Despite increasing interest in improving academic outcomes for students by enhancing mindfulness, there is a paucity of evidence that greater mindfulness is associated with success in school. We measured mindfulness with the short-form Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) in over 2,000 urban students in Grades 5-8. The MAAS had good internal…

The present study examined the extent to which parent involvement in education was directly and indirectly (via school engagement) related to academic outcomes in an effort to more fully understand the school experiences of urban adolescents. Participants (80% racial/ethnic minority; n = 108) were in grades 6, 7 or 8. In the Fall and subsequent…

Academic cheating within the middle grades has become a prevalent schooling dilemma for teachers and administrators. Among the various contextual and cognitive factors that promote academic cheating is home-school dissonance, which has been shown to predict the phenomenon among high school students. The current study extends this line of research…

Considerable evidence shows the detriments of neighborhood social disorganization for urban youth. Researchers have focused less on potential neighborhood strengths or on the interplay of neighborhood perceptions and objective neighborhood characteristics. The authors examined the presence and perception of positive and negative neighborhood…

Background: Insufficient physical activity among urban youth increases risk of chronic disease.Purpose:This study assessed reported physical activity to determine when disparities in participation emerge and what ecologically guided factors are linked with high activity. Methods:We administered a cross-sectional survey to a diverse sample of 321…

Considerable research has documented associations between adverse life events and internalizing symptoms in adolescents, but much of this research has focused on the number of events experienced, with less attention to the ecological context or timing of events. This study examined life events in three ecological domains relevant to adolescents…

Background: School-based social-emotional and character development (SECD) programs can influence not only SECD but also academic-related outcomes. This study evaluated the impact of one SECD program, Positive Action (PA), on educational outcomes among low-income, urban youth. Methods: The longitudinal study used a matched-pair, cluster-randomized…

In this study, a nonprofit community mental health clinic developed a socioecological model of sexual abuse prevention that was implemented in a public school. The goal of the program was to promote and create community change within individuals and the school community by reducing tolerance of sexual violence and sexual harassment. Participants…

Community and school violence continue to be a major public health problem, especially among urban children and adolescents. Little research has focused on the effect of school safety and neighborhood violence on academic performance. This study examines the effect of the school and neighborhood climate on academic achievement among a population…

The last several decades have witnessed a large increase in the number of girls who participate in sports in the United States. Today an estimated 8 million third- through 12th-grade girls and 12 million boys participate in organized and team sports. While much progress has been made toward achieving gender equity in youth sports, too many girls…

Objectives: To study if receptivity and exposure to tobacco marketing are correlated with tobacco use and psychosocial risk factors for tobacco use among a sample of urban Indian youth. Methods: Analysis of cross-sectional survey data from Project MYTRI, a group randomized intervention trial, in Delhi and Chennai, India, collected from sixth and…

Research has begun to show associations between adolescents' mealtime practices and their engagement in problem behaviors. Few studies have addressed this longitudinally and/or examined lunchtime practices during the school day. This study tests for associations between urban multiethnic middle school students' (N = 1498) lunchtime practices in…

This study used self-report symptom inventories administered in school classrooms to examine relations among gender, psychological symptoms, stress, and coping in 1,200 low-income African American urban early adolescents. Girls reported more symptoms than boys, accounted for by higher internalizing symptoms. Boys reported more stress than girls,…

This study examines patterns of organized activity and their concurrent association with academic achievement, problem behavior, and perceived adult support in a sample of urban, early adolescent, middle school students (mean age = 13.01; N = 2,495). Cluster analyses yielded six activity profiles: an uninvolved group (n = 775, 31.1%), a multiply…

In the inner-city of Washington, D.C., lives a generation of young people for whom violence, discrimination, and poverty are a daily reality. This article describes one youth organization that encourages these young people to voice their hopes and concerns for their community and work to create solutions. The out-of-school-time programming of…