Suicidality and non-suicidal self-injury are highly prevalent on college campuses and death by suicide is the number two cause of death for that age demographic. Even with such a deadly public health concern, little is known about how self-harm behavior can be prevented or effectively treated. Research has suggested that differences in affect regulation may differentiate those who engage in self-harm from those who do not, but many of these studies have examined disparate pieces of affect regulation without addressing the overlap and interaction of regulatory behaviors. The field must discover what specific aspects of affect regulation go awry, if self-harmers demonstrate a different pattern of affect regulatory strategies, and if subtypes of persons who engage in self-harm have different patterns of affect regulation that will need to be addressed differently in treatment and prevention efforts. The purpose of this study is to explore these associations between affect regulation, specifically emotion regulation and coping, and self-harm behaviors. Two-hundred and fifty undergraduates completed surveys on emotion regulation, coping strategies, and health-risk behavior. An extremely high prevalence of self-harm and risky behavior was discovered (nearly 47% endorsing self-harm and 86% endorsing risky behavior). Results from three different measures of emotion regulation and coping strategies were factor analyzed to produce three factors, corresponding to maladaptive, active adaptive, and passive adaptive (distress tolerance) affect regulation strategies. Persons with and without a history of self-harm behavior endorsed similar levels of adaptive affect regulation strategy utilization, but those with a history of self-harm behavior had much higher utilization of maladaptive affect regulation strategies. Similar patterns of affect regulation strategy utilization were found for persons engaging in risky behavior (sexual, alcohol, illicit substances, disordered eating, safety, and smoking) and all subtypes of persons engaging in self-harm (i.e., non-suicidal self-injury, suicide attempts, or both). Those who had engaged in self-harm could be differentiated from participants with no history of self-harm behavior or ideation on the basis of their utilization of maladaptive affect regulation strategies. Implications for prevention and intervention are discussed.

In 2005, suicide was the third leading cause of death among youth 10-24 years of age in the U.S. —accounting for 4,482 deaths. Youth suicide is an important public health problem in the U.S. and research focusing specifically on gender differences is needed and warranted since recent research shows that rates of suicide attempts have increased specifically among young girls. Analyses of the recently released 2007 YRBS data (n=14,041; girls=7,036; boys=6,992) of high school students in 9-12th grades, show that 6.9% of adolescents attempted suicide (9.3% of girls versus 4.6% of boys) and 14.5% seriously considered a suicide attempt (18.7% of girls versus 10.3% of boys). Girls are 2.89 (95% CI: 2.31-3.61) times more likely than boys to report attempting suicide in the past 12 months. Moreover, girls who reported attempting suicide were significantly more likely to also report other risk factors such as depression (OR= 5.74), weapon carrying (OR= 1.48), experiencing intimate partner violence (OR=1.60), being forced to have sexual intercourse (1.72), huffing glue (OR=2.04), and being a minority (OR 1.65). However, boys who reported attempting suicide were significantly more likely to also report weapon carrying (OR=1.66), being forced to have sexual intercourse (OR=2.60), huffing glue (OR=1.63), participating in sports (OR=1.52), depression (OR=10.96), hard drug use (OR=2.18), and being a minority (OR=1.93). Furthermore, analyses of 1991 – 2007 YRBS data revealed that these gender specific risks have remained fairly constant over time. These findings will help guide prevention and intervention strategies to prevent suicide and suicidal behaviors among both girls and boys.

This dissertation presents three papers applying health economics to the study of risky behaviors. The first uses data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to examine the relationship between adverse events and risky behaviors among adolescents. Substance use responses to experiencing either of two adverse events--violent crime victimization or death of a non-family member one felt close to--explain 6.7 percent of first cigarette use, and 14.3 percent of first use of illegal drugs other than marijuana. Analyses of exercise, a positive coping mechanism, find shock-responses consistent with a coping-response, but not with rational, time-inconsistent, or non-rational drivers considered here. I conclude that distressing events lead to risky behaviors, with a coping response contributing to this effect.

This dissertation presents three essays. The first essay finds that the household risky ratio, the ratio of high risk assets over low risk assets directly owned by households, is a strong negative predictor of the equity premium on the US stock market. The predictability is robust to definition of the asset classes, first versus second half of sample, and the finite-sample bias of Stambaugh (1999). The predictability is stronger than, and not subsumed by popular predictors like price-earnings ratios, yield spread, equity share of issues, or consumption-wealth ratios. The main predictive power is decomposed into three similar parts: 1) the household tilt of risky assets, which is novel and generally orthogonal to known predictors; 2) a valuation ratio component; and 3) an issuance component of high risk versus low risk assets. / Economics

This study examines whether reference levels change over time and the impact on individuals' risk-taking behavior. I apply expectations-based reference-dependent preferences theory to analyze whether individuals' reference levels change over time in an economic setting. The theory suggests that individuals develop reference levels based on expectations of future outcomes (Koszegi and Rabin 2006). Therefore, this study examines whether individuals' expectations affect the setting of their reference level and how possible changes in reference levels affect subsequent risk-taking behavior. This study also provides evidence on how budget-based contracts impact individual risk taking behavior in a single period setting. Prior research has used multiple theories in an attempt to explain contradictory results relating to budget target difficulty and risk-taking behaviors. This study provides more evidence to the literature by further examining the impact of budget-based contracts on individuals' risk-taking behavior. A 1 x 2 between subjects experiment was conducted over five periods. Budget target was the manipulated factor at two levels: easy and moderate. Results suggest that individuals under easy budget targets make riskier decisions. Additionally, individuals' reference levels change over time and the change in reference level is greater for those individuals who continually attain their budget target, suggesting that expectations do increase the reference level. Lastly, in the current study, changes in reference level do not have a significant impact on risky decision making.

Adolescence is a unique time during the human lifespan, where children develop into reproductively competent adults, and many behavioral and psychological changes develop. The goal of this dissertation is to examine the underlying functions related to the emergence of risky adolescent "behaviors," broadly defined to include both physical risks (e.g., drinking or physical fighting) and psychological risks (e.g., anxious or depressive symptoms). In this paper I (1) present a manuscript reviewing and synthesizing the relevant evolutionary theories, which bears testable hypotheses regarding sex differences in risky adolescent behavior, and (2) empirically assess these predictions in two separate but theoretically and conceptually related studies that test for theoretically-based hypothesized relations: one specific to males, one to females. Specifically, I test the proposition that males should be more likely to engage in physically risky behavior than females, and that females should be more likely to engage in affective risks (assessed as sensitivity to social evaluation). These hypotheses are generally supported, but shed light on important environmental factors that are associated with the prevalence of risk-taking, including the degree of closeness within the family, timing of pubertal development, and social status. In general, an early pubertal development and low social status are associated with risk-taking, while closeness to family buffers against the likelihood of engaging in later risky behaviors.

In the final masters paper “The organization and management of the children’s busyness in the day centers”. Edita Šlapelienė, the student of master’s degree program at Vilnius pedagogical university, department of Social pedagogic discusses the organization and management of the children’s busyness in the day centers. The paper confirms hypothesis that the effective organization of the day centers, secures busyness for the children from the socially risky families. During the recent years, the number of juvenile crimes, varied, however it is still quite high. More than a half of the juvenile crimes are done by the unbusy children. The authors state that the main reasons of the juvenile crimes are children unbusyness and the family social status. Some children attend extra curricular classes at their schools or at the institutions of informal education. The children from socially risky families can attend day centers. The main reasons of the day centers establishment are the increasing number of socially risky families and the increase of the juvenile crimes. The children are educated through the exercise of the prevention programs; their extra curricular busyness is secured. Parents are being socially educated as well. The merit of the day centers is the decrease of the socially risky families and better relationship between parents and children. The research results showed, that children like to attend day centers, they appreciate friendly atmosphere. Centers provide with... [to full text]

This dissertation consists of three essays examining the determinants of child developmental outcomes using the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY). The first essay estimates the relationship between birth weight and cognitive and behavioral outcomes for children aged 0 to 13. Using family fixed effects models to control for household heterogeneity, I find that every ounce counts; additional birth weight for infants born weighing less than 2,500 grams (low birth weight infants) is related to better outcomes for measures of math ability, pro-social behavior and property offense. Additional birth weight for those born weighing 2,500 grams or more is related to higher scores of motor and social development and verbal competence for young children. The second essay, using a sample of Canadian boys and girls aged 10 to 15 in dual-earner families, finds that parental work schedules play an important role in adolescents’ engagement in risky behaviour, especially for boys. Non-standard parental work schedules (i.e. work during evenings, nights, weekends and rotating shifts) are positively related to fighting, drinking and trying drugs among boys and fighting among girls. In the third essay, I investigate relationships between symptoms of hyperactivity-inattention and being read to for a sample of children aged 2 to 4. The main finding, based on family fixed effects estimates, is that children who have higher hyperactivity-inattention are read to less. However, results from interactions suggest that this relationship is only present when the person most knowledgeable of the child (usually the biological mother) has less than a post-secondary degree or diploma.

Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death and disability for youth under 20, and motor vehicle collisions are the leading cause of death in youth aged 15-19 (World Health Organization, 2010). Research has consistently shown that driver education programs do not result in safer youth driving. Indeed, the biggest predictor of collisions involving youth is parental history of collisions. This dissertation comprised two studies – one to develop a measure of risky driving and one that examined the influence of parents on youth risky driving. Participants (N = 432) for both studies were undergraduate students aged 17 to 22 who had obtained their G2 driver’s licence in the past year. In Study 1, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the new Youth Domains of Risky Driving Scale revealed a four-factor solution consisting of aggressive, substance use, distracted, and moving violation subscales. In Study 2, this new measure was used to evaluate relations between parental modeling of risky driving behaviours, parental teaching about safe driving behaviours, and youth risky driving. Results revealed that parental modeling was generally more predictive of youth risk than parental teaching, for all four subtypes of driving behaviours examined. Youth whose parents modeled risky driving behaviour were more likely be willing to drive in a risky manner, to expect that they would do so in the future, and to report a history of risky driving in the past. Findings from this study highlight the role parents play in the development of youth risky driving. Implications for future interventions targeting parent driving behaviour in the early months of youth licensure are discussed. / Canadian Institutes of Health Research

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