Long-term Impacts of Civic Engagement during Emerging Adulthood: A Nationally-representative Study.

PURPOSE: We examined if civic engagement during emerging adulthood positively impacted a broad array of outcomes in middle adulthood, and if associations varied based on race, gender, age, and urban-rural status. DESIGN: Prospective design used to determine if civic engagement during emerging adulthood (M age = 21.81) predicted outcomes 15 years later. SETTING: Restricted data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. SUBJECTS: Wave 1 participants who completed surveys 7 years (77% follow-up rate), 14 years (80% follow-up rate), and 22 years later (follow-up rate 72%) and who had valid sampling weight to ensure national representativeness (n = 9349). MEASURES: Predictor - civic engagement; Outcomes-mental health, substance use, criminal behaviors, and healthy behavior. ANALYSIS: Linear regression using MPLUS 7.2. RESULTS: Civic engagement predicted lower levels of depressive symptoms (b = -1.05, SE = .28), criminal behaviors (b = -.47, SE = .12), and substance use (b = -.66, SE = .13), and higher levels of healthy behaviors (b = 1.26, SE = .19), after controlling for demographics, family, peer, neighborhood, and school-related background variables. Moderation analyses revealed that civic engagement benefited females and white participants more. CONCLUSION: Civic engagement during emerging adulthood has a positive impact on a broad array of outcomes in middle adulthood. Implications and future research recommendations will be discussed.

Empathy as a moderator of sexual violence perpetration risk factors among college men.

Objective: This study examined if empathy was a significant moderator of several empirically established risk factors for sexual violence perpetration among college men. Participants: Data are from 544 college men who participated in a longitudinal study from 2008 to 2011 at a large, public university. Methods: Participants completed a self-report survey in their first through fourth years in college. A series of generalized linear models were conducted using sexual violence risk factors and empathy during the sophomore year as predictors of sexual violence perpetration frequency during junior year. Results: Empathy was found to be a significant moderator of six out of the 10 sexual violence risk factors tested, such that high levels of empathy were associated with lower sexual violence perpetration rates among high-risk males. Conclusion: Additional research, including the measurement and evaluation of empathy in implementation of college sexual violence prevention and intervention efforts, should be undertaken.

Promoting Informal and Professional Help-Seeking for Adolescent Dating Violence.

The present study examined factors that differentiate adolescents with varied intentions of informal and professional help-seeking for dating violence. Help-seeking intentions among 518 ethnically diverse adolescents from a rural, southern county who participated in a longitudinal study of teen dating violence were categorized into three groups: adolescents unlikely to seek any help, adolescents likely to seek only informal help, and adolescents likely to seek informal and professional help. Multinomial logistic regression found that gender, family functioning, problem-solving competency, dating status, having an adult to talk to about a dating relationship, and acceptability of family violence significantly predicted membership in the help-seeking groups. Implications for promoting informal and professional help-seeking and recommendations for future research are discussed.