Journal Publications

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary efficacy of Connected Dads, Healthy Teens, a four-week online father-teen program designed to promote healthy communication and decision-making about sex and relationships.

A pilot sample of 53 fathers and 50 of their high-school aged teens participated in this program and took pre- and post-test surveys. Participants reported high levels of program feasibility and acceptability. Preliminary efficacy assessment from fathers and teens showed statistically significant increases in sexual health knowledge, and frequency and comfort with father-teen communication. Fathers showed increased self-efficacy for father-teen communication and teens showed increased self-efficacy for communication with a partner.

Our findings suggest that the Connected Dads, Healthy Teens program may help fathers and teens to learn sexual health information and communicate about sex and relationships, which has potential to reduce teens’ sexual risk behaviors and bolster their sexual health.

This study was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (5R21 HD109744-02).

Father-teen communication about sex can positively influence teens’ sexual health, but few programs provide guidance for fathers to talk with their teens about sexual topics. This study qualitatively examines fathers’ feedback on the Connected Dads, Healthy Teens intervention, an online program designed to support teens’ health and promote fathers’ sexual health communication with their teens.

The research team used content analysis to analyze interviews with 25 fathers from across the United States who participated in the program with their teens. Findings showed that fathers viewed the program as impactful, describing gains in knowledge and communication skills, shifts in mindset related to their teens’ sexual health, and increased engagement and closeness with their teens. Fathers described skill-building components with tips for how to talk with teens about challenging topics as a particularly useful aspect of the program, extending beyond talk about sex and relationships.

These findings highlight the potential of father-based interventions to improve fathers’ engagement with their teens to support their sexual health. It also shows the importance of concrete tools to support fathers’ parenting, which have potential to impact fathers’ engagement with their teens on topics beyond a sexual health focus.

This study was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R21 HD109744).

Machine learning is increasingly prevalent in mental health care, with contemporary initiatives leveraging these technologies, sometimes in combination with wearable devices, toward novel interventions. 

This paper investigates the development of one of these systems, using a conversation analysis approach to better understand the work of “guides,” a form of labor that is involved in the trial's implementation, and how people are trained for this role. Guides are assigned participants with whom they meet one-on-one over the course of the behavioral modification intervention. Guides are described in advance as an easily replaceable component of the trial. While their work appears sophisticated and valuable in ethnographic observation, in training sessions it is described and enacted as a narrow communicative task of adequately resolving participant queries, even when these queries raise questions about environmental factors or the trial protocol. 

This paper demonstrates how this occurs in guidance training interactions, offering an empirical account of how new forms of human labor that are required by a machine learning-driven intervention are constituted in the interactional practice of training—a process that contributes to both the minimization of the new human labor required for machine learning-based interventions and the conceptualization of digital mental health interventions as neutral, portable, and not contingent on environmental factors. 

As digital mental health initiatives move from small pilot studies into broader implementation, understanding of the interactional processes by which new human roles are established is key for specifying new kinds of human labor involved in digital health interventions and leveraging these new roles for adapting interventions according to the particular circumstances of diverse participants and patients.

The Teen & Dog Study is a longitudinal research project aimed at understanding the impact of youth-dog relationships on youth coping with social anxiety. The study will follow 514 United States adolescents (ages 13–17) with high social anxiety who live with dogs and their families, collecting longitudinal assessments of their physiological, emotional, and social well-being. 

With a focus on identifying the mechanisms by which youth-dog interactions may support adaptive coping, the study has three primary aims: (1) assess how the youth-dog relationship contributes to coping with social anxiety over time, factoring in individual, family, and peer influences; (2) investigate family-level processes that enhance youth-dog relationships and identify barriers to optimization; and (3) examine how dog interactions influence adolescents’ physiological responses, particularly in relation to anxiety. The study integrates quantitative and qualitative data, including surveys, interviews, ecological momentary activity, and continuous physiological monitoring, to assess strategies for optimizing youth-dog interactions in the context of social anxiety. 

This paper outlines the study protocol and presents characteristics of the study sample at baseline. Ultimately, the Teen & Dog Study seeks to inform interventions that harness the benefits of youth-dog relationships to improve mental health outcomes.

Father-teen talk about sex and relationships can protect teens from sexual risk behaviors. However, few studies explore fathers' roles and engagement within family systems to support teens' sexual health and relationships.

This study qualitatively investigated fathers' perspectives on family roles and communication related to talking with teens about sex and relationships. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 43 fathers of high school-aged teens. Interview data were analyzed using thematic analysis.

Results identified themes related to fathers' feelings about talking with their teens about sex, fathers' talk with their own parents about sex, fathers' and mothers' roles in talking with their teens about sex, and parents' communication with each other about their teens' sexual health.

This study identifies supports and barriers to father-teen communication about sex and suggests that parents' patterns of coparenting extend to supporting their teens' sexual health. These findings show the need to expand our understanding of father-teen communication about sex from a dyadic relationship to one which is embedded in a family system.

This study was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R21 HD100807-01A1).

In this paper, the researchers found that immigrant students who attend U.S. colleges are disproportionately employed in either large firms—especially multinationals—or small firms and self-employment. Using linked U.S. Census and longitudinal employment data, they trace the jobs taken by college students in 2000 during the 2001-20 period and evaluate four mechanisms shaping sector and firm size placement: geographic clustering, degree specialization, firm capabilities/visas, and ethnic self-employment specialization.

They found that degree fields predict large firm and multinational placement, while ethnic specialization explains small firm sorting. Immigrant students who remain in the U.S. earn more than their native peers, suggesting the segmentation reflects productive sorting rather than blocked opportunity.

In this paper, the researchers characterize the careers of minimum wage workers by merging data collected from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation covering 1992-2016 into data from the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics Program.

A long-run analysis shows strong earnings growth for these workers in subsequent decades, becoming indistinguishable from peers earning modestly more initially. Most of this growth is due to the steep earnings trajectories of young workers. Older workers earning minimum wages show a modest dip in earnings at that moment compared to earlier and later periods. Increases in state minimum wages do not significantly alter the future careers of workers who are on the minimum wage when the increases occur.

Although studies have often examined the consequences of screen use, the contexts surrounding what leads to positive social media use is underexplored, particularly in girls. Digital mental health apps can be important resources to complement professional mental health care, particularly apps that take a youth-centered and age-appropriate developmental perspective.

Positive youth development programs are emerging that focus on girls’ empowerment in digital spaces, which is an increasingly critical part of the digital caretaking ecosystem. This article explores some of these programs and makes recommendations for clinicians, community youth providers, and youth program evaluators.

YouTube is the most popular social media platform for children and adolescents, yet relatively little research has been conducted on adolescents’ use and their motivations for use. Prior research has predominantly focused on measuring the quantity of time spent on the platform, and less is known about the motivations and self-awareness of using YouTube as children turn into tweens and teens. 

Stemming from a larger survey study of adolescent social technology use, the researchers interviewed a subset of 35 youths (50% female, 49% male, 1% non-binary) to qualitatively explore the benefits and challenges of YouTube use. Thematic analyses revealed the wide range of emotional responses and regulation that were attributed to YouTube use, including humor, fear, anger, insecurity, and anxiety. Some participants experienced wishful identification with YouTube influencers, and others viewed YouTube as entertainment or an escape from boredom. 

Sleep regulation was mixed, in that for some, YouTube was a distraction from getting enough sleep, and for others, it helped them fall asleep. Parental monitoring was a developmental challenge as the youths described their parents as lacking knowledge about the length of time they spend on the platform and/or the risky YouTube content that they watch, particularly as they got older. 

These exploratory findings may be pertinent for parents, educators, and clinicians.

This review looks at current trends in the effect of social media use on mental health, identity development, and civic engagement for LGBTQ + youth during the post-pandemic period, when online engagement has significantly increased. It explores both risks and benefits associated with this shift and offers recommendations for clinicians and future research in this evolving landscape.

There is an intricate relationship between the harms and benefits of social media use and developing adolescents. While some research suggests that social media use and overuse is associated with negative outcomes such as depression and anxiety, many recent studies have found that, for LGBTQ+ youth in particular, social media may be a necessary safe space they have for representation and community building, especially when absent in their physical world. It is important to look at the nuances behind social media use motivations and adolescents’ intersectional identities when understanding and developing personalized interventions for mental health.

This review looks at how LGBTQ+ youth have used social media since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to increase their own agency and build community through developing their own safe spaces online. LGBTQ+ youth’s hidden and intersectional identities might isolate them within their home and community environments, which must be considered when thinking about controlling adolescent social media use. Ongoing research should look into the relationship between social media use and LGBTQ+ adolescent mental health at a more granular level, rather than just LGBTQ+ vs. heterosexual peers, to further tailored interventions.

For adolescents who have a father in their lives, father–teen conversations about sex and relationships can protect teens from risky sexual behaviors. However, little is known about the content and process of these conversations. 

This study explored topics of and approaches to fathers’ talk with their teens about sex and relationships in interviews with a diverse sample of 43 fathers of high school-aged adolescents from across the United States. Interview data were analyzed using content analysis. The results showed how fathers talked with their adolescent children about topics of sexual behavior, risks of sex, dating and relationships, as well as less studied areas of diverse sexual and gender identities and consent, and how these conversations differed with male and female teens. 

Findings also showed that fathers took multiple approaches to talk about sex, including personal talk, talk about friends and family, and use of media and other distal contexts to start conversations. These findings show how fathers contribute to the sexual socialization of their adolescent children and suggest points of access for fathers who are unsure how to approach talk with their teens about sex and relationships. 

This project was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute Of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R21HD100807. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Father-adolescent talk about sex can protect adolescents from sexual risk behaviors. However, few studies explore how family members view fathers' talk with adolescents about sex and relationships. An understanding of how fathers, mothers, and adolescents view fathers' roles in talk with adolescents about sex and relationships can help to guide fathers' talk with adolescents and inform programs to provide targeted support for father-adolescent communication about sex and relationships.

This study investigates family perceptions of father-adolescent communication about sex and relationships by triangulating data from fathers, mothers, and adolescents using content analysis to conduct between-family analysis and within-family approaches with 15 families (n = 45 individuals) with high school-aged adolescents from across the U.S.

Analyses showed agreement on the importance of fathers' roles in family talk about sex. The findings showed shared recognition of the importance of fathers' roles in family talk about sex. Between-group analyses showed that fathers, mothers, and adolescents view fathers' roles as emotional supports and open communicators with their adolescents about sex and relationships and as educators and advisors for their adolescent children. Within-family analysis showed that families often agreed that there were gender differences in how fathers talked with their sons and daughters, but family members expressed different views on how adolescents' gender impacts father-adolescent communication about sexual topics.

These findings may encourage fathers who are uncertain about the value of their roles in talking with their adolescent children about sex and relationships. They also highlight the importance of examining how fathers' messages to their adolescents about sex and relationships may continue to follow patterns of gender stereotypes. This is the first study to qualitatively triangulate perspectives of fathers, mothers, and adolescents on father-adolescent communication about sex and relationships. Since fathers are often less involved than mothers in parent-adolescent communication about sex and relationships, an understanding of how mothers and adolescents see fathers' roles and messages can help provide a pathway for fathers' engagement which works within a family system. 

This project was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute Of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R21HD100807. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Much of the current media messaging consists of alarmist headlines that perpetuate a protectionist mentality on the dangers lurking on social media. There is a tendency to “pass the buck” on who is responsible for “saving” our youth from their digital worlds: social media platforms go unchecked from government oversight, parents expect the social media companies to prevent harm, educators want parents to guide their youth, etc.

How about learning from youth as “under-appreciated experts” who can be tapped to improve youth wellbeing? The motivation of the researchers is to elevate youth’s experiences (a.k.a. “youth centeredness”) in future endeavors that involve their digital ecosystems. In this chapter, they illustrate a research-and-action case study framed in positive youth development terms, offering a concrete documentation of how to engage youth in equitable and meaningful ways in the co-design of their own digital wellbeing.

In the U.S., licensed child care is funded through a mostly private market, constraining the supply of accessible high-quality care. Combine this with variable parental needs and preferences and it is easy to see how alignment is not always achievable. Lower-income families in particular face constraints in securing care that is strong on multiple care dimensions of affordability, quality, and availability when, where, and for whom they need it.

Some parents confront forced choices or tradeoffs among aspects of care. This study aimed to understand the tradeoffs parents make in selecting the best care arrangements for their family.

Between October 2019 and January 2020, the researchers interviewed 67 mothers in Massachusetts whose child(ren) had not yet started kindergarten. They worked to understand the ways in which tradeoffs occurred and the implications of those tradeoffs by asking about mothers’ initial preferences and needs when first considering child care options relative to the choices they made.

They found that 1) tradeoffs occurred along the multiple dimensions of care, 2) mothers used strategies to mitigate the consequences of tradeoffs, 3) tradeoffs varied in level of severity, 4) the more accessible the care, the less severe the tradeoff, and 5) tradeoffs varied in meaningful ways. These findings underscore the utility in applying a tradeoffs lens to assessing child care policy and practice in furtherance of equitable solutions.

This article argues that in understanding self-esteem and self-image in adolescence, it is imperative to keep in mind normative adolescent identity development and how adolescents present themselves to society in the online world as well as their online interactions on social media.

Adolescents may use social media accounts to emotionally regulate self-esteem and self-image which may be related to their levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness, with studies showing that social media can either positively or negatively affect self-esteem.

As a normative part of adolescent social comparison seeking, adolescents may build their self-esteem and self-image through social feedback, accepting or rejecting interactions with online peers. As society is more focused on female physical appearance, appearance-contingent self-worth is found more frequently in females.

Selfies, a social media form of self-portraiture, have become a powerful means for self-expression in adolescents, identifying with idealized figures toward their own separation-individuation from primary parental figures.

Rather than making sweeping generalizations about negative outcomes related to youth social media use, in clinical practice it is important to consider intersectional identity factors of a particular youth when assessing impacts of social media on self-esteem.

Women earn less than men, and that is especially true of mothers relative to fathers. Much of the widening occurs after family formation when mothers reduce their hours of work. But what happens when the kids grow up?

To answer that question, the researchers estimated three earning gaps: the “motherhood penalty,” the “price of being female,” and the “fatherhood premium.” When added together, these three produce the “parental gender gap,” defined as the difference in earnings between mothers and fathers.

They estimated (log) earnings gaps for college graduates born around 1960 using longitudinal data from the NLSY79 and from the LEHD-Census that track respondents from their twenties to their fifties.

As the children grow up and as women work more hours, the motherhood penalty is greatly reduced. But women, especially mothers, seem willing throughout their working lives to trade lower pay for various amenities, such as working in firms with management practices that are less penalizing of career interruptions or of shorter work schedules. Fathers, however, manage to expand their relative earnings gains as their children age, particularly among those working in time-intensive jobs, irrespective of work hours or firm fixed effects. The parental gender gap in earnings remains substantial over the family lifecycle.

Using a randomized controlled trial, the researchers investigated changes in both sexual harassment (SH) perpetration and victimization of 2104 middle school students in New York City who received divergent saturation and dosage levels of Shifting Boundaries, an SH prevention program, which was represented by the length of the program. They assessed the saturation effect of the program by comparing the outcomes across respondents from 26 schools in which there were varying percentages of students enrolled in the program.

The data suggested that, overall, the program was effective in reducing sexual harassment victimization but achieved a null effect against respondents' SH perpetration and that neither the length nor the school-saturation level of the program exerted a significant effect on SH perpetration. Although the data indicated a significant difference in SH victimization between the treatment and control group, when comparing subgroups who received treatment with divergent saturation and dosage levels, no statistically significant difference was identified.

These results suggested that the program effect was not contingent on the portion of students in a school who enrolled in the program, nor was it contingent on the dosage.

The purpose of this study was to identify whether different aspects of social media use were associated with substance use among middle- and high school-aged youth. Participants were recruited from four northeast U.S. middle schools and invited to complete an online survey in fall 2019 and fall 2020.

The researchers found that seeing a social media post about drugs/alcohol in the past 12 months was significantly associated with higher odds of ever using alcohol, cannabis, e-cigarettes, and multiple substances. The total number of social media sites ever used was significantly associated with higher odds of ever using cannabis, cigarettes, e-cigarettes, and multiple substances. Checking social media every hour or more was significantly associated with higher odds of ever using alcohol. A higher problematic internet use score was significantly associated with higher odds of ever using cannabis, e-cigarettes, and multiple substances.

These findings support the need for substance use prevention and social media literacy education and screening to begin early, ideally in elementary school, before youth are using social media and substances.

This study was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development under award number R15HD094281-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

In this study, the researchers examined online and offline social supports for sexual minority adolescents, underscoring the understudied developmental period of early adolescence and the mental outcome of loneliness.

LGBTQ+ youth reported significantly higher levels of loneliness compared to their heterosexual counterparts. To understand potential sources of social support while youth explore their sexual identities, the researchers compared the experiences of LGBTQ+ youth at both ends of the loneliness spectrum. Gaining knowledge about their sexual orientation from LGBTQ+ organization websites, participating in gender-sexuality alliances, and using TikTok or Instagram were associated with lower levels of loneliness. Providing social support to online friends was associated with lower loneliness; however, receiving online support was not associated with lower loneliness. Furthermore, proactive social media engagement such as posting uplifting content, joining online communities, or raising awareness about social issues were associated with lower levels of loneliness.

These results provide guidance on specific youth behaviors and online communities beyond a focus on screen time, while highlighting the continued need for social support to ameliorate loneliness, such as gender-sexuality alliance networks.

This study was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development under award number R15HD094281-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

In this study, the researchers surveyed 248 U.S. parents of early adolescents about their media monitoring behaviors, the family context, and perceptions of their children’s problematic internet use. The results revealed that restrictive parental monitoring (including rules and limits of time or content) of adolescents’ digital media use was associated with children’s problematic internet use. However, active monitoring (efforts to promote critical thinking of the media by discussing central themes, character choices, and implicit messages of content) and deference monitoring (intentional avoidance of restrictions, often in an attempt to showcase parental trust in children’s decision-making) were not associated with early adolescent problematic internet use and were associated with family contexts.

Qualitative interviews with a subset of 31 parents revealed that while most parents reported restrictive behaviors, multiple techniques (e.g., active, surveillant, and deference) were also leveraged when navigating children’s online behaviors. Parents tended to converge on the same types and reasons for restrictive monitoring, whereas for other approaches the reasons behind their decision-making were quite different.

The implication of this study is that parental media monitoring behaviors during early adolescence are rapidly evolving and not confined to a single strategy. Understanding the family dynamics and parental involvement in adolescents’ digital media use remains critical in preventing children’s problematic behaviors and promoting positive online behaviors.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award number 1R15HD094281-01 and Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

This study examines the stability and longitudinal predictors of children's self-blame appraisals among a sample of children reported for family violence.

Children aged 7 to 17 years old were recruited as part of a longitudinal assessment of families referred to the U.S. Navy's Family Advocacy Program due to allegations of child physical abuse, sexual abuse, or intimate partner violence. The children completed assessments of self-blame at three time points, and baseline measures of their victimization experience, caregiver-child conflict, and depression.

Victimization that involved injury, the number of perpetrators, the number of victimization types, caregiver-child conflict, and depression were each positively associated with baseline self-blame. The results indicated only caregiver-child conflict and baseline depression predicted increases in self-blame.

These findings suggest clinicians and researchers may consider assessment of victimization characteristics, caregiver-child relationships, and depression symptoms to identify children most at risk for developing self-blame appraisals.

This study used longitudinal data from 940 pet-owning adolescents, collected over four time points from youth in the northeastern United States. The researchers assessed whether pet relationship quality predicted trajectories of loneliness, social anxiety, and depression.

The results indicated that high satisfaction with a pet relationship was associated with more favorable trajectories, but companionship (i.e., regarding the frequency of interacting with the pet) was not related significantly to socio-emotional functioning. High levels of disclosure to a pet were linked with less favorable trajectories for loneliness and depression, but not related to social anxiety.

These results suggest that a pet relationship can, in some cases, be associated positively with socio-emotional development, but that there is significant complexity in these associations. Families, educators, and practitioners should take a nuanced approach to understanding individual adolescent-pet relationships as an asset for specific youth.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development under award numbers R03HD101060 and R15HD094281. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Social technologies such as social media have impacts, both positive and negative, on racial-ethnic (RE) minority adolescents. However, the role of RE identity in social media use and wellbeing has been understudied.

This study addresses the social media experiences and mental health (i.e., depressive and online anxiety symptoms) of a diverse group of 668 adolescents aged 10-17, 45.7% of whom are non-white. The researchers investigated the roles of self-identified RE groups, identity importance, exposure to hate messaging, and gender.

The researchers found significant moderating effects of RE importance, gender, and online hate messaging. Additionally, the moderating role of race-ethnicity reveals a stronger association between greater social media frequency and heightened depressive symptoms among Asian adolescents. Black adolescents showed a significant association between greater social media frequency and decreased online social anxiety. Significant effects of online hate messaging exposure also reveal associations between online behaviors and depression and online social anxiety across adolescents.

This study suggests that association with RE groups and identity importance may have a significant role in social media experiences and mental health outcomes for diverse groups of adolescents. Additionally, the findings highlight both opportunities and hindrances that social media spaces afford racially and ethnically diverse groups during a critical period in psychosocial and identity development.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development under award number R15HD094281. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

This chapter in the book Flourishing in Contexts and Cultures: Sociocultural Perspectives on Fostering Youth Well-Being falls under Section II: Contexts and Circumstances Affecting Youth Well-Being and Flourishing.

In this chapter, the authors shift away from a strictly negative narrative of the relationship between digital technologies and youth wellbeing to explore possible mechanisms for positive outcomes. They discuss how the digital age has not only added another social ecosystem to an already dynamic time of development in adolescence, but has expanded opportunities for growth around identity, resilience, and overall positive youth development. Though online spaces come with risks, especially in an increasingly diverse society, they also come with opportunities to overcome and leverage social capital, self-determination, and increasing control over emotional regulation. Online spaces can be a place of refuge for adolescents, and, ultimately, a source of positive wellbeing.

The book, which embodies the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’, and ‘how’ of youth wellbeing, will be extremely insightful and useful for scholars and researchers as well as policymakers and practitioners (teachers, interventionists, counselors, youth mentors) who seek to promote the wellbeing of young people.

This book chapter focuses on sexual assaults that involve completed or attempted physical contacts against an adult, focusing primarily on female victims. National studies of victimization are relied upon to examine the incidence and prevalence of rape in the United States, and the authors also take an in-depth look at rape in the military, prison, and in the intersections of gender and race. Definition issues, rape myths, the causes of rape, and society’s response to rape and rapists are discussed.

The Bahá’í Faith and African American Studies: Perspectives on Racial Justice provides readers who may already have basic or even advanced familiarity with the struggle for racial justice in the United States with new material from a less well-known angle: that of members of the Baha’i Faith, for whom the pursuit of racial justice, healing, and harmony is central to their religious expression. In this book, readers will find history, social scientific analysis, and personal memoir showcasing Black Baha’is as well as Baha’is from diverse backgrounds who are working to address America’s “most challenging issue.”

During 1992–2007, house price growth was strongly correlated with local entrepreneurship. In this study, the researchers show with Census Bureau data that most of this entry was related to construction and real estate; these entrants tend to be small and short-lived. 

Using a 1998 Texas reform that allowed home equity lending for the first time in the state, they isolated that entrepreneurship through the collateral channel tends to be longer-lived and more balanced across sectors. The collateral channel is a tenth or less of the entry associated with house price increases, driven by a small share of homeowners who are constrained without price growth.

For families with children during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is crucial to explore how both youth and parents view their roles with regard to the shared caretaking of pets. We present findings from a U.S. based study of adolescents and parents regarding pet care responsibility. As part of a broader longitudinal study, we analyzed survey data from 567 pet-owning adolescents and a subset of 356 dog owning adolescents aged 10–17. We also conducted 31 in-depth interviews with parents of adolescents from the same study. Adolescents who reported more pet caretaking responsibilities were more likely to spend time with pets to cope with stress and to have improved family relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic. For dog owners only, increased levels of responsibility for the pet was significantly associated with a higher likelihood of identifying as a pet owner. Qualitative findings showcase the range of parental expectations and adolescent initiative around pet caretaking. Our study highlights the continued importance of pet companionship during the adolescent years as they develop their identities as responsible pet owners.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award numbers 5R03HD101060-02 and 1R15HD094281-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

In this article, Stein and Taylor chronicle the history of the movement to address sexual harassment in K-12 schools, from their unique perspective on the front lines.

The social movement to address sexual harassment in K-12 schools in the United States traces its development to the larger women’s rights movement in the late 1970s. It was an outgrowth of the work of feminist activists who protested and filed lawsuits to draw attention to sexual harassment in the workplace, as an issue of equity for working women. The focus on sexual harassment in K-12 schools did not begin as an academic pursuit or with an emphasis on research, but as an activist movement to rectify injustices.

Stein and Taylor document the unwritten history of this social movement by examining the early roots of the work to address and prevent sexual harassment in K-12 schools. They focus specifically on those who worked in the education field, whether at the state level in the state education bureaucracy or at the local level in school districts across the U.S.

The article looks not only backward but forward, emphasizing the need for current and future researchers to be reflective about their work, to maintain its feminist and gendered perspective, and to ensure research is translated into accessible language so that it is not limited to academic circles.

This study aims to introduce the concept of communities of social media practice, where more experienced users provide guidance to female novice users, “onboarding” newcomers.

Through surveys with 968 early adolescents (average age was 13), the authors quantitatively explored sources and types of guidance for young social media users, popularity of conversation themes related to this guidance, and how these conversations are associated with positive social media engagement. The authors qualitatively documented a case study of how a summer workshop of 17 students promotes positive social media use through a community of practice.

Although early adolescent girls reported that they more frequently talked to their parents about a wider range of social media topics, same-age peers and younger family members (e.g., siblings, cousins) were also frequent sources. Surprisingly, the authors also found that the source most strongly associated with positive social media use was the peer group. This case study of an intentional community of practice demonstrated how peers go from “peripheral” to “centered” in socializing each other for more positive social media use.

Unlike most prior scholarship on mediating social technology use, this study focuses on a critical developmental period (e.g., early adolescents), sources of guidance other than exclusively parents, explores the specific conversation topics that offer guidance, and documents an informal community of practice for girls that provides the training ground for peers and adult facilitators to codesign more positive social media spaces.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award number 1R15HD094281-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Despite the pervasive use of social technology among minority youth, digital media research has been primarily based on white samples of older adolescents and emerging adults. It is critical to understand how overlooked populations—including racial-ethnic, sexual and gender, and other minorities—use digital media for purposes associated with their marginalized backgrounds. As social media adopters are becoming younger, we must explore how the pervasiveness of constant exposure and use affects marginalized identity development in early adolescence.

This book chapter provides an overview of how understudied subgroups of adolescents, namely racial/ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+, economically disadvantaged, and neurodiverse individuals, are influenced by online representations affecting their identity development, and inherent opportunities for risk and resilience. Social media research needs a) to begin at earlier developmental stages to capture critical identity development online and offline, and b) more nuanced research beyond digital access to examine online connections for healthy identity exploration of marginalized adolescents.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award number 1R15HD094281-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Positive youth development has been extensively documented in contexts such as the family, school, and afterschool programs. Emerging theory and research indicate that digital contexts such as social media may also be venues through which young people develop skills and attributes associated with the 5 Cs model (competence, confidence, connection, caring, and character) of positive youth development and thriving.

This study strives to understand if and how middle school youth’s in-person and online networks connect, and if they do connect, whether these connections relate to engaging in beliefs and behaviors associated with positive youth development.

The results suggest that in this sample, middle school youth included peers from afterschool programs in their online networks, and those who had friends from afterschool programs and school engaged in social media behaviors related to positive youth development at higher rates than those who were not connected to in-person networks. No association was found between the amount of time spent in afterschool contexts and any of the positive or problematic social media outcomes in this study.

The authors discuss implications for youth development professionals considering the influence of social media on youth, and next steps for research on afterschool activities and social media use.

This research is supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award number R15HD094281. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

This paper was a collaboration between the National Institute on Out-of-School Time (NIOST) and the Youth, Media & Wellbeing Research Lab at the Wellesley Centers for Women.

Talk with fathers about sex and relationships can support teens’ health, but its impact is limited as few fathers talk with their teens about sexual issues. Needs assessment and fathers’ input on intervention content and structure can guide the development of programs that support fathers’ health-promoting talk with their teen children about sex and relationships.

In this study, the researchers explored fathers’ goals in their talk with teens about sex and relationships and barriers they perceive to these conversations, as well as what they would look for in an intervention program. Interviews were conducted in the U.S. with 43 fathers of high school-aged teens (age 14-18). The interviews explored fathers’ roles in talk with teens, key messages to teens, and approaches and barriers to conversations, in addition to attitudes toward an intervention and feedback on intervention structure, content, and process.

The findings suggest that fathers see talk with teens about sex as part of their roles, but face challenges in accomplishing this goal. Fathers’ feedback highlights their openness to an intervention and can guide the development of a peer-based and interactive program that addresses how to talk with teens about sex in addition to the content of these conversations.

This research was funded by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development: 1R21HD100807-01A1. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

The majority of mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders have an initial onset before age 24, with 20% annual incidence, and with major depressive disorder being the most common one. Health systems may be able to reduce costs by transitioning from the current treatment-focused model for major depressive disorder to a prevention model. However, evidence is needed for (1) the comparative effectiveness of a “scalable intervention” and (2) an implementation model for such a scalable intervention in the primary care setting.

This paper describes a comparative effectiveness trial evaluating the efficacy of two evidence-based cognitive-behavioral prevention programs: Teens Achieving Mastery over Stress (TEAMS), the “gold standard” group therapy model, and Competent Adulthood Transition with Cognitive Behavioral, Humanistic and Interpersonal Training (CATCH-IT), a scalable, self-directed, technology-based model.

Eligible adolescents, age 13–19, are offered one of these two depression prevention programs across five health systems (30 clinics) in urban and suburban Chicago, rural western Illinois, and Louisville, Kentucky. The research team is comprehensively evaluating patients’ outcomes at two, six, 12, and 18-month assessment points. Using a hybrid clinical trial design that simultaneously examines the implementation process, the study is also assessing adolescents', parents', and providers' experiences (e.g., efficacy, time commitment, cultural acceptability) of each intervention approach.

Adolescents’ relationships with their pets can be very important, since adolescents are at a developmental stage when they’re relying less on their families and more on other relationships in their lives—both human and animal. Yet most research on pet companionship focuses on adults and young children. Moreover, lived experiences around having pets in households with adolescents are underexplored, particularly from parents’ perspectives.

The research team interviewed 31 parents/guardians in the Northeast U.S. to explore their perceptions of the benefits and challenges of having pets for their adolescent’s wellbeing as well as how adolescents affected their pet’s wellbeing.

The three main themes for perceived benefits of pets included social (e.g., reducing anxiety), physical (e.g., screen time companionship), and emotional (e.g., regulation of difficult emotions such as anger and loneliness). Challenges to adolescent wellbeing included such social topics as family tension around unevenly shared responsibilities, physical themes such as problematic animal behaviors, and emotional themes related to grieving the passing of pets.

Dr. Charmaraman and her coauthors offer a developmental systems approach to understanding pets within adolescent families, noting future directions for developing family interventions to improve pet-adolescent interactions given the demands of child and pet upbringing during adolescence.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award numbers R03HD101060-02 and R15HD094281-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

The authors of this study led a synchronous virtual workshop centered on social media innovation, collaboration, and computational design for 17 ethnically diverse, geographically dispersed middle school girls (ages 11-14). In this paper, they present the culminating design ideas of novel online social spaces, focused on positive experiences for adolescent girls and produced in small groups, as well as a thematic analysis of the idea generation and collaboration processes.

The authors reflect on the strengths of utilizing social media as a domain for computing exploration with diverse adolescent girls, the role of facilitators in a synchronous virtual design workshop, and the technical infrastructure that can enable active participation and use of participatory design principles in educational workshops with this population.

This study was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development: R15HD094281-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

The protective effects of talk with parents about sex in delaying sex and reducing young people’s risky sexual behavior may extend from adolescence to emerging adulthood. However, little is known about the content and process of this communication, or how parents and their emerging adult children perceive their conversations about sex and relationships.

This study offers a novel exploration of family talk about sex during emerging adulthood and addresses topics that are not typically assessed as part of communication research, such as consent and positive talk about sexuality. The study uses thematic analysis to investigate perceptions of family talk about sex in a qualitative sample of 16 pairs of parents and their emerging adult children in the U.S., and includes talk about protection, sexual behavior, pregnancy, and parenting; the positive aspects of sex; consent; and sexual orientation.

The study’s findings identified variation across topics in terms of 1) similarities and differences in parents’ and emerging adults’ comfort in talking with each other about sexual topics; and 2) how they perceive this communication across a range of sexual issues. These findings can inform the development of resources to support parents on how to talk with their emerging adult children about sexual issues in a developmentally appropriate way.

This work was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development: R03HD095029.

Family communication about sex protects against risky sexual behaviors. However, most research has focused solely on communication with parents. Emerging research suggests that extended family, such as aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings, may also contribute to sexual socialization.

Using data from 844 adolescents (54% Latinx, 17% Black, 56% female), this study assessed patterns of their communication with their parents and extended family across three areas of communication about sex: protection, risk, and relationships. In the resulting four profiles, adolescents reported talking with no one, primarily parents, everyone, or extended family only. Race and immigration status predicted which profile adolescents fit. There was a significant relationship between having engaged in sex and membership in a particular profile, but no significant associations with risk behaviors.

This study provides evidence that youth communicate at different frequencies and sometimes in different ways with parents and extended family. Some patterns of communication are related to whether youth are sexually active. Therefore, practitioners should consider including both parents and extended family in supporting adolescent sexual socialization and health, and interventions should account for extended family as part of adolescents' family ecology.

This work was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development: R21HD088955. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

The COVID-19 pandemic added new challenges to families’ ability to address their children’s needs. Through focus groups and interviews with parents and guardians in Boston, Massachusetts, Dr. Robeson and Dr. Lucas confirmed research that indicates that (1) the experiences and needs of families regarding their children are quite distinct when comparing those who work from home with those who must return to their work sites, and (2) there is an uneven distribution of work by gender within the home.

The researchers learned, as they describe in this book chapter, that the COVID-19 pandemic introduced new fears into households and greater stresses related to work/life balance, and that these stresses were amplified for families that have less access to important resources. This combination produced new constraints and pressures on families and children. Through looking at how families consider child care choices, one can see how these fears, stressors, and constraints contribute to home environments where parental burnout pervades and are worrisome when applied to children’s development.

Parent-child communication about sex and relationships can protect adolescents from risky sexual behaviors, but few studies investigate how family talk may change over the course of development from adolescence to emerging adulthood.

This study explores continuity and change in perceived talk with parents about sex and relationships, following a sample of 15 adolescents in the U.S. over three time points: early adolescence (age 13-14), middle adolescence (age 15-16), and emerging adulthood (age 20-21). The researchers analyzed participants’ experiences of talk with their parents about sex and relationships in terms of their comfort and engagement, as well as the content of that talk, including dating and relationships, pregnancy and parenting, protection, STIs, and sexual behavior.

Their findings show that family communication about sex and relationships extended from early adolescence to emerging adulthood, but changed in content to reflect shifts in adolescent and emerging adult development. Further, while positive engagement and comfort with talk about sex remained relatively high over time, participants’ discomfort and negative engagement appeared to increase, highlighting challenges for ongoing family communication.

These findings suggest a meaningful, ongoing role for parents in family communication about sex and relationships as their children develop, and suggest some opportunities and challenges that parents may face through this process.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award number R03 HD095029-01A1. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

There is a popular assumption that teens’ wellbeing is intricately linked to their social media use. The thinking goes that if they’re spending a lot of time online, and they’re unhappy, it must be because they’re spending a lot of time online.

But a new study from Dr. Charmaraman and her colleagues found that although teens were using social technologies more during COVID-19 lockdowns, and experiencing increases in social anxiety, loneliness, and depression, there was no evidence that one caused the other.

The aims of this longitudinal survey study of 586 middle school students in the Northeast U.S. were to examine (a) changes in positive and negative social technology behaviors prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (fall 2019) compared to during the pandemic (fall 2020), and (b) whether changes in social technology behaviors were associated with wellbeing outcomes.

Dr. Charmaraman and her co-authors found that during this time period, there were significant increases in frequency of checking social media, social technology use before bedtime, problematic internet use, and positive social media use, such as providing support to others and online civic engagement. Students also experienced significant increases in social anxiety, loneliness, and depressive symptoms (and on the bright side, increased strategies of coping when stressed).

The researchers did not find any strong evidence, however, that the changes in wellbeing that teens experienced were meaningfully related to their social technology use. Interestingly, although there were significant increases in time spent on social media, there were no increases in negative online interactions such as harassment—which may provide some relief to parents and educators that this increased time did not necessarily expose youth to more harmful social interactions.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award number R15HD094281-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

This study retrospectively examined 500 child sexual abuse reports to prosecutor's offices, analyzing case progress and predictors of attrition, including details about alleged perpetrator(s), victim(s), their families, and other case characteristics. The researchers found that less than one in five cases proceeded to prosecution.

The researchers describe all outcomes of the reports in the sample and differentiate prosecutors' decisions to (a) intake/close, (b) investigate/close, or (c) prosecute. Because it is important to understand which variables are associated with progress to each stage, they examined unique predictors of the decisions to investigate and to prosecute. Caregiver support and perpetrator age were significant predictors across all outcome variables, while other factors were barriers only to the decision to prosecute.

These results highlight the complexities of case characteristics that are important at different stages of prosecutorial decision-making and can inform future interventions.

This study was supported by Award No. 2014-MU-MU-0001 awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice to the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

During the summer of 2019, WCW Visiting Scholar Hauwa Ibrahim and her collaborators implemented a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) curriculum at three summer camps in northeastern Nigeria. More than 1,200 students aged 10-14 participated in student-centered, interdisciplinary, community-engaged, culturally responsive, hands-on STEAM projects. 

With minimal instruction, students performed science experiments related to density, pH indicators (bases and acids), osmosis, bodily reflexes and reactions, the period of pendulum, genetics (recessive and dominant), fingerprint analyses, Oobleck, and blood typing kits. In technology and engineering classes, students had the opportunity to build baking soda and vinegar-powered rockets, create support structures to absorb shock to prevent eggs from breaking when dropped from the second floor of a building, and make self-supporting da Vinci bridges. Over 80% of the materials used were sourced locally. This article details several of the activities on the syllabus.

Ibrahim and her team’s long-term goals are to positively impact STEAM education and build children’s STEAM skills and knowledge so they can compete in local, regional and global economies, as well as to reduce youth unemployment by teaching cultural traditions and entrepreneurial skills that can be used to generate income.

Despite dramatic workforce gains by women in recent decades, a substantial gender earnings gap persists and widens over the course of men's and women's careers. Since there are earnings differences across establishments, a key question is whether the widening of the gender pay gap arises from differences in career advances within the same establishment or from differential gains from job-to-job moves across establishments. 

Using a unique match between the 2000 Decennial Census of the United States and the Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics (LEHD) data, the researchers found that both channels are important and affect workers differently by education. 

For the college educated, the increasing gap is for the most part due to differential earnings growth within an establishment. The establishment component explains only 27% of the widening of the total gender pay gap for this group. For workers without college degrees, the establishment component is the main driver of the relatively small widening of the gender earnings gap. For both education groups, marriage plays a crucial role in the establishment component of the increasing earnings gap.

In this study, the researchers explore coethnic hiring among new ventures, using U.S. administrative data. Coethnic hiring is ubiquitous among immigrant groups, averaging about 22.5% and ranging from less than 2% to more than 40%. Coethnic hiring grows with the size of the local ethnic workforce, greater linguistic distance to English, and lower cultural/genetic similarity to U.S. natives and in harsher policy environments for immigrants. Coethnic hiring is remarkably persistent for ventures and for individuals. Coethnic hiring is associated with greater venture survival and growth when thick local ethnic employment surrounds the business. These results are consistent with a blend of hiring due to information advantages within ethnic groups and some taste-based hiring.

A leading cause of disability worldwide, depression is a common mental health disorder that affects over 300 million people globally. Depression is characterized by sadness or irritability, lack of interest, and a variety of somatic and vegetative symptoms. It alters people’s moods, thoughts, and behaviors, resulting in impairment in daily functioning. Depression often co-occurs alongside other physical and mental health concerns, and depression increases the risk of several chronic and acute physical health conditions.

Evidence suggests that depression can be prevented but that most people with symptoms of depression do not receive intervention. Integrated care within primary care settings provides opportunities to identify individuals who are at risk for developing depression through screening and to increase access to appropriate evidence-based interventions.

This book chapter presents important background information on depression and reviews associated risk factors, such as parental depression, cognitive factors, gender, and sociodemographic and environmental factors. The authors discuss effective depression screening to identify those at risk, evidence to support preventive interventions, and stepped care interventions that may be used in primary care settings. Finally, they end the chapter with five specific recommendations to assist with the management of depression within primary care.

Few studies longitudinally investigate parent-teen communication about sex, and data are particularly sparse regarding parent-child communication during emerging adulthood.

This study assesses continuity and change in parent-child sexuality communication over three time points, from adolescence to emerging adulthood. It uses interview data from 15 parents in the U.S. at three time points over an eight-year period from 2012 to 2019 (when the teen was in 7th grade, when the teen was in 10th grade, and after the teen finished high school).

The researchers’ findings showed that parents continued to talk with their emerging adult children about sex and relationships. Whereas the topics of conversation were similar over time, the content shifted, with a growing focus on specific relationships and situations. Parents described the gender of their teen/emerging adult children as important in shaping their comfort in talking with them about sex and relationships.

These findings suggest that emerging adulthood may provide ongoing opportunities for parents and their children to talk in open and connected ways about sex and relationships. Programs that support family communication about these topics could expand to address the changing needs of adolescents and emerging adults as they develop, and the ongoing role of parents in supporting their children’s health beyond adolescence.

This work was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development: R03HD095029 and by Wellesley Centers for Women.

College and university students across the United States are experiencing increases in depressive symptoms and risk for clinical depression. As college counseling centers strive to address the problem through wellness outreach and education, limited resources make it difficult to reach students who would most benefit. Technology-based prevention programs have the potential to increase reach and address barriers to access encountered by students in need of mental health support.

This article describes the development of the Willow intervention, an adaptation of the researchers’ technology-based CATCH-IT depression prevention intervention for use by students at a women’s liberal arts college. The article then presents data from a pilot study of Willow with 34 students. Twenty-nine participants (85%) logged onto Willow at least once, and eight (24%) completed the full intervention.

Participants positively rated the acceptability, appropriateness, and feasibility of Willow. After eight weeks of use, results suggested decreases in depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and rumination. This internet-based prevention intervention was found to be acceptable, feasible to implement, and may be associated with decreased symptoms.

Little is known about the effects of social media initiation on digital behaviors from middle childhood to early adolescence, a critical developmental period marked by peer influence and initial access to mobile devices.

In this study, 773 participants from middle schools in the Northeast U.S. completed a cross-sectional survey about social media initiation, digital behaviors, and parental restrictions on digital use. The results demonstrated that overall, early adolescents more frequently engaged in positive digital behaviors compared to negative ones. The results also showed that using Instagram or Snapchat before age 11 was significantly related to more problematic digital behaviors. These problematic behaviors included having online friends or joining social media sites parents would disapprove of, more problematic digital technology behaviors, more unsympathetic online behaviors, and greater likelihood of online harassment and sexual harassment victimization.

Additionally, the youngest social media initiators were more likely to engage in supportive online behaviors. And limiting access to social media lessened some of the negative effects of early social media use.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award number 1R15HD094281-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Related pilot funding was provided by Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development.

Family talks about sex can protect against teens’ risky sexual behavior, but most research has focused on the role of mothers.

This study included survey data from 728 adolescents in the 11th and 12th grades in the United States. The researchers assessed associations between teens’ direct and indirect talk—defined as less straightforward ways to communicate one’s sexual values—with fathers about sex, and teens’ sexual behaviors. There were no significant direct associations between father-teen talk about sex and teens’ sexual behavior. However, teen gender moderated associations between indirect father-teen communication and teens’ sexual behavior.

The results suggest the need to assess indirect talk about sex in studies of family sexuality communication and to further investigate the role of teens’ identities in determining the influence of father-teen talk about sex on teens’ sexual behavior.

This research was funded by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development: R21HD104860-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.