The purpose of this article is to highlight a critical approach for practice, youth participatory action research, that can be used to invite rural youth to collaborate with school administrators, educators, and community leaders to identify and examine challenges, while building upon the strengths of a school and community to address challenges.…

Objective:This report extends earlier accounts by addressing the effects of the Strong African American Families (SAAF) program across 65 months. Two hypotheses were tested: (a) Rural African American youths randomly assigned to participate in SAAF would demonstrate lower rates of alcohol use than would control youths more than 5 years later, and…

Purpose: Chances for a healthy life are not equally distributed across society. Instead, genetic, social, and environmental factors help determine the probability that a child will be healthy and active. We investigate the probability that youth will be physically active by examining 3 consistent correlates of physical activity. The individual and…

Investigated drug use behaviors of rural and urban students in Georgia. Data from 1,897 response forms indicated experimental use of alcoholic beverages was high (approximately two-thirds for rural and urban samples), while approximately one-third reported marijuana use. Males exceed females in weekly and daily drug use. (Author)

Studied the effects a high stakes test designed to end social promotion would have on poor black students in the 39 Georgia counties characterized as "declining rural counties." Findings suggest such tests would have a disparate impact on African American children, limiting their educational attainment. Illustrates the argument with the…

This study examined whether students could learn counterintuitive science concepts by reading and discussing ideas. Ninth graders read texts, answered questions, then completed control activities or engaged in scaffolded discussions. Students who read expository text and students who participated in scaffolded discussion performed better than…

To test a facilitative-constraint model, data about marijuana use was collected from 4,859 high school students in 2 rural southern Georgia counties. The model was useful for predicting frequency of use and classifying students as users, experimenters, and nonusers. Access to drugs and identification with drug-oriented groups were strong…