Youth, Volume 2, Issue 2 (June 2022) – 8 articles

Young people encounter and experience both risks and opportunities when participating as actors and interactors in online spaces. Digital skills and resilience are considered important parts of a “rights-based” approach to keeping young people “safe” online in ways that enable them to avoid harm while benefiting from the opportunities. The present paper discusses findings from focus group research conducted in England with 60 young people aged 13 to 21. The research explored their perspectives on responding to different online harms, including online hate, unwanted sexual content, and unrealistic body- and appearance-related content. The findings are discussed in terms of scholarship on digital citizenship, specifically regarding the social, affective, and technical dimensions of online life and the skills required for resilience. The analysis suggests that there was a tension between young people’s individualistic responsibilisation of themselves and one another for responding to risk online and the socio-emotional aspects of online life as perceived and recounted by them in the focus groups. It is concluded that a youth-centred approach to resilience is required that encapsulates the multidimensional nature of encountering, experiencing, and responding to risk online. Full article

The concept of career adaptability has been widely applied across cultural and educational settings in the hope of finding working solutions to facilitate school-to-work transition. In Hong Kong, China, there are signs showing that career adaptability scores are increasingly being used as the dominant benchmark to measure the effectiveness of career interventions designed for student populations. However, this concept is developed primarily based on western values. For it to fulfill its theoretical promises, the concept needs to be reinterpreted in the local context. This means that issues concerning the measurement and interpretation of career adaptability need to be clarified due to cultural differences. This paper attempts to address this issue by reviewing published studies on adaptability across other disciplines of psychology. Results showed that most published studies in Hong Kong on career adaptability did not use data and methodological triangulation research methodologies. Overall, this review shows that a reductionist approach has been applied to the study of career adaptability in Hong Kong. The current understanding of career adaptability remains largely at the psychological level only. Cognitive and behavioral changes are seldom studied or reported despite their importance. Implications on how future research could be enhanced are discussed. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with an ‘infodemic’, and young people have reported difficulties dealing with COVID-19-related information. The present cross-sectional study aimed to explore health knowledge related to COVID-19 and accessing relevant information as aspects of health literacy in a cohort of adolescents and young adults residing in Ireland. It also aimed to explore COVID-19-related concerns and levels of compliance with precautionary measures. Data were collected from young people (n = 1009) aged 12–25 years old through an online anonymous survey. Our findings highlight that young people possessed sufficient knowledge about COVID-19 transmission routes and adhered to most precautionary measures. Young people believed that they were moderately likely to contract COVID-19 and highly likely to survive COVID-19 should they get infected. However, these patterns seemed to differ between adolescents and young adults as well as between participants living with and without a chronic health condition (CHC). These findings have implications that can inform knowledge on youth health literacy and health-related attitudes that go beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. Contextual factors such as country context, age group, gender, and the absence or presence of a CHC are important characteristics to consider when designing public health awareness campaigns targeting a global health crisis. Full article

Youth studies represent a research field with visible potential, and its emergence has seen a substantial increase in the last decade. A longitudinal bibliometric analysis of sociological articles on youth was conducted using Web of Science (WoS) entries, with the analysis divided into three distinct decades, 1990–2019. From 41 sociological articles containing the keyword “youth” in 1990 to 704 in 2019, this evolution is reflected in the increasing interconnectedness of keyword co-occurrences. Thus, after 2000, keywords such as gender, adolescence, education, and race became increasingly popular, while keywords such as children and family structure, which were popular between 1990 and 1999, subsequently lost their relevance. The thematic cluster analysis reveals the emergence of new clusters, such as those centered around social media, LGBTQ, or mental health. The growth of occurrences for many keywords demonstrates the complex and heterogeneous development of the youth studies field in the sociological literature, so many future trends in this field remain unpredictable but promising at this time. Full article

Despite the significant economic and social transformation, students from rural China continue to remain at significant risk of early school leaving. Little research has addressed the jointly protective roles of family and school resources as well as children’s sense of capability that may increase the likelihood of remaining in school. Data are drawn from the first two waves of a national probability sample of the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) collected in 2010 and 2012, including households with youth aged 10–15 in 2010 living in rural areas (n = 1503). The results of logistic regression models predicting the likelihood of remaining in school during transition phases of secondary schooling highlight the importance of academic self-efficacy and social capital generated through youth peer networks. Given the severe negative consequences of not finishing secondary school for young people, especially during the later stage of economic transition unfolding in China, findings from this study contribute to an enhanced understanding of the “pull” factors that avert early school leaving. The study offers insight into the design of future low-cost targeted intervention strategies in rural China which could be applied to other middle-income countries. Full article

There is strong evidence that dropping out of school has short-term and long-term effects for the individual, the family, the community, and other strata in society. In South Africa, learners dropping out of school has increased. The link between intention, motivation, and self-efficacy to drop out of school is an understudied area of research. The study aimed to determine the relationship between learners’ intention, motivation, and self-efficacy to drop out of low and high socio-economic schools. A quantitative methodological approach with a cross-sectional design was utilised. Participant’s selection included high school learners in Grades 9 and 11, at both high and low socio-economic public schools in the Western Cape, in South Africa. Most participants were female (51.2%), with a mean age of 16 years, attending schools in resource-constrained communities (50.1). Data was analysed using an independent t-test to assess a significant difference between learners in low and high socio-economic communities. Findings showed that many learners in high socio-economic schools hardly considered dropping out of school, whereas the opposite was true for learners in resource-constrained schools. Family challenges were often cited as a major reason for dropping out of school. The differences between the two groups of learners were significant. Full article

There is increasing interest in the possibility of delivering violence prevention interventions online. This interest has been intensified by the ‘stay at home’ mandates brought about by COVID-19, which has pushed violence prevention practitioners to find innovative ways to deliver violence prevention interventions during the pandemic. Our study sought to understand the ways in which social contexts may enhance or impede participatory interventions for youth online. We conducted 20 in-depth interviews with researchers and practitioners based in various parts of the world. Data were analysed using thematic network analysis. Results indicated that online participatory violence prevention interventions may on the one hand be undermined by material factors such as access to devices, familiarity with technology, Internet infrastructure, and recruitment strategies. On the other hand, young people’s preference for online engagement, the ability to reach those less inclined to take part in in-person interventions, and the potential for continued engagement in cases of participants on the move were raised. Online group-based participatory violence interventions are crucial for situations when in-person meeting may not be possible. We present initial thoughts on how social contexts might impact the occurrence of these interventions online. More evidence is needed to help us understand how the social contexts can shape the outcomes of online participatory violence prevention interventions. Full article

Addressing the interpersonal challenges that students with Emotional Disturbance (ED) classifications experience is critical to their success in and outside the school setting. Improving their self- and social awareness will strengthen their ability to navigate social relationships in and outside school. The planning and evaluation of interventions targeting the development of self- and social awareness requires psychometrically sound assessment instruments. Using the Graded Response Item Response Theory (GRM) approach, this study provides evidence of the reliability of the self- and social awareness subscale of the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA) among students with an ED classification. The study participants were a sample of 449 youth attending schools serving students classified as emotionally disturbed in self-contained and inclusion settings. The examination of GRM item parameters (i.e., item discrimination and difficulty) and the information curves (i.e., test and item information curves) provides evidence of the reliability of DESSA’s self- and social awareness subscales across a broad range of students’ levels of self- and social awareness. Full article