More about the Teen Pathways Study (technical stuff)...

The focus is on the lives of American Indian adolescents living in rural Robeson County, North Carolina. The Teen Pathways study involves a 2-year longitudinal follow-up of 8th grade students as they transition from middle school to high school. 

The available educational statistics have suggested there is a substantial risk for academic achievement and social problems in this community, but the reasons for excess risk are not clear. The study aims involve identifying individual and context-related risk and protective factors that mediate the development of mental health problems that emerge during high school years. In particular we are interested in understanding the relationship between personality traits and identity development, and their influence on mental health outcomes. Broad domains being assessed include: a) individual personality, identity, and physical development;  b) family factors including support, cohesion, conflict, and social adversity; and c) community factors such as participation in the church, ethnic culture, engagement in the schools, and the influence of peer groups.

We hope to make theoretical distinctions between risk factors (that precede an event in time) and developmental continuities (factors that pre-existed in the 8th grade and remain associated with high school outcomes). We are also interested in variable versus fixed markers of risk - the distinction being that some things that increase the likelihood of a future event can more readily be changed, while others are much less open to social intervention. Prevention efforts must naturally focus on those things that can be more readily altered.

Specific topics of study include:

• The role of temperamental behavioral inhibition in social anxiety during adolescence
• School engagement and academic alienation in the pathway to conduct problems
• Involvement with the church and its influence on positive identity development
• Identity development in American Indian boys and the link to school drop out
• Adolescent health behaviors and attitudes in rural ethnic minority communities
• Inter-race relations and the development of the self
• Pubertal timing in rural ethnic minority adolescents

This page maintained by:  Dr. D.L. Newman  - Department of Psychology  University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 22904-4400