Despite the number of teen pregnancy studies in the past, there is a dearth of empirical data relevant to the issue of psychosocial and/or developmental changes in adolescent mothers. Most previous studies have addressed the negative and devastating impact of teen pregnancy on adolescent development. The premise of these early studies was that adolescents have pathological reasons for becoming pregnant. Contrary to these studies, an underlying assumption of this study was that teen pregnancy as a life crisis could entail the same facilitating and inhibiting factors that emerge with other adolescent life crises. Based on Erikson's theoretical framework, this study investigated the impacts of adolescent pregnancy and childbearing experiences on adolescent identity formation and on psychosocial stage development. Data were collected from 64 (34 childbearing, 30 nonpregnant) high school adolescent girls before and after childbirth. The EOM-EIS (Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status) and EPSI (Erikson Psychosocial Stage Inventory) were used in this study. Analyses of pretest data showed that there were no differences between pregnant and nonpregnant adolescents. Results indicated that there were no differences on psychosocial variables between pregnant adolescents and nonpregnant adolescents with similar demographic backgrounds. The childbearing adolescents demonstrated decreases in foreclosure scores on identity status and increases in trust, industry, and intimacy scores on psychosocial stages. The results indicate that childbearing experiences may have enhanced the adolescents' ability to resolve their earlier developmental stage crises and conflicts.

Adolescent depression affects up to 24% of adolescents before adulthood and is linked with serious outcomes. However as only 25% of affected adolescents in Australia receive appropriate assistance the prevention of adolescent depression has a high priority. Risk and protective factors exist in the individual, family, school and society, but the connection between these factors is often uncertain. Prevention at the individual level has been found to be successful but despite the importance of family factors there is little research into prevention at the family level. Because of the difficulty in engaging parents in preventive interventions it has been suggested that convenient, flexible delivery interventions may achieve better penetration. This study evaluates in two stages the Resourceful Adolescent Parent Program (RAP-P), a positively-focused family-based intervention for parents which has been developed to fill the need for a universal preventive intervention for adolescent depression. Firstly the study evaluates the theoretical basis for RAP-P by developing and testing models linking the family-based psychosocial risk and protective factors for teenage depression that are addressed by RAP-P, and the family systems factors underpinning these. No previous models linking these variables could be found in the literature. The study then evaluates two formats of RAP-P, one of three facilitated workshops attended by parents; the other a videotaped flexible delivery format for use at home, developed to overcome parents' poor involvement in preventive programs. Participants were 242 adolescents in Year 8 and 361 of their parents, recruited from eleven schools in Brisbane, Australia. Schools were randomly allocated to one of three conditions: workshop intervention, video intervention and control. Adolescents and parents completed measures at pre-test, post-test and 15 month follow-up. Based on the current adolescent depression literature and Bowen Theory, four models were developed, tested using structural equation modeling and confirmed after minor revisions. The first model examined links between adolescents' depression and the family based risk factors of parent-adolescent conflict and adolescents' negative perceptions of their parents' interactions with them, and the protective factor of parental attachment. Other models, based on Bowen Theory, examined the trans-generational transmission of differentiation of self from the adolescents' grandparents (generation 1) to the adolescents' parents (generation 2) and the effects of parents' differentiation and anxiety on the third generation adolescents' perceptions of their mothers, attachment and depression. The second part of the study examined the implementation and efficacy of the two formats of RAP-P. Predictions that the convenience of the flexible delivery format of RAP-P would result in better recruitment and lower attrition than for the workshop format were not supported, with the flexible delivery format encountering poorer recruitment and higher attrition. Predictions that parents' evaluations of both formats would be equally positive were not supported; the flexible delivery format was consistently evaluated less positively than the workshop format. However parents perceived both formats to be of similar benefit to them. Parents in the intervention conditions were predicted to exhibit better differentiation and lower anxiety than those in the control condition, resulting in their adolescents experiencing less intense conflict over fewer issues and appraising their parents more positively, and consequently exhibiting better parental attachment and lower levels of depression. The level of improvement was predicted to be related to the level of parental engagement in the interventions. However parents and adolescents in the intervention conditions did not show any positive effects of the interventions at post-test or follow-up. Parents who were engaged in the interventions and their adolescents similarly did not show any measurable benefits from the intervention. Thus this study has found support through modeling for the theoretical basis for RAP-P. Parents' feedback strongly supported the overall thrust and ethos of RAP-P and particularly of the workshop format, indicating that the intervention targeted the right factors in the right way. However the interventions did not achieve measurable improvements for parents or adolescents within the time frame of the study. With models supporting the appropriateness of the measured variables it appears that the potency of the intervention was insufficient. Finally the study found that the use of a flexible delivery videotape intervention did not achieve its goal of increased participation and was still very costly of resources.

Parental monitoring is a widely researched hypothetical construct. Patterson and colleagues (Capaldi & Patterson, 1989; Patterson, Reid, & Dishion, 1992) originally developed the construct in their seminal work with the Oregon Youth Study. Adopting a broad theoretical framework, monitoring was defined as parental awareness of adolescent activities, and communication to the child that the parent is concerned about and aware of adolescent free-time (Dishion & McMahon, 1998). Recent research (Kerr & Stattin, 2000; Kerr, Stattin, & Trost, 1999; Stattin & Kerr, 2000) has proposed a narrower definition, where monitoring is perceived to be parental knowledge of adolescent free-time, which is acquired primarily through adolescent disclosure of their activities. Recent debates have been present in the literature proposing either the multi-dimensional view of monitoring, or the latter uni-dimensional view. A model of monitoring interactions was developed that is based on social learning and behavioural principles. The process-monitoring model contends that monitoring is an interactive process between parents, their adolescents, and the ecology of the family. In the model it is proposed that monitoring occurs in discrete episodes that change over the course of adolescent development. To explain monitoring interactions, it is essential to consider the sequence of behaviours that occur within a monitoring interaction at two stages, before the adolescent goes out, and also when they return home. Using the process-monitoring model as a framework, this research examined monitoring across four studies. Study 1 was a qualitative study that explored adolescent perceptions of monitoring interactions. Forty-nine adolescents aged from 12 through to 16 years (M = 13.2) were interviewed about their monitoring interactions with parents. This study found correspondence between the constructs in the process-monitoring model and adolescent perceptions of monitoring interactions. Two new themes that emerged in this study were parental trust and adolescent deceit. For typically developing adolescents there were marked differences in how adolescents perceive parental monitoring across adolescent development. Study 2 involved the analysis of data collected as part of a population based self-report survey of 1285 adolescents aged 14 to 15 years. The hypothesised relationship between monitoring behaviours was examined using structured equation modelling. A model with the constructs of rules, supervision, conflict, and adolescent problem behaviour was found to be an adequate fit of the data, accounting for 40% of the variance in problem behaviour. Specifically, lax rules predicted poor supervision and high conflict. High conflict and low supervision were predictors of the adolescent problem behaviour construct, which encompassed conduct problems, rebelliousness, and sensation seeking. Adequate rules appear to form the foundation for better supervision and less conflict, and hence, lower levels of adolescent problem behaviours. Study 3 involved data collected for the purpose of further testing the process-monitoring model. The associations between parent-adolescent relationship quality, rules, solicitation, disclosure, and tracking were tested using linear path modelling on self-report data from a sample of 210 parents and 202 adolescents aged 11 to 18 years (M = 15.29). Separate statistical models were required for the parent and adolescent data. For the adolescent data the model was an adequate fit, accounting for 27% of the variance in tracking behaviours. In the adolescent model, high rule-setting predicted higher solicitation and tracking, while poor relationship quality predicted lower disclosure and lower tracking. For the parent data, the model was an adequate fit accounting for 34% of the variance in tracking behaviours. In the parent model, high rule-setting predicted higher solicitation, disclosure, and tracking, while poor relationship quality predicted lower disclosure, lower solicitation, and poorer tracking scores. T he tracking construct was found to adequately predict adolescent deviant behaviours including alcohol use, smoking, and deviant peer associations. Study 4 was an exploratory study. In this study the monitoring scale constructed in Study 3 was examined alongside behavioural observations made whilst conducting an intervention with two families who were experiencing parent-adolescent conflict. Some correspondence was found between parent and adolescent measures of monitoring and conflict and the behaviour seen between parent-adolescent dyads; however, the self-report monitoring measures were only able to reveal substantial problems in monitoring. Problem Solving and Communication Training (Robin & Foster, 1989) showed some improvement in parent-adolescent relationships, as measured by the Issues Checklist (Robin & Foster, 1989) and Conflict Behaviour Questionnaire (Prinz, Foster, Kent, & O'Leary, 1979), but there was no impact on monitoring interactions. This series of studies supported the claims that monitoring is a multi-dimensional construct, and that it has bi-directional effects. There was support for the existing research, which has shown that poor parental monitoring is consistently associated with adolescent problem behaviour. The process model was found to provide an adequate framework for examining the temporal sequence in monitoring interactions and the evolution of monitoring across the adolescent developmental cycle. At this stage there is little experimental or intervention research showing how families might improve their monitoring. It is argued that behavioural observations and functional analyses of monitoring episodes are needed to provide an understanding of the action-reaction sequence across monitoring episodes.

‘Psychosocial problems’ are psychological problems that are regarded as resulting from the interaction between the adaptive capacities of individuals and the demands of their physical and social environments. Many different factors have been theoretically proposed, and empirically established, as predictors of a range of psychosocial problems in adolescents. However, a problem exists in that this literature appears to lack an integrative framework that has validity across the range of problems that are observed. The purpose of the current research is to propose and test a model that draws together three clusters of factors that are useful in predicting the incidence of adolescent psychosocial problems. These are family structural background factors, family functioning variables and control beliefs. Data were collected from 155 adolescent males aged between 12 and 19 by a single concurrent and retrospective self-report questionnaire. This included data about the respondent (age, involvements with mental health or juvenile justice agencies) and family structural background factors (days per week worked by mother/father, occupational status for mother/father, residential mobility, number of persons in the family home). The questionnaire also incorporated the Parental Bonding Instrument (Parker, Tupling & Brown, 1979) to quantify the levels of perceived parental care and overprotection, and an adaptation of the Parental Discipline Style Scale (Shaw & Scott, 1991), to assess punitive, love withdrawing and inductive discipline practices. In addition, the (Low) Self-control Scale (Grasmick, Tittle, Bursick & Arneklev, 1993) and the Locus of Control of Behaviour Scale (Craig, Franklin, & Andrews, 1984) were used to collect data concerning adolescents’ perceived behavioural self-control and locus of control. Finally, selected sub-scales of the Child Behavior Checklist Youth Self-Report (Achenbach, 1991b) were used to collect data on the incidence of social withdrawal, somatisation, anxiety and depression, aggression and delinquency among the respondents, and in aggregated form, the incidence of ‘total problems’ and internalising and externalising behaviours. Results indicated family structural background factors, family functioning variables and control beliefs possess limited predicted validity and that the usefulness of the proposed model varies between specific psychosocial problems. Family functioning variables were generally stronger predictors than family structural background factors, particularly for internalising behaviours. Of these, levels of parental care and overprotection were generally the strongest predictors. Perceived self-control and locus of control were also generally strong predictors, but were particularly powerful with respect to externalising behaviours. The strength of predictive relationships was observed to vary between specific internalising and externalising behaviours, suggesting that individual difference variables not assessed in the current research were differentially influential. Finally, the parental and individual characteristics that predicted maximal levels of adjustment (defined in terms of minimal levels of internalising and externalising behaviours) were explored and the correlates of various parenting style typologies (Parker et al., 1979) were investigated. These results strongly confirmed the importance of family functioning and control beliefs with respect to the prediction of internalising, externalising and well-adjusted behaviours. In all analyses, substantial proportions of the variance in the incidence of problem behaviours remain unexplained. The findings are examined in relation to previous research focused on (familial) social control and (individual) self-control with respect to psychosocial problems in adolescents. In addition, methodological considerations are discussed and the implications of the findings for clinical and community interventions to address problem behaviours, and for further study, are explored.

Alcohol-related expectations have been defined as the anticipated consequences from consuming alcohol (Brown, Goldman, Inn, & Anderson, 1980). Previous research has been conducted to examine the role of alcohol expectations in the co-occurrence of alcohol problems with anxiety and depressive symptoms. In the current study, the relationship between alcohol problems, anxiety and depressive traits, and alcohol expectancies were examined within a male juvenile correction sample. Specifically, statistical analyses were conducted to test the degree to which alcohol expectancies combined with anxiety/depression traits improve the prediction of alcohol-related problems beyond that of anxiety/depression traits alone. Archival data were collected from 205 incarcerated male adolescents who completed both the Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire -- Adolescent Form (AEQ-A) and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory--Adolescent (MMPI-A). Two research hypotheses were tested using correlation and regression analyses. The results demonstrated that depressive traits significantly predicted an increase in alcohol-related problems, and the addition of expectancies related to global positive changes and increased social behavior produced a significant gain in the prediction of alcohol problems. Furthermore, anxiety traits significantly predicted an increase in alcohol-related problems, and the inclusion of tension reduction expectancies yielded a significant gain in prediction. The results suggest that alcohol-related problems may be exacerbated by the presence of reinforcement-based expectancies in male juvenile offenders who are concurrently experiencing elevated levels of anxiety and depressive traits. These findings have implications for prevention and treatment programs that utilize cognitive-behavioral and expectancy challenge techniques to affect change in problematic alcohol consumption behaviors. / "December 2006."

Thesis (M.S.W.)--University of Hong Kong, 1982.

This qualitative inquiry uses a life history prospective approach to investigate the social context in which adolescent girls’ sexual feelings emerge and in which girls’ sexual experiences occur. Nine adolescent girls were interviewed at two points in time during their adolescence and themes from their narratives were analyzed with respect to their experiences with sexuality. It appears that peers, family members, and sexual/dating partners have a major effect on both, girls’ sexual experiences and their connection with their sexual feelings. Prospective analysis revealed that over time, the social contexts of adolescent girls became more complex and girls became exposed to increasingly contradictory messages about what they should do and feel and behave. Girls appeared to have internalized the social messages around sexuality, which was evident through how girls talked about sexuality and through girls’ direct reports that their decisions were affected by the social and familial implications of their decisions.

Childhood obesity has become an increasingly important public health concern in Canada. This paper provides an econometric analysis of the role of income and other explanatory factors on adolescent overweight and obese statuses within Canada using data from the 2009/2010 Canadian Community Health Survey. Results reveal the importance of low-income status on adolescent body weight. The effect of low income is particularly pronounced after accounting for household size. However, it does not account for much of the additional incidence of overweight and obesity in the Atlantic region of Canada.

It is well known that adolescence is a difficult stage of development, involving various aspects of development, namely biological, cognitive, social and emotional development. More recent research indicates that the turbulence and stress in adolescence are exaggerated to a great extent (Berk, 2006); yet the youth of today seem increasingly unhappy. Eating disorders, depression and suicide are some of the problems that occur more frequently in adolescence than before adolescence (Barlow & Durand, 2005). Adolescence may also involve that youth become reluctant to spend time with their parents and that they become more likely to engage in arguments with their parents. Research indicates that both parents and adolescents report that they feel less close to each other during this time (Steinberg & Morris, 2001). The purpose of this study was to investigate what adolescents' experiences were of their relationship with their parents, what influence the parent-adolescent relationship (as perceived by the adolescent) has on adolescent emotional-well-being, as well as to determine whether or not adolescents' emotional well-being can be predicted by the parent-adolescent relationship. A quantitative cross-sectional survey research design was used for the purpose of this study. The selected sample included grade 9 to l I learners at various secondary schools who fitted the selection criteria (N = 257). Data collection took place by means of various validated questionnaires to measure the parent-adolescent relationship: The Family Satisfaction Scale (Olson & Wilson, 1982), The Parent- adolescent Communication Scale (Barnes & Olson, 1982), The Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA) of Armsden and Greenberg (1987). To measure adolescent emotional well-being, The Emotional Intelligence Scale (E LS) of Schutte et al. ( 1998), The Fortitude Questionnaire (FORQ) of Pretorius ( 1997), The Affectometer (AFM) of Kammann and Flett ( l 983), The General Hea lth Questionnaire (GHQ) of Goldberg and Hillier ( 1979) and a biographical questionnaire were used to gather demographic information. There were a total of 152 questions, and it took 30-45 minutes to complete. Data analysis was done by means of descriptive stati stics, reliabi lity and validity indices, correlation indices and t-tests; and Cohen's practical effect size was used to investigate significant differences. The results of the study indicate that the majority of adolescents in the research group rate their relationship with their parents positively, although significant differences were found between genders with regard to family satisfaction and between cultures with regard to parent-adolescent communication. The results also seem to indicate that higher manifestations of aspects of emotional well-being are experienced by the African youth than the white participants; and that a healthy parent-adolescent relationship can have a positive influence on adolescent emotional well-being. The parent-adolescent relationship served as a predictor of adolescent emotional well-being, while attachment anger and family cohesion were found to be the strongest predictors of this. / Thesis (M.A. (Psychology))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2010.

It is well known that adolescence is a difficult stage of development, involving various aspects of development, namely biological, cognitive, social and emotional development. More recent research indicates that the turbulence and stress in adolescence are exaggerated to a great extent (Berk, 2006); yet the youth of today seem increasingly unhappy. Eating disorders, depression and suicide are some of the problems that occur more frequently in adolescence than before adolescence (Barlow & Durand, 2005). Adolescence may also involve that youth become reluctant to spend time with their parents and that they become more likely to engage in arguments with their parents. Research indicates that both parents and adolescents report that they feel less close to each other during this time (Steinberg & Morris, 2001). The purpose of this study was to investigate what adolescents' experiences were of their relationship with their parents, what influence the parent-adolescent relationship (as perceived by the adolescent) has on adolescent emotional-well-being, as well as to determine whether or not adolescents' emotional well-being can be predicted by the parent-adolescent relationship. A quantitative cross-sectional survey research design was used for the purpose of this study. The selected sample included grade 9 to l I learners at various secondary schools who fitted the selection criteria (N = 257). Data collection took place by means of various validated questionnaires to measure the parent-adolescent relationship: The Family Satisfaction Scale (Olson & Wilson, 1982), The Parent- adolescent Communication Scale (Barnes & Olson, 1982), The Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA) of Armsden and Greenberg (1987). To measure adolescent emotional well-being, The Emotional Intelligence Scale (E LS) of Schutte et al. ( 1998), The Fortitude Questionnaire (FORQ) of Pretorius ( 1997), The Affectometer (AFM) of Kammann and Flett ( l 983), The General Hea lth Questionnaire (GHQ) of Goldberg and Hillier ( 1979) and a biographical questionnaire were used to gather demographic information. There were a total of 152 questions, and it took 30-45 minutes to complete. Data analysis was done by means of descriptive stati stics, reliabi lity and validity indices, correlation indices and t-tests; and Cohen's practical effect size was used to investigate significant differences. The results of the study indicate that the majority of adolescents in the research group rate their relationship with their parents positively, although significant differences were found between genders with regard to family satisfaction and between cultures with regard to parent-adolescent communication. The results also seem to indicate that higher manifestations of aspects of emotional well-being are experienced by the African youth than the white participants; and that a healthy parent-adolescent relationship can have a positive influence on adolescent emotional well-being. The parent-adolescent relationship served as a predictor of adolescent emotional well-being, while attachment anger and family cohesion were found to be the strongest predictors of this. / Thesis (M.A. (Psychology))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2010.