Adolescent Leaders Research Articles

Are adolescent leaders prosocial and aggressive?

This longitudinal study was initiated to assess the predictors of peer- and teacher-identified Chinese adolescent leaders. Participants were 764 8th grade (14.42 years, 348 girls) and 783 11th grade (17.67 years, 427 girls) students that completed two waves of data collection separated by 1 year. Prosocial behavior, aggression, and the interaction between aggression and effortful control concurrently and longitudinally predicted peer- and teacher-identified leadership. A person-centered analysis revealed that 56.8% of the peer-identified and 37.6% of the teacher-identified leaders exhibited both prosocial and aggressive behavior. Consistent with Confucian ideas, prosocial behavior was strongly associated with leadership in both the variable- and person-centered analyses. These results suggest that the bistrategic model in conjunction with effortful control may be useful for understanding youth leadership contextualized within cultural norms.

LEADERSHIP EMERGENCE THROUGH VOLUNTEERISM: A CASE STUDY OF LATE ADOLESCENT EXEMPLARS

Leadership education is a prominent component of youth programming. In their efforts to promote leadership development, most youth programs promote character development and teach interpersonal skills but fall short in teaching leadership because they fail to encourage the use of authority. In this paper, we present the stories of five late adolescent exemplars as a case study of youth leadership emergence through volunteerism. These youth demonstrated leadership by transitioning from participating in community service activities to becoming organizers of their own beneficent efforts. Through a qualitative analysis of interviews with these adolescent leaders, we present themes that were important to their emergence as leaders. We then discuss how these findings should be used to inform youth development programs that are designed to encourage youth leadership through volunteerism.

Commentary: Innovations in programming for HIV among adolescents: towards an AIDS-free generation.

Ultimately achieving an AIDS-free generation might rely more than we thought on developing adolescent leaders as agents of change -- not simply behavior change but societal and legal change. Innovative programming may be expanding adolescents’ social networks and engagement increasing their HIV-specific knowledge and increasing demand for HIV testing and treatment; but what is to meet this demand; and how will the effects of these programs be rigorously measured? Technology companies and mobile host sites are not clinicians or experts in evaluation. Even dizzying advances in technology are useless if adolescents have no access to them or are not able to access health promoting information services or networks. Moving forward technology and social innovators -- young and old -- must task themselves with removing barriers to testing and treatment that will reduce the sheer numbers of HIV infections and AIDS deaths in this population. Innovations must support adolescents’ access to a wider array of confidential testing options available in the community and through the health sector link them to biomedical and other prevention services of proven efficacy such as antiretroviral therapy medical male circumcision and to specific harm reduction interventions. In the years to come it is network disruption -- of entrenched social mores stigma attitudes and discriminatory practices -- that will constitute true innovation. (Excerpts)

Adolescent Leadership Development

This article reviews the literature on adolescent leadership development and connects the concept of leadership authenticity as a way to influence anti-social adolescent behavior for pro-social outcomes. Because adolescent leaders develop from both pro-social and anti-social constructs, educators must recognize the unique power of both leadership funnels. Pro-social leaders are inclusive and build affiliation, while anti-social leaders are exclusive and rely on power. Leadership studies overly focus on adult-level leadership development. This article centers on the idea that leadership development is essential at the adolescent level, and opportunities for productive adolescent leadership development research, though difficult, do exist. In this article a functional definition for authentic leadership is developed along with a proposed research framework with researchable variables for studying leadership authenticity in adolescents. A case for using an authentic leadership paradigm for helping adolescents build their own leadership attitudes, skills, and experiences is advanced. Finally a review of the processes whereby adolescent leaders are selected, and the existing leadership development solutions existing in the American high school setting are discussed.

The Reflected Best Self field experiment with adolescent leaders: exploring the psychological resources associated with feedback source and valence

This study provides a preliminary examination of the efficacy of the Reflected Best Self Exercise. We conducted a field quasi-experiment with 108 adolescent leaders assigned to a 2 × 2 design: (1) valence of feedback (i.e., strengths-only versus strengths and improvement-oriented) and (2) source of feedback (i.e., professional (e.g., teachers, coaches, bosses) only versus professional and personal (e.g., friends and family)). By ANOVA, support was found for the hypothesis that feedback from the combination of professional and personal sources is associated with more positive emotional, agentic, and relational resources than feedback from only professional sources. Little support was found for the hypothesis that strengths-based feedback generates more positive emotional, agentic, or relational resources. Limitations, implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.

Understanding high school student leaders: II. Peer nominations of leaders and their correlates

The article represents a trait theory approach to the prediction of peer nominations of adolescent leaders in high school. It reports confirmation of earlier results [Leadership Q. 10 (1999) 609.] using teacher ratings of these same adolescents. Results generally confirmed the earlier results, finding similar significant predictors of peer leader nominations to those of the teacher ratings (over a 2-year time lag) in personality, interests, and academic ability domains. More specifically, (1) peer nominations of leaders and teacher ratings of leadership behavior are significantly correlated, (2) the predictors of peer nominations of leaders overlap with the predictors of teacher ratings, (3) peer nominations of leaders are only modestly related to peer nominations of friendship and popularity, (4) the personal attributes that are significant correlates of popularity and friendship are somewhat different from the correlates of leadership, and (5) the most consistent predictors unique to leadership (across time lags, ratings source, and facets of leadership) are the Judging–Perceiving (JP) dimension of the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and grade point average (GPA). A framework for understanding the present results in the context of the history of the trait prediction of leadership is presented with implications for further studies based on a trait theory perspective.

Adolescent and Adult Female Leaders: Comparisons on Measures of Valued Leadership Traits and Irrational Thinking

This study compared the responses of 45 adolescent and 45 adult female leaders on measures of valued leadership traits and irrational thinking. Adolescent leaders value Creativity, while adult leaders view Sense of Purpose an important leadership trait. Adolescent leaders possess significantly more irrational beliefs than adult leaders and tend to endorse those beliefs which reflect high self-expectations, blame proneness, and anxious overconcern about the future.

Models for effective prevention

The social influence models do provide some optimism for primary prevention efforts. Prevention programs appear most effective when 1) the target behavior of the intervention has received increasing societal disapproval (such as cigarette smoking), 2) multiple years of behavioral health education are planned, and 3) community-wide involvement or mass media complement a school-based peer-led program (45,46). Short-term programs and those involving alcohol use have had less favorable outcomes. Future research in primary prevention should address concerns of high-risk groups and high-risk countries, such as lower income populations in the United States or countries that have large adolescent homeless populations. The utilization of adolescent leaders for program dissemination might be particularly critical in these settings. A second major and global concern should focus upon alcohol use and alcohol-related problems. In many communities adolescent alcohol use is normative and even adult supported. Thus, young people are getting quite inconsistent messages on alcohol from their schools, from TV, from peers, and from parents. This inconsistency may translate into many tragic and avoidable deaths for young people. Clearly, in the area of alcohol-related problems, community-wide involvement may be necessary. A third direction for prevention research should involve issues of norms, access, and enforcement including policy interventions, such as involve the availability of cigarette vending machines or the ease of under-age buying or levels of taxation. These methods affect adolescents more acutely since their financial resources, for the most part, are more limited. These policy level methods also signify to adolescents what adults consider appropriate.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Perceptions of Leadership Traits: Comparison of Adolescent and Adult School Leaders

This study compares the responses of 58 adolescent and 58 adult school leaders on the Leadership Traits Inventory. Adolescent leaders rank integrity, good listening, and knowledge or skills highest and rank compassion, consistency, and flexibility lowest. Adult leaders, in comparison, rank sense of purpose, integrity, and knowledge or skills highest and rank flexibility, compassion, and creativity lowest. Rank-order differences between the groups are significant. Adolescent leaders rank good listening and creativity significantly higher than adult leaders. Adults rank sense of purpose, consistency, and flexibility significantly higher than adolescents. Moreover, adolescent school leaders tended to be girls. The results are viewed in terms of leadership qualities, gender, and the developmental differences between adolescents and adults.