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Prior research has found that persistently delinquent youth or more violent youth were less popular than their less delinquent peers [Young, Jacob T. N. 2014. "'Role Magnets'? An Empirical Investigation of Popularity Trajectories for Life-Course Persistent Individuals During Adolescence." Journal of Youth and Adolescence 43 (1): 104-115]. However, recent research has also found that weapon carrying is associated with being more popular in adolescence [Dijkstra, Jan Kornelis, Siegwart Lindenberg, René Veenstra, Christian Steglich, Jenny Isaacs, Noel A. Card, and Ernest V. E. Hodges. 2010. "Influence and Selection Processes in Weapon Carrying During Adolescence: The Roles of Status, Aggression, and Vulnerability." Criminology 48 (1): 187-220]. The present paper examines the perceived popularity of adolescents who carry weapons in comparison to those who both carry and use weapons in acts of violence or threatened violence. Data consist of two waves from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Analyses use OLS regression with lagged predictors. This paper found no differences in number of friends between weapon carriers and weapon users. However, among both male and female gang members, those who did not use or carry weapons (abstainers) named significantly fewer friends than weapon users. Among females, weapon abstainers both named and were named by significantly more people than weapon users. These differences were not observed for males. Implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Middle-class young adults in the United States increasingly face insecurity around social class. This situation is especially fraught for women, whose economic and social gains are still not equal to men's. Using interviews with 20 heterosexual- and LGBTQ-identified women from middle-class backgrounds, this paper investigates the gendered and classed messages in women's communications with friends and family regarding romantic intimacy choices. Women's accounts suggest that family and friends monitor their choices in the interest of protecting class privilege. However, classed messages sometimes conflict with gendered expectations, creating ambiguity for women. Women's accounts also illustrate the importance of heteronormativity to the classed project of adult womanhood, posing a dilemma for LGBTQ women in particular. Despite increased individualization in Western society, women's accounts suggest continued influence from friends and family in the interest of upholding class and heteronormative gender privilege among middle-class women. However, this classed project ultimately comes at the expense of limiting women's intimacy options and maintaining class inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Descriptions of charter schools as militaristic 'boot camps' continue to animate popular discourses. Recently, the upper echelons of the charter school sector, commonly known as Charter School Management Organizations (CMOs), have come under intense scrutiny for their controversial 'no excuses' disciplinary practices. These socialization practices are regarded as investments whereby students are expected to become both adept test takers and 'good', 'disciplined' aspirational citizens. As most 'no excuses' (NE) charter schools operate within segregated, low-income urban communities in the U.S., it can be argued that these schools function as vehicles for behavioral scrutiny and bodily surveillance shaping the lives and subjectivities of economically disadvantaged students of color. A curriculum focused on body control raises significant ethical questions regarding the educative practices for low-income children of color in the United States' divided society. Drawing on discourse analysis, this paper focuses on bodily control portrayed in key texts (handbooks, videos, etc) used by some charter schools before drawing on Bourdieu's tool of habitus to show how a codified corporeal curriculum may work in CMOs, where bodily control is deemed a prerequisite for academic excellence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades, youth organizing has emerged as an important strategy for social change, particularly within education policy; however, the ability of youth to influence policy is limited by the tendency of adults in positions of power to find reasons to distrust, discredit, or otherwise ignore them. This paper draws on interviews with 31 adult civic leaders in one American city to discern their views on a particular youth organizing group, Philadelphia Student Union (PSU), and to uncover the grounds on which they either dismiss or defend its work. Findings show that the tendency to doubt or deny the voices of youth organizers is not concentrated within any one institutional setting; that the most common reason for doubting or distrusting SFE's work is the belief that adult organizers manipulate the youth members; and that every reason adults offer to dismiss the youth organizers can be matched by a different reason other adults give to defend them, their work, and their place in the policy sphere. Implications for youth organizing groups, their adult allies, policy-makers, and the field are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In popular and policy framings in the USA, traffic accidents and fatalities involving teens are typically treated as having their own facticity. Much like other social phenomenon, teen driving accidents are regarded as though they are part of an objective reality external to a set of ideational or discursive processes and social organization of knowledge. Treated as such, teen driving accidents and fatalities are uncritically classified, counted, and compared with rates of accidents and fatalities among other groups of drivers with the purpose to direct public policy decisions and give authority to specific legislative agendas. Examining the rhetorical practices through which an event or an object appears as a factual given, 'as if' belonging to an objective and unproblematic reality, this paper examines how teen driving and the teen driver are social created through a public problems discourse, fueling panic among parents, policy officials and legislators, educators, and risk and safety experts. Significant consideration is given to the uses and misuses of statistics about teens and driving in various media outlets and by various claims-makers in the construction of teen driving as a public drama with specific policy and legislative outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exploration of young people's environmental transactions and their strategies for negotiating the urban environment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, reveals the implications of the post-industrial landscapes of gentrification and disinvestment, informal economies, and current public policy and discourses for the public spaces adolescents traverse everyday and the private spaces of their mental lives. In order to explore young people's understanding of their neighbourhood, their experiences in it, and their construction of self, I have developed the concept of 'street literacy'. Street literacy is a conceptual framework that describes the dynamic processes of experiential knowledge production and self-construction in a specified context, public urban space. This paper, theorizes how the environment, and in particular, the street, is a significant context for learning. The discussion will report on findings from work with junior high school students and their final collaborative research enterprise, the 'Streetwise Guide to the Lower East Side by Teenagers for Teenagers'. Analysis will focus on the contradictory nature of teenagers' 'Rules to the Neighbourhood' and consider the social and psychological repercussions for street literate young people, who have mastered the skills of survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common theme in the literature on care-giving is the issue of "hidden" carers, that is, people who undertake caring roles and responsibilities, yet do not identify themselves as carers. One reason people do not recognise themselves as carers relates to the nature of the caring relationship. When providing care for a family member, intra-familial bonds of love and reciprocity do not encourage parties to view the relationship as anything other than a "normal" familial relationship. The lack of self-identification amongst young carers is complicated further by societal norms surrounding care-giving. Whereas adults are expected to provide care to other adults and children, young people are not expected to be care-givers but rather care recipients. As a result, many young carers remain "hidden" and beyond the reach of services and supports designed to help them in their caring role. This paper draws on qualitative research with young carers and service providers to explore the issue of self-identification amongst young carers. The paper concludes with recommendations for identifying and supporting hidden young carers. (Contains 6 notes.)

Despite a growing concern about gangs in Britain, academic research that focuses on gangs remains scarce. Drawing on data from the ESRC-funded ethnographic research YOGEC (Youth Gangs in an English City) project, this paper explores the negotiation of space and place by young people living in inner-city areas affected by gangs. Using a combination of fieldwork observations and focus group and interview data, this paper charts the experiences of non-gang-involved young people living in known gang areas. These young people's restricted use of space, arising as a result of gang rivalries and the policing of inner-city areas, results in exclusion, marginalization and victimization. We illustrate how young people are identified as "high risk", and how they continually negotiate a range of risks bound up with the territory that they inhabit and subsequent spatial boundaries that are formed. In doing so, we provide an understanding of the lives of young people who reside in places and spaces inhabited by gangs. (Contains 10 notes.)

Child welfare service providers in the United States are increasingly acknowledging the importance of engaging youth with foster care experience in case planning, policy advocacy, and practice change. However, evidence for how to do this well is still quite limited. This study aims to answer two research questions: a) How do youth and staff/professionals define/conceptualize authentic youth engagement (AYE)? and b) What are youths' and staff/professionals' recommended strategies for authentically engaging youth? Thirty stakeholder interviews (15 youth, 15 staff/professionals) and 81 surveys (46 youth, 35 staff/professionals) were completed. Four themes emerged regarding conceptualizations of authentic youth engagement, while three themes emerged regarding recommendations for authentically engaging youth. These perspectives offer valuable insight into overcoming barriers related to authentically engaging youth in service provision, policy, and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the developmental theories of life course and emerging adulthood, the current study examines a central question about the diversity of trajectories among young adults who drop out of college. The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) provides prospective data on a nationally representative sample of US young adults. Our subsamples include young adults who dropped out of college (N = 1,530) and those who obtained a bachelor’s degree (N = 1,977). We examined five dimensions of well-being: socio-economic success indicators, happiness/satisfaction, mastery, stress, and depression. Using latent class analysis, five classes of young adults who dropped out emerged that reflected variability in the patterns of well-being. Differences in socio-economic and mental health dimensions are elaborated in the study. The findings from this study provide valuable basis for challenging stereotypes about the college student dropout population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ‘code of the street’ is a theoretical framework concerning violent interaction. Its enactment on the street can be seen as illustrating a hegemonic masculinity. The typical setting where the code is pervasive is in disadvantaged urban communities. Those in thrall to the code's localised retaliatory edicts are usually young working-class males. Understandably, given the code's origins in the US ghetto, it is a US criminological research tradition which has stimulated the terms of this framework. Although European scholars have pursued theorising violence by recourse to the code, Scotland has not been studied, and the qualitative study reported here aims to remedy this. Based on these data, a behavioural code is evident in Scotland sharing characteristics with Anderson's original contribution, despite differences in terms of chronology and cultural setting. The study contributes to our knowledge of the life histories and personal theorisations of young offenders whose trajectories are arguably entrapped by forms of retaliatory justice and performances of a ‘protest’ type of marginalised masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Factors related to gambling behavior among college students in the USA are examined by applying the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and incorporating the concepts of impulsivity and cognitive bias. This study uses a broader approach to analyze gambling behavior by including financial behavior variables using ordinary least squares (OLS) and logistic regressions. The survey data were collected through a self-administered online questionnaire of college students from 19 colleges and universities in the fall of 2010. With a sample of 5024 college students, a majority of the respondents (84.45%) in this study report that they did not gamble in the last 30 days. The results of multivariate analysis indicate that gambling is related to attitudes toward gambling, cognitive bias toward gambling, subjective norms of family members regarding financial behavior, and impulsivity. Underestimation of financial behavior (cognitive bias toward financial behavior) was found to be associated with only gambling frequency but not gambling propensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are currently over 8 million children in the USA living in households where at least one parent is dependent on or abusing substances. Research has shown a link between parental substance use and children initiating substance use. This article uses qualitative data to give a contextual understanding of the experience of growing up in substance using homes. Results found that the habitus of homes was so immersed in substances that children's initiation into substance use was expected and became a ‘rite of passage’ into full acceptance as an adult member of the family. Furthermore, in many cases youth described a role reversal between child and parent roles or parentification in the family. The conclusion calls for early identification in treatment of youth who use substances with family members to target new norms and behaviors for the entire family posttreatment and to enhance successful recovery when returning to the family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

College drinking and its adverse consequences on students' health and safety are important public health concerns in the USA. Thus far, there is little attention on exploring and addressing the cultural dimensions of college drinking. This study examines the construction of meaning of drinking among students to understand their perspectives of the college drinking culture. From an analysis of a purposive sample of 232 US college newspaper articles covering alcohol-related news and associated readers’ responses, the study identified five major insights in the cultural meanings of college drinking: (1) drinking is central to the US college experience although this can and should change; (2) drinking has significant social and functional meanings to students' identities; (3) heavy drinking derives from a culture of risk taking; (4) college drinking is highly scripted and ritualized; and (5) various social motives drive students' drinking. The first implication for practice and research of college drinking prevention is that a cultural lens viewing drinking as socially and developmentally meaningful may contribute toward theorizing why students continue to drink heavily despite decades of multi-level interventions. Second, approaches that respect and incorporate students' meaning making of drinking may be hypothesized as viable and effective alternatives to existing interventions for reducing risky drinking behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the aftermath of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraqi civilians have witnessed their country descend into profound and often deadly chaos. HNK and Aunt Najma are two young voices from post-Saddam, post-invasion Iraq who write www-based diaries (blogs) on life in post-invasion Iraq. Through their voices, and via the voices of many other Iraqi bloggers, different fragments of the reality of post-invasion Iraq enter the globalised, unruly, digital spaces of cyberspace and create not only accounts of these realities, but what we will call digital selves. We will identify and discuss the selves that HNK and Aunt Najma practise via the use of Michel Foucault's later work on the care of the self and governmentality; and we suggest that HNK and Aunt Najma's digital diaries (blogs) provide a real-time, unfolding, reflexive, and often interactive window into particular life-worlds in post-invasion Iraq, life-worlds that provide glimpses into what it means to grow up female in post-Saddam Iraq. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examine the relationships among types of loneliness, empathy, coping skills, and self-esteem among a sample of high risk adolescents enrolled in an alternative high school in the United States (N = 75; 43 male and 32 female; mean age, 17 years). Results of two forward-selection multiple regression analyses with intimate loneliness and social loneliness serving as criterion variables, and with self-esteem, empathy, perspective taking, and five types of coping serving as predictor variables, revealed that low self-esteem and low social coping significantly predicted high intimate and high social loneliness. Low emotional coping also significantly predicted high intimate loneliness but not high social loneliness. Implications for intervention and research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]