The current study examined the effect of empathy on friendship quality in the context of dyadic same-sex friendships, and how such an effect might be mediated by interpersonal competence. A special version of the actor-partner interdependence model (APIM) was used to examine this hypothesis in 146 same-sex friend dyads in 10th grade. Results showed that empathy was positively related to intimac...

OBJECTIVE A longitudinal comparison of adolescent girls with and without spina bifida (SB), regarding the effects of early pubertal timing on girls' depressive symptoms, mother-daughter conflict, and emotional distancing. METHODS 62 mother-daughter dyads (31 with SB and 31 without) reported on psychosocial outcomes at 5 time points (ages 8/9 to 16/17 years). RESULTS A pubertal timing × SB s...

OBJECTIVE Heavy alcohol use increases dramatically at age 14, and there is emerging cross-sectional evidence that when girls experience family conflict at younger ages (11-13 years) the risk of alcohol use and misuse is high. This study evaluated the role of family conflict and subsequent depressed mood in predicting heavy alcohol use among adolescent girls. METHOD This was a three-wave longi...

Violence against adolescent girls occurs at alarmingly high rates in conflict-affected settings, in part due to their increased vulnerability from their age and gender. However, humanitarian programming efforts have historically focused either on child abuse prevention or intimate partner violence prevention and have not fully addressed the specific needs of adolescent girls, including engageme...

The objective of this study was to identify mother, family, and individual factors associated with adolescent alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use using mother and child self-reports. Adolescents aged 12-15 (N=276) and their mothers who were participants in the British Cohort Study (BCS; born 1970) were both surveyed when mothers were 34 years old. Predictors included mother's substance use as w...