This study uses an ecological framework to examine how adolescents' perceptions of school climate in 6th grade covary with the probability and frequency of their engagement in problem behaviors in 7th and 8th grades. Tobit analysis was used to address the issue of having a highly skewed outcome variable with many zeros and yet account for censoring. The 677 participating students from 8 schools...

Participating in online social, cultural, and political activities requires digital skill and knowledge. This study investigates how sustained student engagement in game design and social media use can attenuate the relations between socioeconomic factors and digital inequality among youth. This study of 242 middle and high school students participating in the Globaloria project shows that part...

This research examined whether various dimensions of parental involvement predicted 10th-grade students’ motivation (engagement, self-efficacy towards maths and English, intrinsic motivation towards maths and English) using data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS 2002). Results showed that both parents’ educational aspiration for their children and school-initiated contact wit...

Mark Hugo Lopez is research director at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (www.civicyouth.org, CIRCLE). He is also a research assistant professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Affairs. He received his PhD in economics from Princeton University in 1996. His work concentrates on youth civic engagement, language policy, and bilingual educat...