In recent years, there has been a growing social, educational, and public policy focus on investigating the correlates associated with youth carrying weapons in their communities and schools. Victimization and other correlates such as drug use and violent risk behaviors among youth have been linked to deviant behavior including weapon carrying.…

Dating violence is an important public health concern and is considered to be a form of school violence. While digital technologies have enabled perpetrators of dating violence to target their victims online (cyber dating abuse), little is known about how this form of perpetration relates to specific adolescent risk behaviors. This brief research…

This article proposes an evolutionary model of risky behavior in adolescence and contrasts it with the prevailing developmental psychopathology model. The evolutionary model contends that understanding the evolutionary functions of adolescence is critical to explaining why adolescents engage in risky behavior and that successful intervention…

African-American youth suffer disproportionately from sexual risk consequences including unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. Parents educating young people about sex may be one approach to reduce sexual risk behaviour among this population. The purpose of this study was to determine young people's perceptions of parents'…

Objective: The relationship between condom use and 2 less visible categories of intimate partner violence (IPV), sexual coercion and verbal aggression, was examined among college students. Methods: In March 2007 a random cross-sectional sample of undergraduates from the southeast region of the United States was taken to collect information about…

We conducted focus groups with girls ages 14 to 17 (N = 43) to study how the dominant discourse of sexual risk shapes young women's understanding of the sexual domain and their management of these presumably pervasive threats. Through inductive analysis, we developed a coding scheme focused on three themes: (a) "types of sexual risk,"…

A review of current English literature in the areas of high-risk alcohol use and sexual behavior was conducted from September 2007 to December 2008. Objective: The purpose was to specifically review studies that used alcohol myopia theory (AMT) as the theoretical perspective from which they were evaluated and analyzed. Participants: Collegiate…

Risk taking may be regarded as a normative behavior in adolescence. Risk-taking behaviors may include alcohol, smoking, drug use, delinquency, and acts of aggression. Many studies have explored the relationship between adolescents and risk-taking behavior; however, only a few studies have examined this link in adolescents with learning…

The present study investigated how maternal HIV and mediating family processes are associated with adolescent distress, substance use, and risky sexual behavior. Mother-adolescent (ages 12-21) dyads (N = 264) were recruited from neighborhoods where the HIV-affected families resided (161 had mothers with HIV). Mediating family processes were youth…

Background: Health risk behaviors like substance use (alcohol, tobacco, soft/hard drugs) and risky sexual behavior become more prevalent in adolescence. Children with behavior problems are thought to be prone to engage in health risk behaviors later in life. It is, however, unclear which problems within the externalizing spectrum account for these…

Peer contagion of adolescent males' aggressive/health risk behaviors was examined using a computerized "chat room" experimental paradigm. Forty-three 11th-grade White adolescents (16-17 years old) were led to believe that they were interacting with other students (i.e., "e-confederates"), who endorsed aggressive/health risk behaviors and whose…

Child health and well-being are intrinsically important and also contribute to a healthy, productive adolescence and adulthood. Parents can play an important role in helping their children acquire or strengthen the behaviors, skills, attitudes, and motivation that promote physical and mental health and overall well-being in childhood, adolescence…

Objective: The authors examined the clustering of health-risk behaviors among college students who reported date fight involvement. Participants and Methods: The authors administered a Web-based survey to a stratified random sample of 3,920 college students from 10 universities in North Carolina. Results: Among men, 5.6% reported date fight…

Purpose: To examine smoking initiation in a group of adolescents at risk for developing substance abuse. Methods: Fifty-nine adolescents (25 control and 34 at risk adolescents) participated in a longitudinal study of behavioral and cognitive predictors of development of substance abuse. Aggression, conduct problems, hyperactivity, impulsivity,…

Aliteracy is defined as the quality or state of being able to read but the lack of interest in doing so; aliterates can read, but they never read for the love of reading. Aliteracy is said to be prevalent among college students. Also prevalent among college students are risk behaviors that contribute to poor health. Problem behavior theory links a…