spring of two consecutive school years, participants completed peer nominations assessing their social standing, aggression, and victimization. More popular youths were concurrently more electronically aggressive and victimized than their peers. Popularity also was associated with increases in electronic aggression over time. In turn, electronic aggression was related to increases in popularity for girls and decreases for boys. We additionally found concurrent, positive associations between social acceptance and electronic forms of aggression and victimization, although these effects held only at the first time point. Among adolescent males, social acceptance also was related to increases in electronic victimization over time. Overall, our results suggest that adolescents may rely on electronic aggression to establish and maintain a privileged position in their peer hierarchy. Our results additionally highlight that popular and accepted youths, who likely possess a large, digitally-connected social network, may be at increased risk for electronic victimization.     

Cumulative Family Risk Predicts Increases in Adjustment Difficulties across Early Adolescence

Family is an important socialization context for youth as they move through early adolescence. A significant feature of this complex socialization context is the accumulation of potential family risk factors that may compromise youth adjustment. This study examined cumulative family risk and adolescents’ adjustment difficulties in 416 two-parent families using four waves of annual longitudinal data (51 % female youth). Risk factors in four family domains were examined: socioeconomic, parents’ psychological realm, marital, and parenting. Cumulative family risk experienced while in 6th grade was associated concurrently with daughters’ higher internalizing problems and with increased internalizing problems during early adolescence. Cumulative family risk was associated concurrently with sons’ higher externalizing problems and with daughters’ increased externalizing problems over time. Cumulative family risk was associated concurrently with lower grades and with declining grades over time for both daughters and sons. The number of risk domains also was associated with youths’ adjustment difficulties during early adolescence, providing evidence that risk in two-parent families involves more than ineffective parenting. These findings suggest a critical need to provide strong support for families in reducing a variety of stressors across multiple family domains as their children traverse early adolescence.     

The Role of Social Support in Students’ Perceived Abilities and Attitudes Toward Math and Science

Social cognitive models examining academic and career outcomes emphasize constructs such as attitude, interest, and self-efficacy as key factors affecting students’ pursuit of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) courses and careers. The current research examines another under-researched component of social cognitive models: social support, and the relationship between this component and attitude and self-efficacy in math and science. A large cross-sectional design was used gathering data from 1,552 participants in four adolescent school settings from 5th grade to early college (41 % female, 80 % white). Students completed measures of perceived social support from parents, teachers and friends as well as their perceived ability and attitudes toward math and science. Fifth grade and college students reported higher levels of support from teachers and friends when compared to students at other grade levels. In addition, students who perceived greater social support for math and science from parents, teachers, and friends reported better attitudes and had higher perceptions of their abilities in math and science. Lastly, structural equation modeling revealed that social support had both a direct effect on math and science perceived abilities and an indirect effect mediated through math and science attitudes. Findings suggest that students who perceive greater social support for math and science from parents, teachers, and friends have more positive attitudes toward math and science and a higher sense of their own competence in these subjects.     

Age and the Explanation of Crime, Revisited

Age is one of the most robust correlates of criminal behavior. Yet, explanations for this relationship are varied and conflicting. Developmental theories point to a multitude of sociological, psychological, and biological changes that occur during adolescence and adulthood. One prominent criminological perspective outlined by Gottfredson and Hirschi claims that age has a direct effect on crime, inexplicable from sociological and psychological variables. Despite the attention this claim has received, few direct empirical tests of it have been conducted. We use data from Pathways to Desistance, a longitudinal study of over 1,300 serious youthful offenders (85.8 % male, 40.1 % African-American, 34.3 % Hispanic, 21.0 % White), to test this claim. On average, youths were 16.5 years old at the initial interview and were followed for 7 years. We use multilevel longitudinal models to assess the extent to which the direct effects of age are reduced to statistical and substantive non-significance when constructs from a wide range of developmental and criminological theories are controlled. Unlike previous studies, we are able to control for changes across numerous realms emphasized within differing theoretical perspectives including social control (e.g., employment and marriage), procedural justice (e.g., perceptions of the legitimacy and fairness of the legal system), learning (e.g., gang membership and exposure to antisocial peers), strain (e.g., victimization and relationship breakup), psychosocial maturity (e.g., impulse control, self-regulation and moral disengagement), and rational choice (e.g., costs and rewards of crime). Assessed separately, these perspectives explain anywhere from 3 % (procedural justice) to 49 % (social learning) of the age-crime relationship. Together, changes in these constructs explain 69 % of the drop in crime from ages 15 to 25. We conclude that the relationship between age and crime in adolescence and early adulthood is largely explainable, though not entirely, attributable to multiple co-occurring developmental changes.     

The Peer Context and the Development of the Perpetration of Adolescent Dating Violence

The peer context is a central focus in research on adolescent risk behaviors but few studies have investigated the role of the peer context in the perpetration of adolescent dating violence. This longitudinal study examined between-subjects and within-person contemporaneous and lagged effects of peer attributes, measured with social network analyses, on trajectories of dating violence perpetration and determined if effects varied by grade and/or sex of the adolescent. Data are from adolescents who participated in a five-wave panel study beginning when they were in 7 through 9th grade and ending when they were in 10 through 12th grade (n = 3,412); half were male, 40.5 % were white, 49.9 % were black and 10.4 % were of another race/ethnicity. Significant between-subjects effects indicate that adolescents who typically have friends who use dating violence, and girls who are typically high in social status, are at increased risk for using dating violence throughout adolescence. Adolescents who typically have high quality friendships and girls who typically have friends with pro-social beliefs are at decreased risk for using dating violence throughout adolescence. Significant within-person contemporaneous effects indicate that both boys and girls reported lower levels of dating violence than usual at times when they had more friends with pro-social beliefs, and reported higher levels of dating violence than usual at times when they had higher social status. None of the lagged effects were significant and none of the effects varied across grade. These findings suggest that the peer context plays an important role in the development of the perpetration of adolescent dating violence.     

People,power, change: three pillars of a food sovereignty research praxis

ABSTRACT

This article is situated within nascent debates on the role of academics within food sovereignty movements. Drawing on insights from a collective autoethnography, we report on our experiences conducting three food sovereignty research projects in different contexts and at different scales. We suggest that that the principles and practices of food sovereignty translate into a food sovereignty research praxis. This consists of three pillars focusing on people (humanizing research relationships), power (equalizing power relations) and change (pursuing transformative orientations). This article discusses these pillars and analyzes the extent to which we were able to embody them within our projects.