Magister Artium - MA / A favourable school atmosphere, in which adolescents behave positively, is one of the greatest concerns for teachers, administrators and parents. Although there are several different pressures leading to adolescent misbehaviour at school, the most contributing factors are peer pressure and the socio-economic status of the school. As adolescents enter the school, the peer group then functions as an important socializing agent for them. As peers socialize within their different school environments, individuals are forced to conform to the practices and opinions of the group. Usually this conformity is unconstructive and clashes with the parents' and teachers' expectations. The aim of this study was to examine the influence of peer pressure on adolescent misbehaviour in advantaged and disadvantaged schools. A quantitative methodological approach was used to conduct the study. The study was conducted with adolescents aged from 13 to 17 years in both advantaged and disadvantaged secondary (high) schools in Windhoek, Namibia. A sample of 300 participants was randomly stratified across the schools. The Exposure to Peer Pressure Control Scale (Allen & Yen, 2002) a) and Child Behaviour Checklist questionnaires (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1987) were used to collect the data. Ethical considerations were carefully considered before and during the research procedure of data collection. The reliability of the instruments was checked by means of a pilot study. The data was analysed by means of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 18 to reveal descriptive and inferential statistics. Results showed a significant positive relationship between peer pressure and adolescent misbehaviour in schools. In addition, misbehaviour was also positively predicted in both advantaged and disadvantaged schools, with disadvantaged schools being significantly more influential. When comparing peer pressure and adolescent misbehaviours in both advantaged and disadvantaged schools, adolescents in advantaged schools engaged significantly more in misbehaviour activities and also responded positively more to peer pressure than their counterparts in advantaged schools. Implications for further research were suggested. / South Africa

Masters of Art / Globally, teenage pregnancy remains a disturbing phenomenon which impacts on the lives of teenagers, their families and society as a whole. Numerous attempts at addressing the problem have seen a decline in fertility rates but agreement still exists that the incidence of young girls bearing children is unacceptably high. Studies conducted over the years have emphasised both the causes and consequences of teenage births. Many studies too have explored the benefits of preventative strategies. Yet, despite all this, teenage pregnancy remains a cause for concern with many teenage girls remaining sexually active after a first pregnancy, and exposing themselves to subsequent pregnancies and births. This study was focused on teenage girls who had experienced unintended repeat pregnancies. Through the research a deeper understanding of the meanings that female teenagers ascribe to repeat pregnancies, were sought. A sample group of teenage mothers were allowed to take a step back from their experience of the repeat pregnancy; to think deeply about the experience, and to reflect on what they had learnt and how it has impacted on their current lives. The researcher employed a qualitative approach with a descriptive, explorative design in order to obtain a rich description of the experiences of teenage mothers who have been through a repeat pregnancy. The goal of the study was to explore and describe the reflections of these teenage mothers who had experienced unintended, repeat pregnancies. Data was obtained through semi-structured individual interviews where an interview guide was used. The data was analysed according to the steps outlined by Creswell (2009). Findings were noted and recommendations made. These recommendations are designed for role-players involved with teenagers and youth in general. Emphasis was placed on recommendations to professionals, like educators, healthcare workers and social workers who are at the coalface of dealing with teenagers who engage in sexual activity. Finally, recommendations for further research were made.

This study examined links between adolescent depressive symptoms, actual pubertal development, perceived pubertal timing relative to one’s peers, adolescent-maternal relationship satisfaction, and couple sexual behavior. Assessments of these variables were made on each couple member separately and then these variables were used to predict the sexual activity of the couple. Participants were drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health; Bearman et al., 1997; Udry, 1997) data set (N = 20,088; aged 12-18 years). Dimensions of adolescent romantic experiences using the total sample were described and then a subsample of romantically paired adolescents (n = 1,252) were used to test a risk and protective model for predicting couple sexual behavior using the factors noted above. Relevant measures from the Wave 1 Add Health measures were used. Most of the items used in Add Health to assess romantic relationship experiences, adolescent depressive symptoms, pubertal development (actual and perceived), adolescent-maternal relationship satisfaction, and couple sexual behavior were drawn from other national surveys or from scales with well documented psychometric properties. Results demonstrated that romantic relationships are part of most adolescents’ lives and that adolescents’ experiences with these relationships differ markedly by age, sex, and race/ethnicity. Further, each respective couple member’s pubertal development, perceived pubertal timing, and maternal relationship satisfaction were useful in predicting sexual risk-promoting and risk-reducing behaviors in adolescent romantic couples. Findings in this dissertation represent an initial step toward evaluating explanatory models of adolescent couple sexual behavior.

Stress in sport is complex and can lead to a number of undesirable consequences such as burnout, performance difficulties, interpersonal problems, and injury. Lazarus’s (1991, 1999) Cognitive-Motivational-Relational model holds that stress is best understood as a transactional relationship between a person and their environment. Stress is a process which is influenced by appraisals and coping. Appraisals are influenced by personal factors as well as environmental demands and the availability of external resources. Coping involves constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage the perceived external and internal demands of a stressful situation (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). The present study examined how appraisal processes mediated (or were possibly moderated by) the effects of social anxiety and perceptions of teammate social support on how high school female soccer players thought they would cope with a hypothetical interpersonal stressor. The study also examined simple relationships among variables. The participants were 181 female high school soccer players from Greater Vancouver. The athletes first completed two questionnaires designed to measure social anxiety (Interaction Anxiousness Scale; Leary, 1983a) and perceived social support from teammates (modified Social Provisions Scale; Weiss, 1974). After reading the scenario, the athletes indicated their appraisal of threat and challenge (Stress Appraisal Measure; Peacock & Wong, 1990) and how they thought they would cope (Coping Functions Questionnaire; Kowalski & Crocker, 2001). . The initial findings indicated that challenge appraisals were moderately correlated with both emotion-focused (r = .41) and problem-focused coping (r = .51), whereas threat had a weak association with avoidance coping (r = .19). Using mediation analysis, the results indicated that challenge fully mediated the relationship between social support and emotion-focused coping, and partially mediated the relationship between social support and problem-focused coping. Threat appraisals mediated the relationship between social anxiety and avoidance coping. Contrary to hypotheses, there was no evidence that social anxiety or threat were related to emotion-focused coping. There was also no support that person variables (social anxiety, social support) moderated the effects of appraisal on coping. The findings suggest that challenge appraisals and social support were key predictors of coping with interpersonal stress in this population. / Education, Faculty of / Kinesiology, School of / Graduate

The purpose of this study was to examine the types of pressures adolescents experience. The factors of age and/or gender were also investigated in order to determine any possible effects upon adolescent experienced pressures. The researcher believed that findings from such a study could be useful to high school counsellors in both planning future Guidance programs for adolescents as well as aiding in individual counselling sessions with their adolescent clients. Using a cluster-sampling technique, 505 adolescents were selected from a Vancouver high school. Subjects were chosen with consideration to the factors of age and gender. The researcher designed an open-form measurement instrument intended to gather adolescent responses to the three greatest pressures they had experienced during the previous four months. Following a pilot of the instrument, which was to aid in determining construct validity, the survey was administered to the sample over an eight day testing period. With the initial help of an assistant, responses were content analyzed and initial categories constructed. All responses were coded and assigned a frequency score to one of eleven mutually exclusive categories. The chi-square "Goodness of Fit" test for significant difference between or among groups was then applied. Results of the statistical analysis indicated that the factors of age and/or gender are related to certain types of pressures experienced by adolescents. Future Pressure was found to be a significant pressure experienced by older age adolescents. Regardless of gender, age appears to be an important factor related to who will experience Future Pressure. Female adolescents experience greater Family Pressure than do males. Whether within the same age group or within a total female and. a total male population comparison, this result remains consistent. Younger age adolescents also indicate greater gender differences compared with older age adolescents. Younger age female adolescents are more likely to experience greater Family Pressure and Peer Pressure while young male adolescents are more likely to experience greater Situational Pressure. In conclusion, it appears that significant gender differences found in this study tend to support the notion that differences in the rate of physical growth as well as learned sexual stereotypes are significant factors in determining such differences. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

The following thesis takes as its data transcripts that were made from tape-recordings of several group therapy sessions between a therapist and five "problem" students. Portions of the transcripts are analysed with reference to the properties of specific units of speech, such as the properties of lists or the properties of categories, with a major emphasis on examining the social and organizational features that surround the interaction, and upon which the utterances are built, in an effort to discover the facilities that persons have available to them for making sense out of those utterances. An attempt is made to show that (a) by reference to such units of speech, conversations between adolescents can be made intelligible and that (b) an analysis of such things is capable of explaining the interactional resources that adolescents must rely on when speaking with one another and with adults, without the use of classical childhood socialization notions. The major issues given special attention are (1) occupational subclasses and the importance that they have with respect to the socialization process and, (2) the incumbency problems that adolescents have as a result of adult socialization notions. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

The Adolescent Discouragement Indicator (ADI) was developed to assess the Adlerian construct of discouragement. The 75-item ADI contains five subscales corresponding to the five life tasks specified in Individual Psychology and is specifically designed to pinpoint the area and degree of adolescent discouragement. Item selection was based on ratings by five prominent Adlerians and item correlation with subscale scores. Age and sex norms for the ADI were established on 225 females and 299 males 12 to 18 years of age. Findings indicate that female adolescents are less discouraged than male adolescents on all scales except the love scale and both sexes reported the least amount of discouragment on the love scale. The only significant difference among the age groups is between the 13-year-olds and the 15, 16, and 17-year-olds on the love scale. An internal consistency coefficient of .95, a 2-week test-retest coefficient of .89, and a 4-week test-retest coefficient of .92 indicates that the ADI is a reliable instrument. Negative and significant (p < .001) correlations between the ADI and Social Interest Index (Greever, Tseng, & Friedland, 1973) and between the ADI and the Social Interest Scale (Crandall, 1975) contribute to construct validity and support Adler's belief that discouragement and social interest are inversely related. Results of behavioral and academic comparisons on a sample of adolescent males (N=57) seem to indicate a link between behavior, academic performance, and levels of discouragement. Results of factor analysis and interscale correlations are presented. Implications for further research include continued validation using behavioral criteria associated with discouragement, refinement of the subscales and establishment of score ranges to indicate when an adolescent is considered discouraged.

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The following study explores the conditions under which former adolescent mothers were successfully or unsuccessfully reintegrated back into high school before and after giving birth. 12 semi-structured, in-depth, interviews were conducted with former adolescent mothers aged 22-23. An exploratory qualitative research approach was adopted as the study sought to acquire information that was specific to the social context and opinions of the former adolescent mothers. In addition, the study sought to explore the factors that contributed to the successful or unsuccessful reintegration of former adolescent mothers back into schools making sense of their recollections of their experiences before and after giving birth. The findings show that despite the interlinked causal factors that may have led to the unplanned pregnancies of adolescent mothers, the journey of adolescent pregnancy and motherhood worked to reinforce their motivation to complete school. Furthermore, the findings indicate that successful reintegration into high school and dealing with adolescent pregnancy and motherhood required various interventions that involved schools, families and the community to ensure the best possible chances for successful reintegration into high school. Recommendations were suggested in the study to enhance the provision of support interventions in managing adolescent pregnancy and parenthood, including, revised curriculum of sexual education, educator training and development, as well as provision of support by families and communities. / Mini Dissertation (MSoSci)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Sociology / MSoSci / Unrestricted

Includes bibliographical references. / There is paucity of evidence to guide case-finding strategies in field trials of new tuberculosis vaccines conducted in young children. To investigate case-finding and case detection methods for tuberculosis in tuberculosis field trials conducted in young children.