A model of self -transformative identity development in troubled adolescent youth

Within the Stage II program evaluation of the Miami Youth Development Project's (YDP) Changing Lives Program (CLP), this study evaluated CLP intervention effectiveness in promoting positive change in emotion-focused identity exploration (i.e. feelings of personal expressiveness; PE) and a "negative" symptom of identity development (i.e. identity distress; ID) as a first step toward the investigation of a self-transformative model of identity development in adolescent youth. Using structural equation modeling techniques, this study found that participation in the CLP is associated with positive changes in PE (path = .841, p < .002), but not changes in ID. Increase in ID scores was found to be associated with increases in PE (path = .229, p < .002), as well. Intervention effects were not moderated by age/stage, gender, or ethnicity, though differences were found in the degree to which participating subgroups (African-American/Hispanic, male/female, 14-16 years old/17-19 years old) experience change in PE and ID. Findings also suggest that moderate levels of ID may not be deleterious to identity exploration and may be associated with active exploration. ^

Substance Use and Sexual Risk Behaviors among Adolescent Detainees

During the past two decades there has been much research conducted on the relationship between the risky sexual behavior practices and substance use among U.S. adolescents. This body of research has documented the fact that substance use and not using condoms are the most important indicators associated with the risk of becoming infected with sexually transmitted diseases (STD) both among adolescents and adults (Florida Department of Public Health, 2004; Malow, Devieux, Jennings, & Lucenko, 2001; McCoy & Inciardi, 1995). Data from those reports and studies indicate that adolescents and adults who use a condom regularly and appropriately are 20 times less likely to contract an STD than those who do not (Pinkerton & Abramson, 1997). However, less empirical evidence exists about the factors that influence adolescent use of condoms, particularly among adolescents who are detained due to their criminal lifestyle. Researchers have found both a high prevalence of STD in addition to early onset of sexual activity without protection among some adolescent groups such as the detainees (D'angelo & DiClemente, 1996) and that adolescents tend to underestimate their risks of acquiring the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) (Magura, Shapiro, & Kang, 1994). Many adolescents will experiment with alcohol and other drugs. This behavior may compromise their judgment and increase their chances of engaging in risky sex (Rotheram-Borus, 2000). Hence the need for research that investigates the influence that substance use, risky sexual attitudes, knowledge about the transmission of HIV, and both peer and parental approval of condom use have on the use of condoms among both female and male adolescent detainees. Lastly, it is important for additional research to be conducted because adolescent detainees have been identified as being at high risk of becoming infected with an STD (Malow, Rosemberg, & Devieux, 2006). The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among adolescent substance use, gender, sexual risk attitude, attitude about personal use of condoms, knowledge associated with the transmission of HIV, peer and family approval of condom use, history of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) and the level of condom use in a sample of adolescents housed in a correctional institution. Further details of the explanatory variables, the control variables and their expected relationships can be found in the review of the Literature in Chapter 2. Also, more information about the separate analysis of the research questions is detailed in the Methods section in Chapter 3. Based on the literature detailed in Chapter 2 (e.g., Malow et al., 2006), the current study’s researcher anticipated that adolescents’ higher levels of illicit drug use would be related to higher levels of sexual risk behaviors, as measured by lower levels of condom use, than their counterparts who used no drugs. Similarly, it was hypothesized that positive attitudes toward condom use and higher levels of HIV risk knowledge would be associated with a lower level of risky sexual behaviors along with a higher level of condom use skill. It was further hypothesized that the level of approval perceived from parents and peers regarding condom use was going to be related to adolescents’ safe sex behavior (i.e., condom use). Therefore, it was expected that participants’ perception of a high level of approval to use condoms from peers and parents would be a statistically significant variable in helping explain the condom use within this sample of adolescent detainees.

A model of self-transformative identity development in troubled adolescent youth

Within the Stage II program evaluation of the Miami Youth Development Project's (YDP) Changing Lives Program (CLP), this study evaluated CLP intervention effectiveness in promoting positive change in emotion-focused identity exploration (i.e. feelings of personal expressiveness; PE) and a "negative" symptom of identity development (i.e. identity distress; ID) as a first step toward the investigation of a self-transformative model of identity development in adolescent youth. Using structural equation modeling techniques, this study found that participation in the CLP is associated with positive changes in PE (path = .841, p < .002), but not changes in ID. Increase in ID scores was found to be associated with increases in PE (path = .229, p < .002), as well. Intervention effects were not moderated by age/stage, gender, or ethnicity, though differences were found in the degree to which participating subgroups (African- American/Hispanic, male/female, 14-16 years old/17-19 years old) experience change in PE and ID. Findings also suggest that moderate levels of ID may not be deleterious to identity exploration and may be associated with active exploration.

Bullying Victimization and Perpetration Among Adolescent Sport Teammates

Purpose: Bullying is a specific pattern of repeated victimization explored with great frequency in school-based literature, but receiving little attention within sport. The current study explored the prevalence of bullying in sport, and examined whether bullying experiences were associated with perceptions about relationships with peers and coaches. Method: Adolescent sport team members (n = 359, 64% female) with an average age of 14.47 years (SD = 1.34) completed a pen-and-paper or online questionnaire assessing how frequently they perpetrated or were victimized by bullying during school and sport generally, as well as recent experiences with 16 bullying behaviors on their sport team. Participants also reported on relationships with their coach and teammates. Results: Bullying was less prevalent in sport compared with school, and occurred at a relatively low frequency overall. However, by identifying participants who reported experiencing one or more act of bullying on their team recently, results revealed that those victimized through bullying reported weaker connections with peers, whereas those perpetrating bullying only reported weaker coach relationships. Conclusion: With the underlying message that bullying may occur in adolescent sport through negative teammate interactions, sport researchers should build upon these findings to develop approaches to mitigate peer victimization in sport.

Understanding alexithymia in female adolescents: the role of attachment style

Adults with alexithymia retrospectively report emotional difficulties with caregivers during childhood. However, the association between attachment style and alexithymic traits may be evident at an earlier stage than adulthood, i.e. during adolescence. Sixty school-based healthy females aged 9–18 years (mean 14.08, SD 2.71 years) participated in an Attachment Style Interview (ASI) and completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Greater levels of alexithymia were exhibited by both anxious and avoidant insecurely attached groups compared to securely attached participants. Fear of separation (characteristic of anxious attachment style) predicted both overall alexithymia scores and the specific alexithymic trait of ‘difficulty identifying feelings’ (DIF). Constraints on closeness (an avoidant attachment attitude) predicted ‘difficulty describing feelings’ (DDF). Low felt attachment to primary caregiver was a predictor of ‘externally oriented thinking’ (EOT). These findings indicate that features of anxious and avoidant insecure attachment styles are differentially related to the separate facets of alexithymia in female adolescents. Specifically, the findings concerning fear of separation may reflect the adolescent struggle for autonomy and the resulting effects on the affect regulation system. Our results also suggest that the normative differentiation of the emotional and cognitive aspects of alexithymia may occur on a developmental trajectory.

Knowledge and acceptance of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) and HPV vaccination in adolescent boys worldwide: a systematic review

Aim

To determine HPV and HPV vaccine awareness, knowledge and acceptance in male adolescents worldwide.

Methods

A mixed methods systematic review was conducted. In accordance with PRISMA guidelines, relevant literature was identified through an electronic database search using specified keywords from inception to September 2015. Non-interventional studies presented in English that assessed HPV knowledge and provided data on male adolescents were included. If available, data on HPV and HPV vaccine perceptions, attitudes and/or HPV vaccine acceptance were also extracted. All studies were critically appraised to provide an indication of methodological quality. Results were compiled using a convergent synthesis.

Results

22 papers were included. The majority of studies were cross-sectional and conducted in the US and Europe. Across continents, regardless of a country’s HPV vaccination programme status, boys’ knowledge of HPV and/or HPV vaccination was generally low to moderate and significantly lower than female knowledge or awareness. There was a disagreement in the association of knowledge and vaccine acceptance, with higher knowledge not always being predictive of acceptance.

Conclusions

Comparison and synthesis of research concerning HPV knowledge and attitudes was made difficult due to the lack of universal definition of vaccine acceptance, and no universally accepted tool for its measurement or for the measurement of HPV knowledge. It is imperative that future research utilises consistent measures of HPV knowledge and attitudes to facilitate interpretation and comparison across studies internationally. Prospective longitudinal studies would be more informative providing data on factors that influenced the move from vaccine intention to uptake.

Book review: Laurel Kamada, Hybrid Identities and Adolescent Girls: Being Half in Japan. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2010

Arguably, the catalyst for the best research studies using social analysis of discourse is personal ‘lived’ experience. This is certainly the case for Kamada, who, as a white American woman with a Japanese spouse, had to deal first hand with the racialization of her son. Like many other mixed-ethnic parents, she experienced the shock and disap-pointment of finding her child being racialized as ‘Chinese’ in America through peer group taunts, and constituted as gaijin (a foreigner) in his own homeland of Japan. As a member of an e-list of the (Japan) Bilingualism Special Interest Group (BSIG), Kamada learnt that other parents from the English-speaking foreign community in Japan had similar disturbing stories to tell of their mixed-ethnic children who, upon entering the Japanese school system, were mocked, bullied and marginalized by their peers. She men-tions a pervasive Japanese proverb which warns of diversity or difference getting squashed: ‘The nail that sticks up gets hammered down’. This imperative to conform to Japanese behavioural and discursive norms prompted Kamada’s quest to investigate the impact of ‘otherization’ on the identities of children of mixed parentage. In this fascinat-ing book, she shows that this pressure to conform is balanced by a corresponding cele-bration of ‘hybrid’ or mixed identities. The children in her study are also able to negotiate their identities positively as they come to terms with contradictory discursive notions of ‘Japaneseness’, ‘whiteness’ and ‘halfness/doubleness’.The discursive construction of identity has become a central concern amongst researchers across a wide range of academic disciplines within the humanities and the social sciences, and most existing work either concentrates on a specific identity cate-gory, such as gender, sexuality or national identity, or else offers a broader discussion of how identity is theorized. Kamada’s book is refreshing because it crosses the usual boundaries and offers divergent insights on identity in a number of ways. First, using the term ‘ethno-gendering’, she examines the ways in which six mixed-ethnic girls living in Japan accomplish and manage the relationship between their gender and ethnic ‘differ-ences’ from age 12 to 15. She analyses in close detail how their actions or displays within certain situated interactions might come into conflict with how they are seen or constituted by others. Second, Kamada’s study builds on contemporary writing on the benefits of hybridity where identities are fluid, flexible and indeterminate, and which contest the usual monolithic distinctions of gender, ethnicity, class, etc. Here, Kamada carves out an original space for her findings. While scholars have often investigated changing identities and language practices of young people who have been geographi-cally displaced and are newcomers to the local language, Kamada’s participants were all born and brought up in Japan, were fluent in Japanese and were relatively proficient in English. Third, the author refuses to conceptualize or theorize identity from a single given viewpoint in preference to others, but in postmodernist spirit draws upon multiple perspectives and frameworks of discourse analysis in order to create different forms of knowledge and understandings of her subject. Drawing on this ‘multi-perspectival’ approach, Kamada examines grammatical, lexical, rhetorical and interactional features from six extensive conversations, to show how her participants position their diverse identities in relation to their friends, to the researcher and to the outside world. Kamada’s study is driven by three clear aims. The first is to find out ‘whether there are any tensions and dilemmas in the ways adolescent girls of Japanese and “white” mixed parentage in Japan identify themselves in terms of ethnicity’. In Chapter 4, she shows how the girls indeed felt that they stood out as different and consequently experienced isolation, marginalization and bullying at school – although they were able to make better sense of this as they grew older, repositioning the bullies as pitiable. The second aim is to ask how, if at all, her participants celebrate their ethnicity, and furthermore, what kind of symbolic, linguistic and social capital they were able to claim for themselves on the basis of their hybrid identities. In Chapter 5, Kamada shows how the girls over time were able to constitute themselves as insiders while constituting ‘the Japanese’ as outsiders, and their network of mixed-ethnic friends was a key means to achieve this. In Chapter 6, the author develops this potential celebration of the girls’ mixed ethnicity by investigating the privileges they perceived it afforded them – for example, having the advantage of pos-sessing English proficiency and intercultural ‘savvy’ in a globalized world. Kamada’s third aim is to ask how her participants positioned themselves and performed their hybrid identities on the basis of their constituted appearance: that is, how the girls saw them-selves based on how they looked to others. In Chapter 7, the author shows that, while there are competing discourses at work, the girls are able to take up empowering positions within a discourse of ‘foreigner attractiveness’ or ‘a white-Western female beauty’ discourse, which provides them with a certain cachet among their Japanese peers. Throughout the book, Kamada adopts a highly self-reflexive perspective of her own position as author. For example, she interrogates the fact that she may have changed the lived reality of her six participants during the course of her research study. As the six girls, who were ‘best friends’, lived in different parts of the Morita region of Japan, she had to be proactive in organizing six separate ‘get-togethers’ through the course of her three-year study. She acknowledges that she did not collect ‘naturally occurring data’ but rather co-constructed opportunities for the girls to meet and talk on a regular basis. At these meetings, she encouraged the girls to discuss matters of identity, prompted by open-ended interview questions, by stimulus materials such as photos, articles and pic-tures, and by individual tasks such as drawing self-portraits. By giving her participants a platform in this way, Kamada not only elicited some very rich spoken data but also ‘helped in some way to shape the attitudes and self-images of the girls positively, in ways that might not have developed had these get-togethers not occurred’ (p. 221). While the data she gathers are indeed rich, it may well be asked whether there is a mismatch between the girls’ frank and engaging accounts of personal experience, and the social constructionist academic register in which these are later re-articulated. When Kamada writes, ‘Rina related how within the more narrow range of discourses that she had to draw on in her past, she was disempowered and marginalized’ (p. 118), we know that Rina’s actual words were very different. Would she really recognize, understand and agree with the reported speech of the researcher? This small omission of self-reflexivity apart – an omission which is true of most lin-guistic ethnography conducted today – Kamada has written a unique, engaging and thought-provoking book which offers a model to future discourse analysts investigating hybrid identities. The idea that speakers can draw upon competing discourses or reper-toires to constitute their identities in contrasting, creative and positive ways provides linguistic researchers with a clear orientation by which to analyse the contradictions of identity construction as they occur across time in different discursive contexts

Vertical jumping tests versus wingate anaerobic test in female volleyball players: The role of age

Single and continuous vertical jumping tests, as well as the Wingate anaerobic test (WAnT), are commonly used to assess the short-term muscle power of female volleyball players; however, the relationship among these tests has not been studied adequately. Thus, the aim of the present study was to examine the relationship of single and continuous vertical jumps with the WAnT in female volleyball players. Seventy adolescent (age 16.0 ˘ 1.0 years, body mass 62.5 ˘ 7.1 kg, height 170.4 ˘ 6.1 cm, body fat 24.2% ˘ 4.3%) and 108 adult female volleyball players (age 24.8 ˘ 5.2 years, body mass 66.5 ˘ 8.7 kg, height 173.2 ˘ 7.4 cm, body fat 22.0% ˘ 5.1%) performed the squat jump (SJ), countermovement jump (CMJ), Abalakov jump (AJ), 30 s Bosco test and WAnT (peak power, Ppeak; mean power, Pmean). Mean power in the Bosco test was correlated (low to large magnitude) with Pmean of the WAnT (r = 0.27, p = 0.030 in adolescents versus r = 0.56, p < 0.001 in adults). SJ, CMJ and AJ also correlated with Ppeak (0.28 ď r ď 0.46 in adolescents versus 0.58 ď r ď 0.61 in adults) and with Pmean (0.43 ď r ď 0.51 versus 0.67 ď r ď 0.71, respectively) of the WAnT (p < 0.05). In summary, the impact of the Bosco test and WAnT on muscle power varied, especially in the younger age group. Single jumping tests had larger correlations with WAnT in adults than in adolescent volleyball players. These findings should be taken into account by volleyball coaches and fitness trainers during the assessment of short-term muscle power of their athletes.

Female Entrepreneurship in Australia: Revisited

This paper is a ten-year follow-up on a study conducted in 1995 that profiled women entrepreneurs in Australia (Bennett and Dann 2000). The aim of the paper is to identify changes in demographic profile, motivation and personality traits of women entrepreneurs over the past ten years by replicating a study from1995 and reporting the results.