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Rates and patterns of substance use and violent behaviors among multiracial adolescents were examined and compared with 3 monoracial groups, European, African, and Asian Americans. The relationships between ethnic identity and the subjective experience of racial discrimination, substance use, and violent behavior were also examined. The authors found multiracial adolescents reporting higher rates of problem behaviors. Several significant relationships between ethnic identity and racial discrimination were found with these problem behaviors.

Little is known about what strategies adolescents use in condom use negotiation, or what strategies are successful. In this paper, we report on analyses of the content of 306 adolescents' condom negotiation strategies in a role playing situation. Study participants were higher-risk adolescents recruited in an STD clinic and in a juvenile detention institution. Using an analogue, paper-and-pencil measure, adolescents wrote out the responses they would give to an opposite sex partner who was pressuring them to have sex without a condom. Responses were coded and reasons were grouped into four categories: use condoms, no sex, safety-related reasons, and socio-emolional appeals. Consistent with predictions, socio-emotional messages were more likely to be used with steady than casual partners, and no-sex messages were more likely to be used with casual than with steady partners. Implications for refining intervention design and for future research are discussed.

This study examined the relationship between peer attachment and peer deviance. Study participants were fifth-grade students from an urban school district. Approximately half of the sample was male, and subjects represented a variety of racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Subjects were asked questions about each of four best friends including how much they shared thoughts and feelings with the friends (intimacy), and whether they wanted to be like these friends (identification). They also were asked whether these friends got in trouble with the teacher, and whether they, themselves, got in trouble with the teacher. Results indicated that, in general, early adolescents were more attached to friends who did not get into trouble, regardless of whether they got in trouble themselves. These findings are inconsistent with cultural deviance theories and suggest, instead, that early adolescents likely share a common definition that friendships with conventional peers are more desirable than friendships with deviant peers.

Youth in detention are at higher risk for HIV/AIDS than other sexually active adolescents. This article describes the development of an 8-hour, coed group skilltraining program implemented in a county detention facility with 75 high-risk, heterosexual adolescents-39 African-American (AF) and 36 European-American (EA) teenagers, ages 14 to 17 years. The TAKE 5 training program attempts to create a positive, interactive learning environment through metaphor, sequential learning, membergenerated situations for practice, game formats, and peer facilitators. Training goals include providing adolescents with a range of specific interpersonal skills to help them discuss, negotiate, or insist on condom use with their sexual partners, or to decline unprotected sexual intercourse, in all situations. Four skill steps provided the foundation and organization for the intervention; Think it up, Bring it up, Keep it up. and Reward it. Interventiondevelopment activities included operationalizing generalization programming strategies, and empirically grounding the approach in the experiences and attitudes of the target population. Self-report data on amount of trainee exposure to intervention components, and participant satisfaction with group content and procedures suggested that, overall, these incarcerated youths found the training engaging, relevant, and worthwhile. Further, the absence of race and gender differences in participant reactions to the curriculum suggests that these adolescents perceived the training as culturally and gender appropriate. The article discusses challenges to applied scientific inquiry and raises questions for future intervention research with high-risk, culturally diverse youth.

Information regarding fathers of children born to school-age mothers is minimal. In this study, the authors describe paternal age, relationship and contact with the mother of the child, help provided by fathers, and the natural history of paternal drug use and other illegal behaviors of 170 fathers through three and one-half years postpartum. Results indicated that fathers tended to be older than their partners and have intermittent patterns of contact and changing relationships with mothers over time. Many fathers engaged in illegal activities, including selling drugs. Potential predictors of ongoing contact between fathers, their partners, and their children are explored.

Understanding problem behavior among adolescent mothers is critical, as their behaviors affect not only their own lives but the lives of their children. Using confirmatory factor analysis with an ethnically diverse sample of 233 pregnant adolescents, we test a hypothesis derived from problem behavior theory that diverse problem behaviors are manifestations of a single underlying construct Three measurement models of problem behaviors are compared; a single factor model, a four factor model, and a second order factor model in which a single higher order factor is posited to account for the covariation among the four factors. The results show support for the higher order factor model, suggesting a constellation of related problem behaviors in this population.

Reactions to patients who complain of pain were explored in an experimental study in which nursing students viewed a videotape of a “hospital patient”. The medical diagnosis and the physical attractiveness of the patient were systematically varied. Results indicated that an ambiguous diagnosis itself led to a negative impression of the patient, rather than leading to the use of nonrnedically relevant information (physical attractiveness) to form an impression. Patients with an ambiguous diagnosis were rated less favorably on trait adjectives, and their pain was seen as less genuine.