Students in distress: Unanticipated findings in a cyber bullying study

This article discusses the use of quantitative measures to foster the agency and capabilities of children and youth research participants, and facilitate opportunities for students to receive social services. Based on unanticipated findings of a cyber bullying study among students in grades 4, 7 and 10, we discuss how quantitative measures identified youth “in distress” and allowed opportunities for students to obtain resources that would be helpful. Data indicate that students were able to express their agency by navigating the quantitative phase of the research process in ways that met their needs. These findings suggest that quantitative methods should be included among a range of research methodologies that can promote children and youth's agency and unique voices; meaningfully engage children and youth; and offer benefits to youth participants.     

Supporting a strong sense of purpose: lessons from a rural community

Many rural youth leave their small home towns, at least temporarily, to pursue education and work opportunities after high school. A strong sense of purpose will likely help these young people navigate their transition to adulthood away from the comforts of home. A case study of high school students in a remote rural county in the Pacific Northwest using survey and ethnographic data showed that traditional out-of-school activities (for example, sports, theater, band, Future Farmers of America) and community-based activities (for example, community symphony, community classes, community events), along with work experiences, were all important for developing a strong sense of purpose. The case study points to the important role small rural schools can play in supporting youth and connecting them to activities that foster a strong sense of purpose. In addition, this article discusses the importance of paying attention to the development of a sense of purpose alongside traditional measures of academic achievement and social competence.     

Understanding weaknesses in bullying research: How school personnel can help strengthen bullying research and practice

School personnel (teachers, administrators, counselors, staff, and social workers) would greatly benefit from a stronger understanding of bullying dynamics. In order to heighten their understanding, we must strengthen bullying research. Despite more than 40 years of bullying research, a number of methodological weaknesses continue to plague the field of bullying. First, there is a lack of a common definition of bullying, making it difficult to compare results across studies. Second, some researchers use one-item measures of bullying, a practice that lacks content validity and fails to assess the entire scope of the bullying dynamic. Third, many measures fail to assess all forms of bullying. Fourth, researchers often fail to provide a definition of bullying or to even include the word “bullying” in their measures, thus conflating the measurement of bullying and aggression. Finally, most scales measure the prevalence of bullying and fail to assess the motivations for bullying or reasons why youth are bullied or bully others. The current article provides an overview of these five weaknesses present in bullying research, presents possible solutions, and discusses implications for school personnel.     

Homeless youth,strain, and justice system involvement: An application of general strain theory

Using Agnew's (2006) general strain theory as a guide, we seek to identify some of the key events and experiences that place homeless youth at high risk of justice system involvement. By expanding and elaborating on the particular types of strains and stressors that are relevant to homeless youth, we identify several key (and understudied) strains that may help to account for their high risk of justice system involvement and that may also place them at risk of persistent homelessness. These strains include experiences of polyvictimization, experiences of discrimination and violent victimization that result from an LGBT identity, and a variety of failures and setbacks associated with multiple system involvement. The implications of this work for policy, practice, and future research are discussed.     

Advancing the Career Counseling Profession: Objectives and Strategies for the Next Decade

This article discusses the 9 analyses of the career counseling profession's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that appear in this September 2003 special issue of The Career Development Quarterly. The author identifies points of convergence, proposes a mission statement, and summarizes what career counselors seem intent on doing in the coming years. The analysts recommended that the career counseling profession concentrate on 8 objectives: advancing theory that is more holistic, contextual, and multicultural; using accumulated research more effectively; focusing new research on the career counseling process; exploiting technology to construct new tools; ameliorating career counseling training; expanding the National Career Development Association's role; increasing advocacy about public policy; and fostering the international growth of the profession.     

Promoting youth purpose: a review of the literature

This article reviews the research literature on teaching and supporting purpose in adolescence and young adulthood. An extensive search revealed that most studies on youth purpose examine psychological correlates and neglect instructional and social supports. School is an effective context for fostering purpose, yet reported approaches for explicitly instructing for purpose are rare after the early 1990s, reflecting a trend away from a language of purpose as a discrete endeavor in education since at least the 1960s. Furthermore, research on the outcomes of early purpose instruction curricula is not present in empirical journal articles. Nevertheless, a concern for fostering youth purpose has not disappeared from education; rather, it is subsumed under approaches that foster more comprehensive positive student outcomes, such as character, civic engagement, and positive youth development. Key curricular approaches to these outcomes are therefore also reviewed and examined for insights into how purpose can be fostered.     

Some kids are left behind: The failure of a perspective,using critical race theory to expand the coverage in the sociology of youth sports

Sports are no longer simply extracurricular activities. For many children, sports are curricular, central to their identity, development, and peer and familial relationships. However, sport scholars and sociologists spend little time trying to learn and understand the huge growth in youth sports participation and even less attention to the role of race in youth sports. Sociology could offer much more, but suffers from what James McKee calls ( 1993 ) “the failure of a perspective” with regard to studying and understanding race, racism, and race relations. Critical Race Theory can help to extend the coverage of youth sports to include more input from Youth and of Scholars of Color. In this article, we review a current debate in the sociology of youth sports, which illustrates the gap in understanding the experiences of youth of color and Black athletes in particular. And, we provide solutions and ideas for future research.     

Health Issues of Homeless Youth

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of what is currently known about the health issues of homeless youth, focusing on risk-taking behaviors, health status, and access to care. The paper addresses the health issues of homeless youth in the U.S. within an international context. Existing data suggest that homeless adolescents exhibit high rates of risk-taking behaviors, face additional barriers to access of health care, and suffer from a high burden of poor health. However, most research on the health of homeless youth has been cross-sectional and has relied on convenience sampling. Future research should focus on conducting more methodologically rigorous studies on the specific health needs of homeless youth. Research should include eliciting information directly from the youth about their preferred health care interventions.     

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual homeless youth: an eight-city public health perspective

This article reports on results of a one-day public health survey conducted in six states by homeless youth providers to measure and compare risk factors between lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) homeless youth and non-LGB homeless youth. This article intends to inform the child welfare field on existing gaps in services and areas where more training and technical support is necessary in providing services to homeless LGB youth. The findings point to substantial differences within the homeless youth sample and demonstrate that in addition to the public health risks young people face merely by being homeless, the risks are exacerbated for those who self-identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. The article informs child welfare providers and policymakers about the substantial vulnerability of LGB youth beyond that of non-LGB homeless youth and the need to fund programming, training, technical assistance and further research to specifically respond to the complex needs of this population.     

Supporting vocationally oriented learning in the high school years: rationale, tasks, challenges

This article highlights the limitations of our current educational system in terms of vocational learning and highlights the role that vocational learning can play in supporting youth development and improving youth outcomes. It discusses the role that nonschool settings can play in supporting vocational learning and suggests strategies to improve our in-school and out-of-school systems to build a more coherent whole that promotes youth development across various settings.     

Clinical and Ethical Considerations for Delivering Couple and Family Therapy via Telehealth

Studies have generally supported telehealth as a feasible, effective, and safe alternative to in‐office visits. Telehealth may also be of particular benefit to couples/families interested in relational treatments, as it addresses some of the barriers that may be more prominent for families, such as childcare and scheduling difficulties. Therapists interested in expanding their practice to include telehealth should understand ethical and practical considerations of this modality. This article discusses areas unique to the delivery of telehealth to couples and families. Each broad domain is then elaborated upon with case examples from actual clinical practice and specific recommendations for addressing potential difficulties. Authors recommend further empirical research examining differences in modality outcome, as well as feasibility of the suggestions proposed here.     

Data integration in the evaluation of juvenile justice education

This article discusses the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program's evaluation of juvenile justice education through the integration of multiple data sources. Validation of best practices and the corresponding effect of these practices on community reintegration require the development of a comprehensive database of program-level and individual-level indicators from several sources. These sources include the Florida Department of Education, the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Florida Department of Corrections, and the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program's own educational quality assurance and pre-/posttest data. This article examines the methodological, political, and bureaucratic obstacles encountered in this effort. Evaluation research analyses are also explored with an emphasis on the meaning of outcome measures relative to causal issues of time order, the modeling of events, and analytic strategy. The article provides a framework for future juvenile justice educational evaluation and a critical examination of problems encountered in integrating data sources for the purpose of outcome evaluation.     

Patching Holes and Integrating Community: A Strengths-Based Continuum of Care for Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,Transgender and Questioning Youth

This article describes an integrated model of service provision called a continuum of care (CoC), and illustrates the application of this approach to working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth through a case example. The CoC described in this article includes provision of individual and group counseling, case management, housing/family supports, socialization events, and prevention workshops, along with relevant outcomes. The relevance of a CoC model for LGBTQ youth due to the inclusion of community context and potential to empower service users is explored. Key recommendations for CoC models with LGBTQ youth include a focus on collaboration, provider education, and affirmative practice, and incorporating service user feedback.     

The social “R & D” paradigm in child and youth services: Building knowledge convivially

Adaptation of agricultural and industrial research and development models offers new methods for bridging the worlds of research and practice in child and youth services. Social R & D methodologies provide effective means for generating new social technologies because they are product oriented and use a wide array of traditional and nontraditional data sources. This article discusses one social R & D paradigm—Developmental Research and Utilization. Permanency planning and community support systems research are used to illustrate the past and potential application of this methodology to the field of child and youth services.     

Youth studies in transition: theoretical explorations

In youth studies, a clear distinction is made between theories on youth in transition and theories of youth culture. Whereas theories and research on youth transitions often use quantitative data – (and therefore need to operationalize their ‘variables’) – cultural studies uses various qualitative methods, alongside a more elastic definition of, and conceptual approach to, young people’s socio-material living conditions. The argument made in the present article is that we need a theoretical renewal in youth studies that will enable us to thoroughly explore class, gender and ethnicity in light of the intersections between social and cultural positions. At the same time, we also need to elaborate our conceptual tools to capture contemporary transformations of social identity among youth and in society and culture. The aim is to reintroduce three central concepts in the renewal of youth studies, that of identity, subculture and resistance. Furthermore, it is imperative that connect and create links between these concepts and theories of youth in transition.     

An overview of how sports, out-of-school time, and youth well-being can and do intersect

This article examines the benefits and disadvantages of participation in organized youth sports and describes a youth development approach to sports programming. The authors summarize what is known about the physical, socioemotional, and cognitive benefits of sports participation. These include health benefits (for example, a reduction in heart disease and diabetes) as well as socioemotional benefits, among them the coping skills of being able to bounce back from problems. The authors describe some of the disadvantages of participation as well. In particular, studies in this area have focused on health risk behaviors and engagement in problem behaviors. The authors present an innovative approach to youth sports and the advantages of implementing this approach using the emerging community youth development framework. Specific examples of youth sports programs are provided that use a positive youth development framework.     

Conceptualizing a Mobile App for Foster Youth Transitioning to Adulthood: A Mixed-Method Approach

Despite the promise of mobile smartphone applications (apps) in addressing challenges faced by foster youth transitioning to adulthood, the literature is devoid of conceptual frameworks for the development of these apps. This article documents the process of using Concept Mapping to delineate a conceptual framework germane to developing an app to assist youth transitioning from foster care to adulthood, and explore differences in development priority areas among participants. Participant data was collected via qualitative brainstorming sessions, and analyzed using multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis. This article explicates findings from this study, discusses implications, and identifies apposite areas for future research.     

Basil Bernstein: Theory,models and the question of method

The purpose of this article is to address the interpretive synthesis of qualitative research. The article discusses the potential to develop a ‘meta-interpretation’ approach which attempts to maintain an interpretive epistemology congruent with the majority of primary qualitative research. The article identifies and discusses a range of issues in the synthesis of interpretive qualitative research (objectivity, evaluation of studies, sampling, context, interpretation and integrity) that emerge from a review of nine research methods involving synthesis and a broader review of the research synthesis literature. Seven fundamental features of meta-interpretation are outlined and the meta-interpretation procedure is presented. In conclu-sion, the aims of synthesis procedures in general and meta-interpretation in particular are discussed.     

The Role of Social Support in the Transition From Foster Care to Emerging Adulthood

Many youth leave foster care with disrupted relationships with their family and others in their social networks. Previous research has documented the severe adversity that former foster youth face in the transition to young adulthood. Perhaps some difficulties are at least partially related to a lack of social support that results from frayed relationships. This article reviews the literature on social support, particularly as it relates to foster youth, for the purpose of examining the role that formal and informal supports play in the transition to adulthood. The implications of this literature for successful transitions for former foster youth are discussed, as well as ways child welfare workers can engage youth and their families, and help them develop supportive social networks.     

Life-Stage and Mobility: An Exploratory GPS Study of Mobility in Multigenerational Families,Ahmedabad, India

As the population of older adults in India grows, research is needed to plan a sustainable future for India’s older adults. This article reports results from a Global Positioning System (GPS)–based pilot study that examined the mobility of middle-class, older adults living in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. Using mobility as a lens through which to examine the lives of older adults, we map potential research and identify policy areas of interest considering older adults in urban India. The study explores the role of life stage in mobility as well as the effects of gender and urban environment on mobility. Using this distinctive perspective on day-to-day life, we propose themes through which, using policy and planning tools, the living environments of older adults in Indian cities can be improved. These policy measures include focusing on walkability and pedestrian safety in residential areas and building on existing mixed land use to create high accessibility to goods and services in urban environments.