Psychosocial resources, adolescent risk behaviour and young adult adjustment: is risk taking more dangerous for some than others?

Longitudinal analyses examined the extent to which adolescent alcohol use, illegal drug use, and antisocial behaviour predicted adjustment and risk behaviour during young adulthood, and whether psychosocial resources buffered any impact of risk-taking. American adolescents completed questionnaires in Grade 12 and 2 years later (n = 694). Personal and social resources predicted success in occupational, relational, and health domains. High school risk behaviours predicted decreased success in relational domains, and alcohol use predicted higher educational attainment, independent of the relations with psychosocial resources. Interactions of resources with risk behaviours predicting adjustment were inconsistent, but resources predicted decreased risk behaviours in young adulthood among adolescent risk-takers. Discussion focuses on the value of, and challenges to, research on consequences of adolescent risk taking.     

Improving color CAD Systems for Users: Some Suggestions from Human Factors Studies

Human factors studies reveal that users' perceptions of a CAD system may be quite different from the developers' concepts.     

Parents' influence on children's achievement-related perceptions.

Two aspects of the relation between parents' perceptions of their children and children's self- and task perceptions in math and English were investigated: (a) the mediating role of parents' perceptions between grades and adolescents' self-perceptions and (b) the gendered nature of parents' perceptions. Data for this study are part of a longitudinal investigation (the Michigan Study of Adolescent Life Transitions). Data from 914 sixth-grade adolescents and their parents are used in this article. Results showed that parents' perceptions mediate the relation between children's grades and children's self and task perceptions in both domains. Parents' perceptions had a stronger influence on children's perceptions than children's own grades. Significant but low correlations between gender and self and task perceptions were found in both math and English. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)