Longitudinal Research in the Social and Behavioral Sciences: An Interdisciplinary Series – serie

This volume brings together a sample of the best of the studies that illustrate two recent trends in research on deviant behavior. The first of these trends is the investigation of deviant behavior in longitudinal perspective. Panels of subjects are followed over long periods of time to establish temporal relationships be­ tween deviant behavior and the antecedents and consequences of deviant behav­ ior. The second trend in contemporary research on deviance is the recognition of the association among forms of deviant behavior such as violence, drug abuse, and theft. The recognition of the covariation among forms of deviance stimulated questions regarding the nature of the relationships among multiple forms of de­ viance. Is one form of deviant behavior a cause or a consequence of other forms of deviant behavior? What variables mediate and moderate such causal relation­ ships? Do different forms of deviant behavior have common antecedents and consequences? Independent of the foregoing relationships, do particular forms of deviant behavior have unique antecedents and consequences? The eight original research studies that, along with the introduction and overview, constitute this volume are based on data drawn from among the most influential longitudinal studies in the general area of deviant behavior. These studies variously consider common and pattern-specific antecedents and conse­ quences, reciprocal influences, and intervening and moderating variables in causal relationships among drug use, crime, and other forms of deviance.

This book presents new and important information about adolescent drug use. The book is intended for human service professionals, teachers, researchers, and students interested in the issue of early adolescent drug use and its causes and pervasiveness in a multiethnic population. Today, the field of adolescent drug use research relies on integrative models that permit competing explanations of drug use. This approach promotes flexibility in testing hypotheses pertinent to adol- cents of very different social and cultural backgrounds or personal characteristics. Longitudinal studies, including the one presented in these pages, have identified many risk and protective factors or processes that are linked to adolescent drug use. We review these throughout this book and present new information from our own research. Our point of departure is to extend and elaborate descriptive research and models of adolescent drug research to cover the unique and diverse experiences of adolescents who are Hispanic, African American, and White non-Hispanic.

Leading experts review the research on resilience and represent the diverse perspectives and opinions found among both scientists and practitioners in the field. Although the chapters are written to the standards expected by researchers, they are equally useful for program developers and others in applied fields seeking science-based information on the topic. This book is a unique resource in keeping with the growing interest in resilience both in research and interventions.

This text investigates whether or not there is a causal link between personality traits and the development of alcohol abuse. Findings suggest that there is such a link: people who are inclined toward sensation-seeking are likely to consume more alcohol, and those who show high levels of psychotic and/or antisocial behaviour are more inclined to have alcohol problems. The authors develop and validate a measure of the addiction-prone personality.

This text represents a serious attempt to carry out a large-scale longitudinal study of pre-marital factors that predict breakup and marital quality. The author develops a theoretical rationale for predicted paths and tests those paths with the best statistical tools. Practitioners should find the results useful in their attempts to help individuals and couples make decisions about marriage, marital stability and childrearing.

A comprehensive synthesis of the empirical findings of seven important ongoing longitudinal studies of delinquency. The seven projects included in this volume represent much of the diversity found in individual-based panel studies of antisocial behaviour. Individually and collectively, the results of these investigations have been published in a wide range of disciplinary outlets, thus making it difficult to identify common themes and general principles. This volume intends to provide a comprehensive and unified picture of empirical results, both within these studies and across them. One of the fundamental purposes of the text is to examine the extent to which these studies answer the basic question of the origins of delinquent and criminal careers despite their varying guiding theories, methods and settings. "Taking Stock in Delinquency" is a resource for criminologists, psychologists, sociologists, and upper-level students on juvenile delinquency, criminology, developmental psychology, and deviant behaviour.

The Fullerton Longitudinal Study, launched in 1979, chronicled the development of over 100 children and their families from the children's first birthday through their high school completion using a cross-informant/cross-context methodology. In this volume, the developmental course of children's temperament from age 1.5 years through high school completion are documented. Using the model of temperament developed by Alexander Thomas, Stella Chess, and their colleagues in the New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS) and standardized temperament inventories collected repeatedly across infancy, childhood, and adolescence.The authors of this text systematically present their findings investigating the following issues: stability and continuity of the nine NYLS temperament dimensions based on parent reports and, during adolescence, both parent and self-reports; concurrent and cross-time relations between temperament dimensions and behaviour problems in home and school contexts; temperament dimensions as predictors and consequences of intelligence; relations between temperament dimensions and children's education, including academic achievement, classroom behaviour, grade point average, and self-appraisals of academic competence and motivation; home environment and family relationship correlates of temperament; the long-term developmental trajectories of infants with extreme temperament characteristics, including temperamental, behavioural, intellectual, academic, and home/family outcomes. The book should prove an important resource for developmental researchers, clinicians, educators, students, and others interested in how individual differences in children's behavioural styles develop and relate to their development.

At the start of every school day, it’s not an unfamiliar sight to see younger children bounding toward school, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to seize the day. In contrast, adolescents sometimes seem to sleepwalk toward their middle and high schools, often bleary-eyed, cantankerous, and less than enthusiastic to get down to work. Why the difference?Recent developmental research has demonstrated a relationship between sleep/wake patterns and different kinds of problem behaviors, including social adjustment problems, family coercion, and disaffection from school. Adolescents who prefer staying up later in the evening and arising late in the morning (i.e., eveningness) have often been considered at greater risk of suffering from such problem behaviors as delinquency and negative relationships with parents and teachers. Those who tend to go to bed and arise earlier (i.e., morningness) have long been associated with more positive outcomes. In the majority of previous research, however, these concepts have never been adequately tested.In Sync with Adolescence: The Role of Morningness-Eveningness in Development examines the possible effects of adolescent preferences on problem behavior in different contexts. This volume presents a new way of looking at morningness-eveningness in relation to adolescent development in general and on problem behavior in particular. The study has produced results, the implications of which necessitate a reinterpretation of the current thinking about morningness-eveningness and adolescent adjustment.This volume should be of particular interest to developmental psychologists and researchers who are interested in examining the role of biological factors in psychological processes as well as to sleep researchers who are interested in both the clinical and behavioral aspects. In addition, it is a valuable resource for clinical child and school psychologists, medical staff,teachers, and anyone who works with adolescents.

Children born during the post-WWII era of peace and prosperity entered history at a time dominated by I-Like-Ike politics and domestic security. As they approached adolescence, however, their world was shaken by major cultural, economic, social, and political upheaval. And although it was time of great innovation and progress, a sense of chaos and bitterness began to envelop the country. It was the ‘60s. For many Americans, a mere mention of this decade evokes an extraordinary time and place in the country’s - and their own - history.Adolescents who had been enjoying the technological and medical advances of the era - television, drive-in movies, rock-and-roll, vaccinations that prevented once-incurable diseases - now were also experiencing the fallout from the Civil Rights Movement, domestic terrorism, stagflation, and (perhaps most significant) the Vietnam War.From Adolescence to Adulthood in the Vietnam Era provides a unique, detailed, long-term study of the psychological and social worlds of male adolescents who were on the cusp of adulthood as the 1960s were ending. This longitudinal analysis follows adolescent boys who graduated with the class of 1969 and transitioned into adulthood either through military service, full-time employment, or college life. The results examine the different pathways these boys chose and the affect these choices had on their transition from adolescents to young adult men.

This volume is about understanding the relationship between deviance and selected correlates of deviance in one generation and deviance and its selected correlates in the next generation. By examining the significance of these constructs in the parental generation as part of the explanation for the same constructs in the child’s generation, we contribute to an und- standing of the phenomena. This contribution, however, is quite limited in the sense that we are examining in essence bivariate relationships—the association between first-generation and second-generation phenomena— while ignoring all of the other influences on the second-generation p- nomena that do not stem from or account for the intergenerational relationship. Nevertheless, the study of intergenerational parallelism of deviance and its correlates justifiably has excited attention and resulted in a vo- minous literature greater than might have been expected for any parti- lar bivariate relationships because of the mystique surrounding ideas—cycle of violence, reproduction of culture, to name but a few—that are evoked by consideration of the association between such phenomena in one generation and the same phenomena in a successive generation.

Children born during the post-WWII era of peace and prosperity entered history at a time dominated by I-Like-Ike politics and domestic security. As they approached adolescence, however, their world was shaken by major cultural, economic, social, and political upheaval. And although it was time of great innovation and progress, a sense of chaos and bitterness began to envelop the country. It was the ‘60s. For many Americans, a mere mention of this decade evokes an extraordinary time and place in the country’s - and their own - history.Adolescents who had been enjoying the technological and medical advances of the era - television, drive-in movies, rock-and-roll, vaccinations that prevented once-incurable diseases - now were also experiencing the fallout from the Civil Rights Movement, domestic terrorism, stagflation, and (perhaps most significant) the Vietnam War.From Adolescence to Adulthood in the Vietnam Era provides a unique, detailed, long-term study of the psychological and social worlds of male adolescents who were on the cusp of adulthood as the 1960s were ending. This longitudinal analysis follows adolescent boys who graduated with the class of 1969 and transitioned into adulthood either through military service, full-time employment, or college life. The results examine the different pathways these boys chose and the affect these choices had on their transition from adolescents to young adult men.

Based on the findings of a unique longitudinal study, this volume provides experts with unprecedented analysis of prospectively collected data following the road from childhood to early adulthood of 1,517 boys and young men from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Especially during the project's early years, when we were directly assessing the development of over 100 children twice yearly and visiting their homes, high activity level was required.

Based on the findings of a unique longitudinal study, this volume provides experts with unprecedented analysis of prospectively collected data following the road from childhood to early adulthood of 1,517 boys and young men from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Leading experts review the research on resilience and represent the diverse perspectives and opinions found among both scientists and practitioners in the field. Although the chapters are written to the standards expected by researchers, they are equally useful for program developers and others in applied fields seeking science-based information on the topic. This book is a unique resource in keeping with the growing interest in resilience both in research and interventions.

This book should be of interest to scholars, researchers, students, and practitioners alike. Scholars, researchers, and students of personal relationship development will recognize in this book the first serious attempt in over 40 years to do a large-scale, longitudinal study of premarital factors that predict premarital breakup and marital quality; they should also appreciate our attempt to develop a theoretical rationale for predicted paths and to test those paths with the best available statistical tools. Practitioners-while generally not as interested in the intricacies of the statistical results-will find much that is useful to them as they help individuals and couples make decisions about their intimate relationships, their readiness for marriage, and how to increase the probability for marital success. Teachers, family life educators, premarital counselors, and clergy will find helpful our “principles for practice,” particularly as described in Chapter 9, as they teach and counsel couples in any premarital situation. My interest in the development of relationships from premarital to marital probably began when I got married in 1972 and started to notice all of the characteristics my wife and I brought from our respective families and how our “new beginning” as a married couple was in many ways the continuation of our premarital relationship, only more refined and more intense. My professional interest began when I did my doctoral dissertation in 198 1 on premarital predictors of early marital satisfaction (the results of that study are reported in Chapter 8).

Taking Stock in Delinquency is the comprehensive synthesis of the empirical findings of seven important ongoing longitudinal studies of delinquency.

This book presents new and important information about adolescent drug use. The book is intended for human service professionals, teachers, researchers, and students interested in the issue of early adolescent drug use and its causes and pervasiveness in a multiethnic population. Today, the field of adolescent drug use research relies on integrative models that permit competing explanations of drug use. This approach promotes flexibility in testing hypotheses pertinent to adol- cents of very different social and cultural backgrounds or personal characteristics. Longitudinal studies, including the one presented in these pages, have identified many risk and protective factors or processes that are linked to adolescent drug use. We review these throughout this book and present new information from our own research. Our point of departure is to extend and elaborate descriptive research and models of adolescent drug research to cover the unique and diverse experiences of adolescents who are Hispanic, African American, and White non-Hispanic.

The production of this book represents a culmination for me of some 25 years of interest in the field of personality and substance use and abuse.

This volume brings together a sample of the best of the studies that illustrate two recent trends in research on deviant behavior. Is one form of deviant behavior a cause or a consequence of other forms of deviant behavior?

This volume is about understanding the relationship between deviance and selected correlates of deviance in one generation and deviance and its selected correlates in the next generation. By examining the significance of these constructs in the parental generation as part of the explanation for the same constructs in the child’s generation, we contribute to an und- standing of the phenomena. This contribution, however, is quite limited in the sense that we are examining in essence bivariate relationships—the association between first-generation and second-generation phenomena— while ignoring all of the other influences on the second-generation p- nomena that do not stem from or account for the intergenerational relationship. Nevertheless, the study of intergenerational parallelism of deviance and its correlates justifiably has excited attention and resulted in a vo- minous literature greater than might have been expected for any parti- lar bivariate relationships because of the mystique surrounding ideas—cycle of violence, reproduction of culture, to name but a few—that are evoked by consideration of the association between such phenomena in one generation and the same phenomena in a successive generation.