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Pour favoriser la participation des jeunes à la vie civique, il nous faut comprendre les facteurs individuels et contextuels qui déterminent leur engagement dans les domaines civique et politique. Cette étude illustre les rapports entre les caractéristiques personnelles des jeunes, le contexte proximal et national dans lequel ils évoluent et leur participation à la vie politique. L’article, qui utilise les données extraites d’une enquête effectuée auprès de 632 élèves de quatre lycées à forte diversité ethnique de la région parisienne, se fonde essentiellement sur celles provenant des 245 participants en âge de voter. Nous y examinons les facteurs relevant du contexte individuel, proximal et national susceptible d’influencer l’engagement des jeunes en utilisant trois indices de participation politique et civique : l’engagement dans des activités politiques, la participation à des mouvements sociaux et la participation non conventionnelle. Il ressort des résultats que les jeunes qui possèdent de plus grandes connaissances dans le domaine politique ont plus de chances de participer à des activités politiques conventionnelles. Les variations dans deux des trois indices s’expliquent aussi par le genre et l’appartenance ethnique. Le rapport étroit révélé entre les contextes de l’école et des pairs et chaque type d’engagement souligne l’importance de l’éducation civique, de l’efficacité collective à l’école et d’un climat de classe ouvert favorisant la discussion dans la promotion de la participation politique des jeunes adultes. To encourage youth’s involvement in civic life, we need to understand the individual and contextual factors that shape their involvement with civic and political issues. This study illustrates how youths’ individual characteristics and their interactions with proximal and national contexts relate to their participation in political life. Using survey data collected from 632 students from four ethnically diverse high schools in the Paris region, this paper focuses on data from 245 participants who were of voting age. We examine individual, proximal, and national context factors that may affect youth’s involvement using three indices of political and civic engagement: Commitment to Political Activities, Social Movement Participation, and Unconventional Participation. Results showed that youth with greater political knowledge were more likely to engage in Conventional Political Activities. Gender and race/ethnicity also explained some variation in two of the three indices. School and peer contexts were strongly related to each type of engagement, underscoring the importance of citizenship education, collective school efficacy, and open classroom climate for discussion in promoting young adults’ political participation.

Overview: A recent evaluation of children who had participated in the Parent-Child Home Program (PCHP) as toddlers found that at kindergarten age, these children were performing at levels expected for their age, despite the fact that they had multiple factors putting them at risk for school failure. The Study: In the winter and spring of 2002, 135 kindergartners in five Long Island school districts received a battery of tests focusing on 2 interrelated areas of school readiness: social-emotional skills such as the ability to follow teachers' directions and early literacy skills such as knowledge about books and about the alphabet. In addition, keeping in mind the recommendation of the National Education Goals Panel with regard to school readiness, parents were interviewed about their participation in and support of children's learning at home and at school. Children who had participated in PCHP at ages 2 and 3 were compared, at kindergarten age, with classmates who had not been in the program. Preliminary...

The development of ethnic identity is a critical facet of adolescence, particularly for adolescents of color. In order to examine the developmental trajectory of ethnic identity, African American, Latino American, and European American early and middle adolescents (N 420) were assessed over 3 years. Two components of ethnic identity were assessed—group-esteem was found to rise for both early and middle adolescents; exploration rose for middle adolescents. African Americans and Latino Americans were lower in group-esteem but have greater increases than European Americans, particularly across a school transition. The course of ethnic identity development during early and middle adolescence, the role of school context, and the variability in developmental trajectories among racial and ethnic groups are discussed. With the rapid changes in the racial and ethnic composition of our nation, understanding ethnic identity development has gained increasing theoretical, empirical, and practical salience. With each passing year, the number of children of color grows, and they will eventually outnumber European American children, thus necessar- ily making issues relating to the development of children of color central themes in psychology. The social origins of the ethnic identity development literature date back to Clark and Clark's (1950) research examining racial preference with young African American children. Through judicial decision making, these clas- sic studies had a far-reaching impact on society in terms of the desegregation of public schools. In part, this early empirical work on young children stimulated the development of theories of ethnic identity development. Theoretically, many forms of identity, including ethnic identity, become especially salient during adolescence. Yet, surprisingly, the research examining these theories has been primarily cross- sectional and has only recently focused on early or middle ado- lescents. In addition, these theories of ethnic identity development have not been subject to rigorous empirical test. The present study furthers researchers' understanding of ethnic identity development by examining the developmental trajectories of two major dimen- sions of ethnic identity: group-esteem (or regard) and exploration (or search). These two dimensions are examined over a 3-year period during early and middle adolescence for African Ameri- cans, Latino Americans, and European Americans. But first, the- ories of identity development and ethnic and racial identity devel- opment are reviewed and examined.

This study explored the role of perceived family transactions of daily hassles, social support, and involvement with family in leisure activities in a sample of racially and ethnically diverse urban adolescents living in poverty as they made the transition to junior high school. Adolescents who perceived fewer daily hassles and more involvement with their families prior to the transition to junior high school appeared less vulnerable to declines in scores of self-esteem. In addition, adolescents who perceived fewer daily hassles also appeared to have fewer declines in preparedness for class. Social support moderated the effect of daily hassles on preparation for class: Under conditions of high hassles and high support, adolescents were most vulnerable to decrements in class preparation, whereas adolescents who perceived low hassles and high support were highest in class preparation. Implications for further research and interventions are discussed.

The transition to high school may serve as a race/ethnicity consciousness-raising experience that stimulates the development of one’s racial/ethnic identity depending on newcomers’ racial/ethnic congruence with the student body and staff, as well as their perceived social transactions with the new school. The nature of this development was tested within samples of poor, urban, Black, White, and Latino students (n = 144). Racial/ethnic identity (group-esteem and exploration) and perceived transactions with school (academic hassles, participation, and social support) were assessed at the end of both the year prior to the transition and the transition year. The results suggested that changes over the transition to senior high school served as a race/ethnicity consciousness-raising experience for both Black and European American students but in dramatically different ways.

This research extends previous work that identified groups of youth characterized by profiles of perceived family and peer transactions. Predictions derived from self-enhancement and self-consistency theories concerning how such transactions might relate to self-esteem in a diverse sample of early adolescents (N = 635) were investigated. Both theories indicate independent contributions of family and peer transactions to self-esteem. The theories differ, however, with regard to implications for how the two microsystems might interrelate in their linkages with self-esteem, with self-enhancement theory implying a moderational model and self-consistency theory a mediational model. As predicted, family and peer profiles each made independent contributions to the prediction of self-esteem. Consistent with self-consistency theory, the relations of family transactions to self-esteem were mediated in part by their associations with peer transactions, with particularly strong linkages evident between qualitatively similar profiles of family and peer experiences. Support for a moderational model, however, was not found.

Examined the effects of the normative school transition to senior high school (n = 330) on the self-system and perceived school and peer social contexts of poor, black (n = 83), European American (n = 115), Latino (n = 105), and Asian American (n = 27) youth in the public school systems of three Eastern urban cities. The only negative effect of the school transition on the self-system was a decline in grade point average (GPA). Concurrently, the school transition was perceived to be associated with changes in the school and peer contexts. Across the transition, students reported increased disengagement from school (i.e., increased social support and extracurricular involvement) and increased engagement with peers (i.e., decreased daily hassles and increased involvement). These changes in the school and peer microsystems, like the changes in the self-system, were also common across race/ethnicity and gender. In addition, transition-associated school changes, and in particular changes in daily academic demands/hassles and involvement in school activities, were associated with changes in the academic dimensions of the self-system (i.e., academic efficacy expectations and GPA). Results and implications for preventive intervention are discussed within a developmental mismatch framework.

The authors develop and validate multidimensional and contextual profiles of competence among low-income, urban, middle adolescents (N = 560). The assessment of contextual competence was based on youth self-reports of involvement, performance, and relationship quality in the peer, school, athletic, employment, religious, and cultural contexts. A principal components analysis of these engagement indices revealed the six expected components with the addition of a component labeled “self-in-context.” To identify holistic, multidimensional profiles of contextual competence, scores along the seven domains were cluster analyzed. Nine clusters emerged, each representing a distinct constellation of youth experience. Profiles were associated with demographic variables and youth adjustment. Profiles reflecting high engagement in two or more contexts predicted higher self-esteem and lower depression. In contrast, profiles marked by high engagement in the contexts of athletics or employment predicted more serious delinquency. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for future research and intervention.

In this chapter, we summarize the literature of patterns of both normative and problematic development among racial and ethnic minority adolescents. Our purpose is not only to present what is known, but also to highlight the gaps in our knowledge base, in order to underline areas that need further investigation. As we began to write, our original intention was to avoid the usual Whiteminority comparison by restricting the choice of any comparative studies for this review to those that focus on understudied groups. However, this strategy proved too limiting.

This study explored the effects of structural and experiential neighborhood factors and developmental stage on antisocial behavior, among a sample of poor urban adolescents in New York City. Conceptually and empirically distinct profiles of neighborhood experience were derived from the data, based on measures of perceived neighborhood cohesion, poverty-related hassles, and involvement in neighborhood organizations and activities. Both the profiles of neighborhood experience and a measure of census-tract-level neighborhood hazard (poverty and violence) showed relationships to antisocial behavior. Contrary to expectation, higher levels of antisocial behavior were reported among adolescents residing in moderate-structural-risk neighborhoods than those in high-structural-risk neighborhoods. This effect held only for teens in middle (not early) adolescence and was stronger for teens perceiving their neighborhoods as hassling than for those who did not. Implications for future research and preventive intervention are discussed.

Developed and validated instruments for urban and culturally diverse adolescents to assess their self-reported transactions with family, peer, school, and neighborhood microsystems for the constructs of social support, daily hassles, and involvement. The sample of 998 youth were from schools in three Eastern cities with high percentages of economically disadvantaged youth. Data were collected before and after the transition to junior high school or to senior high school. Blacks constituted 26%, whites 26%, and Latinos 37% of the sample. Factor analyses confirmed and enhanced the hypothesized four-factor microsystem factor structure for support, hassles, and involvement; internal consistency and stability coefficients were consistent with these structures. In general, the microsystem factors were common across gender, ethnicity, and age. However, when group differences did occur on these demographic variables, they tended to validate the salience of microsystem specificity. In contrast to the total scores, the microsystem-specific factors yielded more meaningful and differential information with regard to demographic differences and the mediating processes across a school transition.

This study examined the effects of the normative school transition (n = 580) during early adolescence on the self-system and perceived school and peer social contexts of poor, black (n = 161), white (n = 146), and Latino (n = 273) youth in the public school systems of 3 eastern urban cities. The results revealed negative effects of the school transition on the affective and behavioral domains of the self-system. These declines in self-esteem, class preparation, and grade-point average (GPA) were common across race/ethnicity and gender. Concurrently, the school transition was perceived to be associated with changes in the school and peer contexts. Daily hassles with the school increased, while social support and extracurricular involvement decreased over the transition. Daily hassles with peers decreased, and peer values were perceived as more antisocial. These changes in the school and peer microsystems were also common across race/ethnicity and gender. In addition, transition-associated school and peer changes and, in particular, changes in daily hassles with the school were associated with changes in the academic dimensions of the self-system, that is, academic efficacy expectations, class preparation, and GPA. The results are discussed within a developmental mismatch framework.

Comparative analysis of American race riots and homicides during the 1960s shows that the presence of large percentages of non-Whites and people living in structural poverty increased the chances of cities' having both collective (race riots) and individual (homicides) violence. Cities in the South had a greater chance of having relatively serious homicide activity than did other U.S. cities but a lesser chance of having serious race riot activity. The relative risk of individual (homicide) versus less individualistic (race riot) response to structural poverty is interpreted from a multidimensional perspective that treats both riots and homicide as examples of violent coping mechanisms. These mechanisms form one axis of a three-dimensional representation of community coping mechanisms: violent/non-violent, symptom focused/cause focused, and collective/individual. Several authors (e.g., Ball-Rokeach & Short, 1986; Spilerman, 1976) have argued that the differential incidence of riots in the South and in the rest of the country during the sixties should be interpreted in terms of the relative repressiveness and unresponsiveness of city governments in the South. Our findings suggest that repressiveness and unresponsiveness may be conducive to the development of coping mechanisms in communities that define and resolve problems at the individual level. The ironic consequences of such cultural adaptation are discussed.

Twenty-three boys and girls with cancer, ages 5-10, were matched with a comparison group of healthy children. They were administered measures of cognitive development, adjustment, and humor. Few differences were found between ill and well children across a broad array of measures. Ill children were found to have lower scores on two measures of cognition, and more frequently rated a cartoon funny when they did not understand the joke. The generally comparable performances of ill and well children were interpreted as a manifestation of healthy denial among the ill group. Age and health group interactions offered evidence of the effects of age as a moderating variable in the relationship between a stressor and its impact.

There are alarming parallels between black women's position in American society and their place in social science research and literature. Black women have gone largely ignored by scholars who speculate upon or investigate ways to prevent psychological disorder. And black women are largely ignored by policy analysts who assess the impact of high rates of unemployment on society. They are largely overlooked by researchers who evaluate the impact of unemployment on its victims, as well. The unemployment of women in general, but most especially, the unemployment of black women, has not been considered a social problem. Two political and curricular efforts that might have been great sources of support for black women have not always come through. The Civil Rights movement and its academic counterpart, Black Studies, have focused largely on the problems and concerns of black men. The Women's Liberation Movement and its counterpart in the academy, Women's Studies, have been for and about white women. An informa...