Adolescents’ Reports of Parental Engagement and Academic Achievement in Immigrant Families

The purpose of this study was to add to the understanding of the effects of perceived parental engagement on adolescents’ academic achievement in immigrant families. Self-report data were collected from 1,245 adolescents in immigrant families from four high schools in Los Angeles County. The sample characteristics follow: 13–16 years old (M = 14.5); 58.9% female, 41.1% male; 57.5% Latino; 40.6% 1st generation youth (i.e., foreign born), 59.4% 2nd generation youth. After controlling for parental educational attainment, parental engagement variables were indirectly related to grades through youths’ academic engagement. Multigroup SEM indicated some differences between genders, generational statuses, and ethnicities (Latinos versus others). Adolescents’ perceptions of monitoring by mothers and fathers were indirectly related to grades through academic engagement. Perceived educational advice by mothers was indirectly related to grades through academic engagement for non-Latinos, boys, and 2nd generation youth. Perceived mothers’ schoolwork help was positively related to adolescents’ academic engagement in all the models (except 2nd generation youth), yet fathers’ schoolwork help was significant only for girls and 2nd generation youth.

Cultural Identities of Adolescent Immigrants: A Three-Year Longitudinal Study Including the Pre-Migration Period

This article investigates the cultural identities of adolescent immigrants in the pre-migration period and during the first 3 years after immigration. The target population consists of high-school Jewish adolescents from Russia and Ukraine participating in an Israeli immigration program. In this program, Jewish adolescents immigrate to Israel without their parents, live in kibbutzim and boarding schools, and study in Israeli schools. Participants filled out questionnaires four times: half a year before their departure from the homeland and once a year for three consecutive years after their arrival to Israel. Changes in the cultural identities during immigration were curvilinear. Three stages were distinguished: devaluation of the homeland and idealization of the country of immigration in the pre-migration period, disillusionment with the receiving country and strengthening of the homeland cultural identity in the first year after immigration, and the formation of an inconsistent bi-cultural identity in the later post-migration period. Throughout the entire post-migration period, immigrants’ attitude towards the receiving country was more positive than their attitude towards their homeland; however, immigrants’ sense of belonging to the homeland was stronger than their sense of belonging to the receiving country. Pre-migration cultural identities and perceived discrimination in the receiving country predicted post-migration cultural identities of immigrants. Immigrant adolescents from ethnically homogenous Jewish families had a less positive attitude towards Russia/Ukraine, a more positive attitude towards Israel, and a weaker sense of belonging to Russia/Ukraine as compared to immigrants from ethnically mixed families.

Intensity and Breadth of Participation in Organized Activities During the Adolescent Years: Multiple Associations with Youth Outcomes

The goal of this study was to examine initial levels and rates of change in the intensity and breadth of participation in organized activities during the adolescent years, and how these participation practices were related to youth outcomes in later adolescence. The main objectives were (a) to examine growth curves of intensity and breadth of participation from Grades 7 through 11 and their interrelations, and (b) to test the associations between these dimensions of participation and academic orientation, risky behaviors, internalizing problems, and civic development in Grade 11. A homogenous sample of 299 youth (mean age = 13.37, SD = .41; 62% girls) were surveyed annually using questionnaires and phone interviews. The main results revealed that (a) even though both intensity and breadth of participation decreased over time, intensity of participation showed steeper declines by later grades, and (b) initial levels of participation were better predictors of later outcomes than rates of change over time. Regardless of the levels of change taking place over time, results revealed that youth with high initial levels of participation (both intensity and breadth) were more committed to school and developed more positive values towards society by Grade 11 than those who participated less. This might suggest that a high level of participation during early-to-mid-adolescence is particularly important when it comes to later outcomes.     

Understanding the Association Between Maltreatment History and Adolescent Risk Behavior by Examining Popularity Motivations and Peer Group Control

The purpose of the present study was to examine how peer group processes of pressure and control and individual motivations for popularity would add to, and moderate the relationship between, childhood maltreatment and risky behavior in adolescence. A total of 1558 youth (804 girls) from three high schools in Ontario, Canada (M age = 15.02 years, SD = .86) reported on their alcohol use, delinquent behavior, childhood experiences of physical and emotional maltreatment and neglect, peer group processes involving control and individual popularity motivations. Regression analyses showed that, beyond the significant contributions of childhood maltreatment, peer group control predicted risky alcohol use and delinquent behavior. Peer group control and popularity motivations exacerbated the negative effect of physical maltreatment on delinquent behavior. Boys’ experiences of peer group control were more strongly linked to alcohol use and delinquent behavior than girls’. These results suggest that there is a significant window of opportunity during adolescence where the peer group context can exacerbate or buffer childhood experiences.

Multilevel Modeling of Direct Effects and Interactions of Peers,Parents, School,and Community Influences on Adolescent Substance Use

This study tested a social-ecological model of adolescent substance use. Multilevel modeling was used to investigate how systems, such as parents, peers, schools, and communities, directly influence and interact together to influence adolescent substance use. Participants included 14,548 (50.3% female) middle school students who were 78.6% White, 5.4% Biracial, 4.8% Asian, 4.8% Black, and 3.6% Hispanic. Participants completed a survey with scales assessing substance use, peer influences, parental influences, and characteristics of their school and community. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to consider the variation of parental and peer influences on substance use and how schools and communities relate to both substance use and the relationship between substance use and peer and parental factors. Results indicated that a positive school climate and a positive sense of community were associated with less adolescent substance use and that a positive sense of community moderated the relation between peer and parental influence on adolescent substance use, thereby acting as a protective factor.

Parental Smoking-specific Communication,Adolescents’ Smoking Behavior and Friendship Selection

In this study, we investigated whether parental smoking-specific communication is related to adolescents’ friendship-selection processes. Furthermore, we investigated whether adolescents and their best friends influence each other over time, and what role parents play in this process. In the present study we used data from the Family and Health project in which at baseline 428 full families participated. In this 2-year, three-wave longitudinal study data were available from fathers, mothers, early adolescents (aged M = 13.4 years, SD = .50), and middle adolescents (aged M = 15.2 years, SD = .60). The majority of the participating adolescents were of Dutch origin (>95%). There was an almost equal distribution of boys and girls, and adolescents with lower, middle, and higher educational levels were equally represented. Analyses were conducted by means of Structural Equation Modeling. Results demonstrate that a high quality of the smoking-specific communication is related to a lower likelihood of adolescent smoking, whereas the frequency is positively associated with adolescent smoking. Both the quality and frequency of parental smoking-specific communication were related to adolescents’ selective affiliation with (non-)smoking friends. The findings suggest that parental smoking-specific communication is associated with adolescent smoking directly but also indirectly by influencing the friends the adolescents will associate with.

“Victim Refuses to Cooperate”: A Focal Concerns Analysis of Victim Cooperation in Sexual Assault Cases

Research suggests that victim cooperation is a strong predictor of arrest and prosecution in sexual assault cases. Relatively little research has focused on identifying the factors that shape the decision to cooperate and the research that does exist is largely atheoretical. We address these gaps by examining victim cooperation using a revised version of the focal concerns perspective. We use data on cases reported to law enforcement agencies in Los Angeles to estimate models using factors situated within three victim focal concerns—crime seriousness, costs of cooperation, and likelihood of conviction—for three stages of the case process. We supplement these results with qualitative data from police reports regarding the reasons why victims refused to cooperate. The findings of this study provide initial support for the theoretical development of victim cooperation using the focal concerns perspective and provide potential guidance to criminal justice practitioners on how to increase victim cooperation.     

Study in blue: trauma,affect, event

As contemporary student activists in the United States embrace a vocabulary of trauma and microaggressions, some critics on the left consider this a depoliticizing move symptomatic of the university’s growing thralldom to neoliberalism. The author argues that such criticism neglects how talk of trauma and microaggressions attempts to affectively manage structural violence’s failure to manifest in the form of discrete, identifiable, and extraordinary events. To illustrate this, she turns to the poetry of Claudia Rankine and the performance art of Emma Sulkowicz as aesthetic treatments of racial microaggression and sexual trauma, respectively. Rankine’s and Sulkowicz’s works belong to an emergent genre the author calls the coincidence report, in which subjects with no proof of structural violence except for their own feelings must cope with what happens when an event doesn’t. Ultimately, both artists sideline attempts to reconstruct the event in favor of redistributing specific affects throughout their respective publics. In both cases, these affects are blue – that is, depressive (Rankine) and obscene (Sulkowicz). Subjects in the blue find themselves ambivalently attached to living politically in the shadow of an event even as they detach from the fantasy that political life is less disappointing, depressing, or deflating than it actually is.     

Food insecurity and ART adherence in Swaziland: the case for coordinated faith-based and multi-sectoral action

ABSTRACT

Faith-based organisations (FBOs) have long been involved in HIV and AIDS impact mitigation and humanitarian relief, but most are not equipped to intervene in the structural drivers of food insecurity and attendant health inequities. Acknowledging limitations is as paramount a task for organisational effectiveness as maximising strengths. This article reports findings from a study of HIV-positive care supporters who volunteer with a church-run home-based care organisation in Swaziland. The article seeks to assess the impact of chronic food insecurity on antiretroviral adherence practices and how these individuals manage daily food shortages. Findings highlight the limited capacities of FBOs in highly vulnerable settings and the imperative for international and governmental coordination.     

From rhetoric to reality: an NGO’s challenge for reaching the furthest behind

The guiding principle of Agenda 2030 is the commitment to “leave no one behind”. However, as the Millennium Development Goals experience has demonstrated, there remains a “rhetoric-implementation gap” where local stakeholders struggle to realistically respond to policies formulated at the global level. This article proposes a way forward for NGOs seeking to translate the rhetoric of Agenda 2030 into reality. It presents an integrated and multi-sectoral approach to meet the challenges of an NGO working to ameliorate the basic needs of women who are affected by HIV/AIDS and limited WaSH provisions in the impoverished rural community of Lyantonde, Uganda.