Despite evidence that youth gain weight disproportionately over the summer months, few studies examine contributing obesogenic behaviors. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, this study examined associations between summertime dietary intake patterns and executive function among 79 low-income urban minority early adolescent girls (ages 9-13 years).…

The purpose of this study was to analyze the narratives constructed by urban youth in a summer program for future educators of color. In particular, we asked, "In what ways do students use texts to create counternarratives of urban education?" Utilizing visual counternarratives and counterstorytelling as theoretical frames, and through…

Western liberal conceptions of democratic citizenship require the state to be "neutral" by separating the political from the social. However, this is often at odds with the realities of socio-political organization in many former colonized countries. In this paper, I draw on empirical data from photo-elicitation interviews with eight…

Youth obesity is a major public health problem in the United States, especially among urban-based, minority youth. The B'More Healthy Communities for Kids (BHCK) trial worked at multiple levels of the food environment, including carryouts, to increase access to and demand for healthy, affordable foods. The objective of this article is to describe…

The present study explored the influence of psychological stress on the development of purpose among youth of color living in urban, low-income communities. A qualitative approach based on grounded theory was used to understand how stress-related experiences influence the development of youth purpose in participants' own words. Findings revealed…

In 2007 and 2008, I worked with a team of adult and youth researchers from Youth Media Action, an independent media outlet, on a participatory action research project to better understand the media needs and interests of urban youth. This study centers on training and working with a group of youth researcher to conduct a community needs assessment…

This article explores how achievement motivation is framed by the larger context of the devaluation of educational capital that is currently underway in urban centers in Europe. The article elucidates the shared cultural meaning working-class German Turkish youths living in urban marginalized zones in Berlin, Germany create about the decreasing…

Two waves of longitudinal data were used to examine the sequencing between violent victimization, violent behavior, and gun carrying in a high-poverty sample of African American youth. Multivariate logistic regression results indicated that violent victimization T1 and violent behavior T1 increased the likelihood of initiation of gun carrying T2…

This study reports efforts to locate and survey participants in Project Northland Chicago (PNC), a longitudinal, group-randomized trial of an alcohol preventive intervention for racial/ethnic minority, urban, early-adolescents, 3-4 years following the end of the intervention. Data were collected annually among students from 6th-8th grade and then…

The goal of this study was to document comorbidity profiles of psychiatric disorder and perceived need for treatment among urban adolescents with unmet behavioral health needs. Participants were 303 community-referred adolescents and their primary caregivers. Adolescents included both boys (54%) and girls and were primarily Hispanic (58%), African…

This study explored relations between culturally relevant stressors (i.e., urban hassles, perceived discrimination) and subjective well-being (SWB; i.e., positive/ negative affect, life satisfaction) to examine whether ethnic identity and/or coping strategies would serve as moderators of the relations between stress and SWB for 157 urban, ethnic…

Breaking down the social, political, and cultural processes through which race, class, and gender worldviews are established, ideological literacies help students look closely at the intricate, contradictory meanings in texts. The purpose of developing ideological literacies in urban youth is so they become more socially conscious of the…

Several studies have investigated factors associated with physical aggression during adolescence. Yet, little is known about the longitudinal relationship between drug use, particularly alcohol use, and physical aggression among minority youth. The present study examined the effects of alcohol and substance use at age 11 on trajectories of…

The theory of sensation seeking has conceptualized this construct as a stable personality trait associated with a variety of problem behaviors. Reckless behavior theory posits that increases in reckless behavior during adolescence can be attributed, in part, to increases in sensation seeking. This study evaluated patterns of stability and change…

The focus of this study was to prospectively investigate the effect of aggressive behavior and of classroom behavioral context, as measured in the fall of 1st grade, on the timing of 1st school removal across Grades 1-7 in a sample of predominately urban minority youths from Baltimore, Maryland. Using a multilevel discrete-time survival framework,…