Risk taking by adolescents

Summary of Articles

Article 1: Tezler et al:

The aim of this research project was to establish the contributory factors that bring about differential attitudes towards risk taking by adolescents. This project’s background stated that adolescence is a period that is marked by high risk behavior though at different intensities that varies from individual to individual. High risk behaviors that may be witnessed in this population include drug consumption, drug abuse, alcohol abuse and unsafe sexual behaviors among others.

Article 2:  Andrew et al

This research study’s aim was to examine the attitude towards family obligations by adolescents in American society who were drawn from Asian, European and Latin American Backgrounds. The study considered both male and female respondents and the results of the survery established that adolescents from Latin American as well as Asian families exhibited a greater degree of obligation as well as expectation of their contributions to their families compared to those from European backgrounds whose sense of obligation was considerable lower. The reason for this was the fact that those who tended to be more obliged came from families that embraced a collectivistic approach to coexistence while the others came from communities that upheld adolescent autonomy.

Article 3: Andrew et al

This article was based on a study conducted to find out how academic adjustment was affected by the ethnicity of the students involved. The Ethnicities observed were Chinese, Mexican and Europeans. Members of these groups were given a chance to label themselves in an academic context and it was found that Mexicans and Chinese based the names on their family/national backgrounds whereas Europeans did not. Another finding was that the strength of this ethnic identification played a bigger role in their academic adjustment than in the labeling and what this led to was the assumption that this is the reason why they have a more difficult time adjusting as opposed to their European American counterparts.