The impact of future expectations on adolescent sexual risk behavior

Preteen Suicidal Ideation and Adolescent Academic Well-Being Among Child Welfare-involved Youth

Background

Youth involved in the U.S. child welfare system (CWS) are at risk for mental health problems, including suicidal ideation (SI). However, the relationship between preteen suicidal ideation and academic outcomes has not been considered.

Methods

This study uses data from two nationally representative longitudinal surveys of CWS-involved youth to examine the association between preteen suicidal ideation (ages 7-11) and subsequent academic well-being (ages 12-17) among CWS-involved youth in the United States. Suicidal ideation was assessed using a single self-report item. Academic well-being was assessed through a number of constructs related to young people's ability to thrive in the present and future, including school engagement, academic achievement, and expectations of what their lives would look like in adulthood. Linear regression models with person-level random effects were estimated.

Results

Findings indicate CWS-involved youth with a history of preteen suicidal ideation performed worse across all measures of adolescent academic well-being compared to their peers without a history of suicidal ideation.

Conclusions

These findings, though associational, have potentially broad implications for understanding how early life suicidal ideation may impede CWS-involved youths' ability to thrive academically.

Stability and Change in Adolescents' Sense of Agency: Contributions of Sex, Multiple Risk, Pandemic Stress, and Attachment to Parents

Although literature states that individual, relational, and contextual factors contribute to adolescents' sense of agency, more research is needed to clarify and understand how adolescents develop this belief over time. The current study examined the stability/change trajectories of the sense of agency during adolescence, specifically across high school, analyzing whether attachment to parents over time, adolescents' sex, cumulative risk in baseline, and pandemic-related stress explained these trajectories. The sample included 467 Portuguese adolescents (40.7% were males; Mage = 15.58 years, SD = 0.80), evaluated three times across 18 months. This work yielded three significant findings. First, adolescents' sense of agency significantly increased over time, with significant between-subject variance at the initial levels but not at the growth rate. Second, attachment to parents consistently links to adolescents' sense of agency across time, despite the differential contributions from attachment to mothers and fathers. Third, boys reported greater growth in the sense of agency than girls. Adolescents' cumulative risk at T1 predicted lower initial levels of sense of agency, whereas higher pandemic-related stress predicted less growth of the sense of agency. These findings emphasize the contributions of individual and family characteristics and the role of the broader social context in shaping the development of adolescents' sense of agency. The findings underline the need to consider further the differential influences of adolescents' relationships with mothers and fathers to understand changes in adolescents' sense of agency.

Do high aspirations lead to better outcomes? Evidence from a longitudinal survey of adolescents in Peru

Using a novel panel survey of relatively poor urban Peruvian adolescents, we explore the link between educational aspirations and propensity to invest in the future. Aspirations comprise hope and agency. We find remarkably high educational aspirations, even among relatively poor individuals and adolescents who were exposed to negative shocks, suggesting high levels of resilience. We also find high occupational aspirations and aspirations to migrate. High-aspiration respondents were also more likely to invest in their education and avoid risky behaviors. These are associations as we do not have enough data to establish causality, although we were able to control for within-person traits. Aspirations are stable over time and positively associated with personality traits such as self-efficacy and life satisfaction, which help explain their persistence over time. Our findings complement those of other recent studies that highlight the role of personality traits in addition to cognitive skills in long-term educational, health, and socioeconomic outcomes.

Contraceptive Consistency and Poverty after Birth

Unplanned pregnancies in the U.S. disproportionately occur among poor, less educated, and minority women, but it is unclear whether poverty following a birth is itself an outcome of this pregnancy planning status. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (n=2,101) and National Survey of Family Growth (n=778), we constructed two-year sequences of contraceptive use before a birth that signal an unplanned versus a planned birth. We regressed poverty in the year of the birth both on this contraceptive-sequence variable and on sociodemographic indicators including previous employment and poverty status in the year before the birth, race/ethnicity, education, partnership status, birth order, and family background. Compared to sequences indicating a planned birth, sequences of inconsistent use and non-use of contraception were associated with a higher likelihood of poverty following a birth, both before and after controlling for sociodemographic variables, and before and after additionally controlling for poverty status before the birth. In pooled-survey estimates with all controls included, having not used contraception consistently is associated with a 42% higher odds of poverty after birth. The positive association of poverty after birth with contraceptive inconsistency or non-use, however, is limited to women with low to medium educational attainment. These findings encourage further exploration into relationships between contraceptive access and behavior and subsequent adverse outcomes for the mother and her children.

‘Looking to the Future and the University in an Inclusive and Sustainable Way’: A Career Intervention for High School Students

Career guidance needs new perspectives, considering the challenges that characterize our future, and it cannot exist without solidarity, inclusion, and attention to environmental challenges. It should also positively influence stakeholders to invest in the values of the 2030 Agenda recently proposed by the United Nations, and its encouragement to think about some of the emergencies that new generations will have to face in the future. Based on these premises, we designed and validated a sustainable career guidance intervention for high school students. The participants (N = 75) were assigned to an experimental or a control group. All of the participants answered questions pre- and post-intervention to measure career adaptability, training, future investment, and wishes about the feature. The students from the sustainable career intervention group increased their post-intervention scores on control, curiosity, confidence, training, and future investment. They also indicated future wishes that take into more account attention to relationships and social challenges.

Risky Sexual Behavior among Arrested Adolescent Males: The Role of Future Expectations and Impulse Control

The current study evaluates two predictors of adolescent sexual risk-taking, specifically whether impulse control or future expectations predict condom use and casual sex. We examine whether risky sex occurs among youth who tend to act without thinking about the future, or instead, youth who report low future expectations. We consider these relations longitudinally among a sample of sexually active justice-involved adolescent males (N = 752, M age = 15.58) a group at heightened risk for sexual risk-taking. We found that optimistic expectations for the future predict a higher likelihood of engaging in consistent condom use, whereas high impulse control is related to a lower likelihood of casual sex. Implications for intervention and research on positive sexual health are discussed.

How Does Juvenile Offending Relate to Mothers' Aspirations and Expectations for Their Sons?

Mothers of 317 first-time juvenile offenders (M = 15.35 years old) were interviewed over 2.5 years about their expectations and aspirations for their sons' futures. Mothers' expectations were lower than their aspirations, reflecting a discrepancy between what mothers felt was important for their child's future and what they considered likely to happen. As their children continued to engage in delinquent acts, mothers' expectations for their sons' future success diminished. Youth age moderated the association between delinquency and maternal expectations, such that when perceived delinquency was high, expectations were lower for mothers of young sons compared to mothers of older sons. These findings carry implications for practice and intervention, as parent expectations and aspirations are both directly and indirectly associated with youth achievement.

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and future expectations in Russian adolescents

In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on the role of future expectations-the extent to which a future outcome is deemed likely-in the health and well-being of adolescents, with research linking future expectations to outcomes such as an increased likelihood of engaging in risky health behaviors. As yet, however, there has been no research on future expectations and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adolescence. To address this research gap, the current study examined the association between ADHD symptoms/possible ADHD status and future expectations in a school-based sample of adolescents. Data were analyzed from 537 Russian adolescents (aged 12-17) with teacher-reported ADHD symptoms and self-reported future expectations. Logistic regression analysis was used to examine associations. In fully adjusted analyses, inattention symptoms/possible ADHD inattentive status was associated with lower future educational expectations, while a possible ADHD hyperactivity status was associated with increased odds for negative future expectations relating to work, family and succeeding in what is most important. The findings of this study suggest that greater ADHD symptoms/possible ADHD status in adolescence may be linked to an increased risk for negative future expectations across a variety of different life domains.

Adolescent Agentic Orientations: Contemporaneous Family Influence, Parental Biography and Intergenerational Development

Agentic orientations developed in adolescence have been linked to better health, well-being, and achievements in the years following. This study examines longitudinal parental influences on the development of adolescent children's agentic orientations, captured by the core constructs of mastery beliefs and generalized life expectations. Drawing on multigenerational panel data from the United States (1991-2011), the study examines contemporaneous family factors, but also how parental biographies (their own transition to adulthood) and parents' own adolescent agentic orientations influence their adolescent children. Study adolescents were 46% male, 52% white, and 15.6 years old on average. The findings indicate that parents' early orientations and experiences in the transition to adulthood have little effect on their children's mastery beliefs, but that parents' generalized life expectations (in adolescence) and having married before having the child were associated with their children's more optimistic life expectations. Contemporaneous family income and optimistic expectations among parents-as-adolescents were somewhat substitutable as positive influences on adolescents' optimistic life expectations. The findings contribute to our understanding of intergenerational and over-time influences on these key adolescent orientations.

Aspirations, Expectations and Delinquency: The Moderating Effect of Impulse Control

Although prior research finds a robust link between delinquent behavior and expectations, or an adolescent's perceived likelihood of obtaining one's future goals, fewer studies have evaluated aspirations, or the perceived importance of achieving one's goals. In addition, few studies consider how individual traits such as impulsivity affect the degree to which expectations and aspirations motivate or deter delinquent behavior. We contribute to this body of research by evaluating the independent effects of expectations and aspirations, and the aspiration-expectation gap (i.e., strain) on delinquent behavior during the year following an adolescent's first arrest using a large (N = 1117), racially/ethnically diverse sample of male adolescents (46.55% Latino, 35.81% Black, 14.95% White, and 2.69% Other race). In addition, we considered how impulse control interacts with expectations, aspirations, and strain to motivate behavior. Our results indicated that both aspirations, expectations and strain uniquely influence criminal behavior. Importantly, aspirations interacted with impulse control, such that aspirations affected delinquency only among youth with higher impulse control. Our findings suggest that aspirations may only influence behavior if youth also have the psychosocial capabilities to consider their future aspirations when behaving in the present.

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow up? Career Aspirations as a Marker for Adolescent Well-being

OBJECTIVE

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" is a simple, commonly asked question that might provide insight into adolescent well-being. Career aspirations might reflect an adolescent's sense of identity, hope for the future, and self-efficacy, all of which are critical to identifying at-risk youth and intervening on risky behaviors. However, there are no studies on whether career aspirations are associated with adolescent emotional and health behavior outcomes.

METHODS

We analyzed cross-sectional surveys of 929 ninth to 12th grade low-income minority adolescents in Los Angeles assessing career aspirations and its association with hopelessness, self-efficacy, substance use, violence, and risky sexual activity. We used Department of Labor statistics to categorize career aspirations according to amount of education required, income, and prestige. Generalized estimating equations accounted for sociodemographic characteristics, school type, academic performance, and clustering at the school level.

RESULTS

Grades, standardized test scores, and health behaviors varied according to career type. Adolescents with higher career aspirations, measured according to career-related education, income, and prestige reported less hopelessness and more self-efficacy. After adjusting for confounders, aspirations requiring high levels of education were associated with decreased odds of alcohol use, at-school substance use, and risky sexual activity, and higher prestige scores were associated with decreased odds of other drug use.

CONCLUSIONS

Career aspirations might be a marker for adolescent health and well-being. Adults might consider asking a teen what they want to be when they grow up to gain insight into their levels of hopelessness and self-efficacy and provide context for counseling on healthy behavior change.

Assessing future expectations of low-income minority young men: Survival-threats and positive expectations

Future expectations, a subset of overall orientation, represent youths' most realistic appraisals of future outcomes, and has been demonstrated to be associated with a range of health risk behaviors and wellbeing. The current study extends previous measurement efforts to operationalize and measure future expectations by estimating a multidimensional model of future expectations encompassing both positive and survival-based expectations, and using longitudinal data to test the consistency of these constructs over time. The current work uses data from six waves of the Chicago Youth Development Study (n=338), a sample of African American and Latino young men from low income neighborhoods in an urban center, to test a hypothesized multidimensional structure of future expectations across adolescence. Test retest confirmatory factor analyses from six waves of data covering the mean age range of 12 to 19 years reveal good model fit for the hypothesized multidimensional model of future expectations at each wave. Strong measurement invariance based on race/ethnicity is established for the multidimensional model. Implications for a latent construct approach to future expectations with low-income racial/ethnic minority young men are discussed.

Adolescents' sexual and reproductive health: an ecological perspective

BACKGROUND

Adolescence is the key time in the formation of sexual confidence and fertility in people and many risky sexual behaviors in this sensitive era are the roots of many adulthood diseases. STD and early pregnancy are among the most important issues of adolescence.

OBJECTIVE

This study deals with reviewing ecological factors related to the sexual and reproductive health of adolescents.

METHODS

As this study was a narrative review the researchers conducted their computer search in public bases such as Google Scholar and then in more specialized ones such as MEDLINE, EMBASE, Science Direct, Up-to-date, SPRINGER, SID, Magi ran, Iranmedex and Irandoc with the key words adolescents, sexual health, reproductive health and ecological from 1991 to 2015. Initially 152 articles were elicited and after a review study of the title and abstract, 80 articles entered the study. After reading the full text, 39 articles were chosen for writing the current review article.

RESULTS

Reviewing the articles led to organizing the contents in three main classes according to Bronfenbrenner's suggestion namely ecological factors at microsystem, mesosystem and macrosystem levels which include individual predisposing factors, environmental enabling factors and social reinforcing factors.

CONCLUSION

Adolescents are at a high risk of STD and early pregnancy. Many factors are considered as effective at this critical era, based on which comprehensive intervention based on ecological factors is needed to step forward toward preventing adolescence risks.

Promoting Positive Future Expectations During Adolescence: The Role of Assets

Positive future expectations can facilitate optimal development and contribute to healthier outcomes for youth. Researchers suggest that internal resources and community-level factors may influence adolescent future expectations, yet little is known about the processes through which these benefits are conferred. The present study examined the relationship between contribution to community, neighborhood collective efficacy, purpose, hope and future expectations, and tested a mediation model that linked contribution to community and collective efficacy with future expectations through purpose and hope in a sample of 7th grade youth (N = 196; Mage = 12.39; 60 % female; 40 % African American; 71 % economically disadvantaged). Greater collective efficacy and contribution to community predicted higher levels of hope and purpose. Higher levels of hope and purpose predicted more positive future expectations. Contribution to community and neighborhood collective efficacy indirectly predicted future expectations via hope. Implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Low prospects and high risk: structural determinants of health associated with sexual risk among young African American women residing in resource-poor communities in the south

African American women at increased risk of HIV/sexually transmitted infection (STI) may engage in risky sex as a coping mechanism for depressed economic conditions. This study examines the association between high-risk sexual behavior and structural determinants of sexual health among a sample of young African American women. 237 young African American women (16-19 years old) from economically disadvantaged neighborhoods in North Carolina were enrolled into a randomized trial testing the efficacy of an adapted HIV/STI prevention intervention. Logistic regression analyses predicted the likelihood that young women reporting lack of food at home, homelessness and low future prospects would also report sexual risk behaviors. Young women reporting a lack of food at home (22 %), homelessness (27 %), and low perceived education/employment prospects (19 %) had between 2.2 and 4.7 times the odds as those not reporting these risk factors of reporting multiple sex partners, risky sex partners including older men and partners involved in gangs, substance use prior to sex, and exchange sex. Self-reported structural determinants of sexual health were associated with myriad sexual risk behaviors. Diminished economic conditions among these young women may lead to sexual risk due to hopelessness, the need for survival or other factors.