This study explores how secondary school students perceive high-performing potential classmates. A total of 1,794 seventh- and 10th-grade students from five countries completed a questionnaire measuring their expectations of hypothetical male and female high-performing classmates in three categories: intellectual ability, positive social…

Researchers, school personnel and parents are concerned with students' academic motivation. However, research on the topic yields ambiguous results. While adolescents in Western societies report a decline in achievement drive over the school years, adolescents in some Eastern societies may avoid this negative trend. In addition to personal…

Using primary socialization theory and theory of planned behavior, this study examined how targeted parent-child communication against substance use and parents' references to the negative consequences of their own past substance use (from the youth's perspective) directly and indirectly relate to Latino and European American youth's external…

The role of adolescents' disclosure to their parents in their academic adjustment was examined in a study of 825 American and Chinese adolescents (mean age = 12.73 years). Four times over the seventh and eighth grades, adolescents reported on their spontaneous disclosure of everyday activities to their parents, the quality of their relationships…

Background and purpose: This study explores the issues of cyberbullying from a cross-cultural perspective. The focus is on the examination of the extent of a sample of Canadian and Chinese adolescents' experiences and possible culture differences related to bullying and cyberbullying. Sample: Two sets of data were collected in Canada and China. In…

Examined self-report cross-sectional and longitudinal data on associations between drug use, suicide ideation, and attempts among seventh-and eighth-grade males. African Americans had highest prevalence of six-month ideation; Haitians had highest attempts. For total sample, tranquilizers had highest odds ratio for ideation. Psychoactive drug use…

The third Attorney General's California Student Substance Use Survey was conducted between December 1989 and March 1990. A total of 6,282 students in grades 7, 9, and 11 participated. The primary focus was the extent to which declines in the use of drugs other than alcohol observed in the 1987-88 survey persisted, and whether the decline included…

Analyzes risk factors for drug use among 6,760 sixth- and seventh-grade Cuban, other Hispanic, African-American, and white non-Hispanic males in Miami (Florida). The cumulative prevalence of risk factors is monotonically related to drug use, but ethnic and racial differences in risk factor profiles suggest cultural differences in predictive value.…

This user's guide provides an overview of an approach to learning about different cultures that is based on an understanding of young adolescent development. It highlights three teaching methods that are considered of particular importance to the educational process: (1) the integration of materials in social studies and language arts classes; (2)…