Adolescent resilience research differs from risk research by focusing on the assets and resources that enable some adolescents to overcome the negative effects of risk exposure. We discuss three models of resilience-the compensatory, protective, and challenge models-and describe how resilience differs from related concepts. We describe issues and limitations related to resilience and provide an overview of recent resilience research related to adolescent substance use, violent behavior, and sexual risk behavior. We then discuss implications that resilience research has for intervention and describe some resilience-based interventions.

/pdf/adolescent-resilience-a-framework-for-understanding-healthy-tmidvkxoxc.pdf

ADOLESCENT RESILIENCE: A Framework for Understanding Healthy Development in the Face of Risk

This review details a key innovation across the field of adolescent sexuality research over the last decade—conceptualizing sexuality as a normative aspect of adolescent development. Anchored in a growing articulation of adolescent sexuality as having positive qualities and consequences, we provide an organizing framework for understanding sexuality as normative and developmentally expected. Using this framework, we report on 3 specific areas of research that have developed “critical mass” over the past decade: new views on sexual behavior, sexual selfhood, and sexual socialization in the 21st century. We conclude by suggesting that the next step in the field of adolescent sexuality development is the explicit integration of “positive” dimensions of sexuality with risk management dimensions. Rather than navigating a binary between positive and risky, we propose characterizing the “both/and” quality of adolescent sexuality development as normative. This framework, we argue, encourages empirical research that assumes a wide range of strategies through which adolescents learn about themselves, their bodies, intimate partners, and relationships within contexts where they are required to both manage risks and develop positive patterns for adulthood sexuality. We conclude with considerations for future research and public policy.

/pdf/normative-sexuality-development-in-adolescence-a-decade-in-415rpj5yir.pdf

Normative Sexuality Development in Adolescence: A Decade in Review, 2000–2009

Predictors of adolescent sexual behavior and intention: a theory-guided systematic review.

Ten Years of Longitudinal Research on U.S. Adolescent Sexual Behavior: Developmental Correlates of Sexual Intercourse, and the Importance of Age, Gender and Ethnic Background.

Connectedness as a Predictor of Sexual and Reproductive Health Outcomes for Youth

http://scs.fhi360.org/publications/Psychosocial.pdf

Initiation of sexual intercourse among middle school adolescents: the influence of psychosocial factors

The authors implemented strategies to maximize cohort retention to avert loss of statistical power and minimize bias in a longitudinal evaluation of a middle school HIV/STD prevention intervention. A retention rate of 80% of the baseline sample (n = 2,975) at six months and 73% at 18 months was achieved despite high reported rates of student mobility and a major system reorganization in one urban district. The strategies increased retention but did not eliminate differences in demographic characteristics and behaviors between the groups of retained and lost students. Results confirm the need to implement retention strategies early and to maintain them throughout data collection. Information from a tracking data base can be used to prioritize students for follow-up to reduce bias from sample loss.

Lesley Hirsch

Papers

Initiation of sexual intercourse among middle school adolescents: the influence of psychosocial factors

Strategies to Maximize Retention of a Sample of Young Adolescents in a Longitudinal Evaluation of Healthy & Alive!