Conflicting findings exist regarding (1) whether anxiety sensitivity (AS) is a construct distinct from anxiety in children and (2) the specific nature of the role of AS in child anxiety. This study uses meta-analytic techniques to (1) determine whether youth (ages 6-18 years) have been reported to experience AS, (2) examine whether AS differentiates anxiety disordered youth from youth without d...

African American youth from single mother homes are at greater risk for internalizing and externalizing problems relative to their peers from two-parent homes. Although the predominance of psychosocial research on these youth has focused on maternal parenting and mother-child relationship quality, far less attention has been devoted to the quality of the relationships that youth have with "nonm...

Little is known about what additional services youth receive while they reside in out-of-home treatment settings. However, such information may be crucial for explaining effectiveness and variation in outcomes for youth in such settings. Our research examines patterns of multi-sector service use for youth in two settings— Therapeutic Foster Care and group homes. Data come from in-person intervi...

OBJECTIVE To describe the quality of life (QoL) of parents of youth with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and examine youth disease activity (DA) and youth QoL as predictors of parent QoL. METHODS Forty-nine youth with IBD (ages 10-18) and a parent completed measures of demographics, parent QoL, and youth QoL. Youth DA ratings were obtained from medical records. RESULTS Parental QoL was hig...

Recent research suggests that a youth development framework emphasizing youth assets may be a promising intervention strategy for preventing adolescent risk behaviors. Understanding how neighborhood and community resources relate to youth assets may aid in identifying environmental strategies to complement individually oriented asset-building interventions. In this study, 1,350 randomly selecte...

ANNALS, AAPSS, 624, July 2009 Using qualitative in-depth interviews with a sample of adult male youth workers (n = 55), including a subset of twenty-nine fathers, the author explores how men’s fathering and youth experiences can be viewed as part of a larger, integrated social mosaic. Informed selectively by social constructionist, symbolic interactionist, life course, and generativity themes, ...

In the field of positive youth development programs, "empowerment" is used interchangeably with youth activism, leadership, civic participation and self-efficacy. However, few studies have captured what empowerment means to young people in diverse contexts. This article explores how youth define and experience empowerment in youth-led organizations characterized by social justice goals: high sc...

The goals of youth mentoring have broadened from redressing youth problems to promoting positive youth development. Yet, many of the principles associated with contemporary conceptualizations of development found in the positive youth development (PYD) and community psychology (CP) literature have yet to be fully integrated into mentoring research and practice. These approaches place greater em...

INTRODUCTION This paper reports a mental health assessment of 60 homeless youth. Our study explored the mental health needs of youth accessing an overnight youth shelter (maximum stay 8 weeks). METHODS Participants completed an interview (45 to 120 minutes in duration) using one demographic form and one of two standardized questionnaires (Youth Self Report, Adult Self Report). Questions asses...

This study prospectively examines the effects of maternal and child HIV infection on youth penetrative and unprotected penetrative sex, as well as the role of internal contextual, external contextual, social and self-regulatory factors in influencing the sexual behaviors of HIV-infected (PHIV+), HIV-affected (uninfected with an HIV+ caregiver), and HIV unaffected (uninfected with an HIV- caregi...