The role of reflection in the effects of community service on adolescent development: a meta-analysis.

This meta-analysis assessed the effect of community service on adolescent development and the moderation of this effect by reflection, community service, and adolescent characteristics to explicate the mechanisms underlying community service effects. Random effects analyses, based on 49 studies (24,477 participants, 12-20 years old), revealed that community service had positive effects on academic, personal, social, and civic outcomes. Moderation analyses indicated that reflection was essential; the effect for studies that include reflection was substantial (mean ES = .41) while community service in the absence of reflection yielded negligible benefits (mean ES = .05). Effects increased when studies include more frequent reflection and community service, reflection on academic content, and older adolescents. These findings have implications for understanding and improving community service.

Improving Screening Cut-Off Scores for DSM-5 Adolescent Anxiety Disorder Symptom Dimensions with the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders.

Presently most adolescent anxiety disorder screening instruments make their determination of running a high risk for an anxiety disorder on the basis of a cut-off score measured by a single screening which can lead to false positives. Therefore, the goal of this study is to examine whether a repeated administration of the SCARED screening instrument for DSM-5 anxiety disorder symptoms could help in the detection of true positives while also avoiding false positives. Participants were 923 early adolescents from the general community. The adolescents' ages at the first annual screening ranged from 10 to 15 with an average of 12.5 years. In a prospective five-year longitudinal design, the adolescents completed the SCARED screening instrument for anxiety disorder symptoms on a yearly basis. To detect true positives and avoid false positives, the data were analyzed with Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) cut-off score analyses. ROC cut-off score analyses revealed that the sensitivity and specificity of high risk were greatly improved for repeated screenings above those of a single screening. The findings of this study demonstrate that a screening instrument (such as the SCARED) should be administered not just once but several times in order to better determine true positives and avoid false positives.

The role of adolescents' morality and identity in volunteering. Age and gender differences in a process model.

The aim of this study was to explain adolescents' volunteering in terms of their morality and identity and to examine the moderation effect of gender and age in this process. Data were collected among 698 Dutch adolescents aged 12 to 20 (M = 15.19; SD = 1.43). Adolescents' moral reasoning was positively associated with understanding moral issues and thinking about public responsibility towards these issues. In turn, moral understanding, along with being personally committed to act upon moral issues, were positively associated with identity. Extending the number of identity contexts tended to be related to being more likely to volunteer and to more volunteering involvement. Adolescents' identity integration was not related to how likely they were to volunteer, and was negatively related to their volunteering involvement. Clearer effects were found when differentiating between adolescent gender and age groups. Future research could examine this process over time, along with additional factors that may further explain adolescents' volunteering, and examine their age and gender specific effects.

The predictive capacity of perceived expressed emotion as a dynamic entity of adolescents from the general community.

BACKGROUND: In previous studies, it has been demonstrated that high parental expressed emotion (EE) is predictive of depressive, aggressive and delinquency symptoms of adolescents. Two issues have received much less prominence in EE research, these being studies of adolescent perceived EE and the measurement of the EE as a dynamic, developmental construct. This 4-year, three-wave, longitudinal study of perceived EE of adolescents from the general community examines if adolescent perceived EE measured with the traditional, one-measurement EE approach as well as adolescent perceived EE measured with a repeated measured, dynamic EE approach can predict adolescent depressive, aggressive and delinquency symptoms. METHODS: Dutch adolescents (N = 285; 51% girls; M = 13 years) from the general community were prospectively studied annually for 4 years. At all waves, the adolescents completed the Level of Expressed Emotion (LEE) questionnaire and at the final wave also completed self-rated measures of depressive, aggressive and delinquent symptoms. Growth models were used to predict adolescent symptoms from adolescent perceived EE. RESULTS: Growth models significantly predicted adolescent depressive, aggressive and delinquency symptoms from adolescent perceived EE. CONCLUSIONS: This study of the LEE demonstrates that developmental characteristics of EE are predictive of adolescents' symptoms. These findings hold implications for current EE intervention therapies and the conceptualization of EE.

One factor or two parallel processes? Comorbidity and development of adolescent anxiety and depressive disorder symptoms.

BACKGROUND: This study investigates whether anxiety and depressive disorder symptoms of adolescents from the general community are best described by a model that assumes they are indicative of one general factor or by a model that assumes they are two distinct disorders with parallel growth processes. Additional analyses were conducted to explore the comorbidity of adolescent anxiety and depressive disorder symptoms and the effects that adolescent anxiety and depressive disorder symptoms have on each other's symptom severity growth. METHODS: Two cohorts of early (N = 923; Age range 10-15 years; Mean age = 12.4, SD = .59; Girls = 49%) and middle adolescent (N = 390; Age range 16-20 years; Mean age = 16.7, SD = .80; Girls = 57%) boys and girls from the general community were prospectively studied annually for five years. These two adolescent cohorts were divided into five groups: one group at-risk for developing a specific anxiety disorder and four additional groups of healthy adolescents that differed in age and sex. Self-reported anxiety and depressive disorder symptoms were analyzed with latent growth modeling. RESULTS: Comparison of the fit statistics of the two models clearly demonstrates the superiority of the distinct disorders with parallel growth processes model above the one factor model. It was also demonstrated that the initial symptom severity of either anxiety or depression is predictive of the development of the other, though in different ways for the at-risk and healthy adolescent groups. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study established that the development of anxiety and depressive disorder symptoms of adolescents from the general community occurs as two distinct disorders with parallel growth processes, each with their own unique growth characteristics.

Developmental trajectories of adolescent anxiety disorder symptoms: a 5-year prospective community study.

OBJECTIVE: This study prospectively examined the developmental trajectories of anxiety disorder symptoms in a large sample of adolescents from the general population. METHOD: Two cohorts of early and middle adolescents (1,318 junior high and high school students) completed the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders during 5 consecutive years. The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders is a questionnaire that measures self-rated child and adolescent anxiety symptoms that map onto DSM-IV-TR anxiety disorders. At the first wave of measurement, the early and middle adolescent cohorts were an average of 12 and 16 years of age, respectively. Age and sex differences in the developmental trajectories of adolescent anxiety disorder symptoms over time were examined by means of latent growth modeling. RESULTS: Over the course of 5 years, there was a slight decrease in the panic disorder, school anxiety, and separation anxiety disorder symptoms for all of the adolescents, with the exception of social phobia symptoms, which remained fairly stable over time. Adolescent girls showed a slight increase of generalized anxiety disorder symptoms over time, whereas these symptoms decreased among adolescent boys. CONCLUSIONS: This study replicates and extends earlier findings on the developmental trajectories of anxiety symptoms during adolescence. By using individually focused, trajectory-based analyses rather than group score differences, this study extends earlier findings and advances our understanding of age and sex differences in the development of adolescent anxiety symptoms.

The spatial integration of adolescent identity: its relation to age, education, and subjective well-being.

A sense of being the same person through time and social contexts is a central characteristic of identity formation. The spatial integration of identity was investigated in three groups of high school students differing in age and/or educational level. The 294 adolescents chose and ranked personally revealing identity contexts, described their general and context-specific identities, and indicated their subjective sense of well-being. With increasing age and educational level adolescents chose an increasing number of identity contexts. Context-specific identities were found on average to be closely interwoven. There was a positive linear relationship between spatial integration and subjective well-being. The conclusion is that age and education promote the extension of adolescents' identity horizons, provided that their spatial integration is solid enough to absorb the downward effect of a new identity context. A comparison between spatial integration and two measures of exploration and commitment showed that spatial integration is a relatively powerful measure of adolescent identity.