Publication year
2002
Citation Title
Some ways in which neighborhoods, nuclear families, friendship groups, and schools jointly affect changes in early adolescent development.
Journal Name
Child Development
Journal Volume
73
Issue Number
4
Page Numbers
1283-1309
DOI
10.1111/1467-8624.00472
Summary
An assessment of ways in which school, neighborhood, nuclear family, and friendship group contexts jointly contribute to positive change during early adolescence was conducted. Middle school students, parents, teachers, and staff from one county bordering with Washington D.C. participated in a large-scale 19-month longitudinal study. Findings suggested that focused attention on all four contexts is necessary for optimal positive outcomes for adolescents.
Key Findings
The family had the greatest influence on the social behavior and mental health outcomes; friendship groups related to less acting out and drug use; schools related to positive changes in attendance, and rates of entry into 8th grade algebra; and neighborhoods influenced school attendance and participation in social activities.
All contexts together had a cumulatively larger effect on adolescent’s positive outcomes.
Adolescents who were supported by four better contexts did not show any decline across outcomes; whereas, those who were supported by four worse contexts did worse over time by almost two outcomes.
Implications for Military Professionals
Collaborate with organizations and schools connected with military parents to emphasize the importance of communication and engagement across contexts
Provide military-connected youth and their families resources on community and youth-focused activities
Implications for Program Leaders
Provide education to military families, schools, and community on supporting the holistic development of adolescents
Promote the development of structured activities for military families and adolescents within their local communities
Implications for Policy Makers
Recommend collaboration between military families’ multiple contexts (i.e., schools, neighborhoods, friends) to more effectively support the holistic development of adolescents
Recommend integrating holistic development models into existing service delivery systems for militaryconnected youth and their families
Methods
Participants were recruited from 23 middle schools in Prince George’s County, a county that surrounds the south and east borders of Washington, D.C.
Middle schoolers from each cohort completed an Attitude and Climate Questionnaire and approximately 3,000 parent interviews were conducted as well as 1,500 faculty and staff interviews. In addition, annual data were also collected from district records.
Analyses examined the extent to which quality schools were associated with quality neighborhoods, quality friends, and quality nuclear families, as well as how these jointly influenced youth’s developmental changes.
Participants
The sample population included the 23 participating schools which consisted of 22,314 7th graders from entering cohorts in the 1990, 1991, and 1992 school years.
Overall, 12,702 7th graders were a part of the longitudinal sample.
At the community level, 65% identified as Black, 28% as White, 3% as Latino, and 4% as Asian American; however, at the individual level racial and ethnic backgrounds were not provided.
Limitations
Inclusion of just one county in the U.S. limits the generalizability of the findings.
There were no Latino youth or families included in the sample, due to limited parental consent; therefore, the findings cannot be extended to this population.
Simultaneous random assignment to family, friend, school, and neighborhood quality was impossible; therefore the findings presented depend on the assumptions built into the models tested and should be interpreted with caution.
Avenues for Future Research
Broaden the scope of contexts through a representative sample of military-connected youth, families, schools, and communities which would evaluate the generalizability of the findings described in this research
Explore in more depth how adolescents living in four consistently better contexts are supported in developmentally positive ways
Examine risk and protective factors across social contexts for military-connected youth living within civilian communities
Focus
Civilian
Target Population
Population Focus
Abstract
This study assessed some ways in which schools, neighborhoods, nuclear families, and friendship groups jointly contribute to positive change during early adolescence. For each context, existing theory was used to develop a multiattribute index that should promote successful development. Descriptive analyses showed that the four resulting context indices were only modestly intercorrelated at the individual student level (N =12,398), but clustered more tightly at the school and neighborhood levels (N=23 and 151 respectively). Only for aggregated units did knowing the developmental capacity of any one context strongly predict the corresponding capacity of the other contexts. Analyses also revealed that each context facilitated individual change in a success index that tapped into student academic performance, mental health, and social behavior. However, individual context effects were only modest in size over the 19 months studied and did not vary much by context. The joint influence of all four contexts was cumulatively large, however, and because it was generally additive in form, no constellation of contexts was identified whose total effect reliably surpassed the sum of its individual context main effects. These results suggest that achieving significant population changes in multidimensional student growth during early adolescence most likely requires both theory and interventions that are explicitly pan-contextual.
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