Dutch Youth Research Articles

Lifetime parental smoking history and cessation and early adolescent smoking behavior

Background. Associations are examined between parental smoking and smoking onset by their children. Smoking parents are more likely to have children who start smoking in their teenage years; however, less is known about whether parental quitting is related to adolescent smoking. Methods. A cross-sectional national sample of 2,206 adolescents, ages 10–14 years, living in two-parent households were interviewed for the DEFACTO annual report on Dutch youth smoking behavior. Adolescent smokers reported that they have tried smoking, even one puff. Respondents indicated whether their parents were never, former, or current smokers, and provided, in the case a parent had quit, their age at that time. Results. Logistic regression analyses revealed that likelihood increased gradually: adolescents with both parents being current smokers were four times more likely to be a smoker compared to adolescents with parents who had never smoked. Additionally, within the group of adolescents whose parents quit smoking, the findings demonstrated that the earlier the parents stopped smoking in the life of their offspring, the less likely their children were to start smoking in adolescence. Conclusions. Parental smoking history is associated with smoking initiation in early adolescence. Parental cessation at an early age of their offspring reduces the likelihood of adolescent smoking initiation. Preventive efforts, therefore, should focus on the benefits of parental cessation as early as possible.

“Dancestasy”: Dance and MDMA Use in Dutch Youth Culture

“House” is the main youth subculture of the 1980s and 1990s in the Netherlands. For the members of this youth culture scene, house is a combination of going to parties and dancing all night while being high on MDMA, a drug better known as XTC/Ecstasy. This article is a review of the history of house and the Dutch house scene. It considers some of the psychological effects of dancing combined with taking Ecstasy: “dancestasy.” MDMA itself can be physically and cognitively harmful, but the dancestasy experience may contribute positively to the development of personal and social identity during adolescence. Results of ethnographic studies suggest that the dancestasy experience can have temporary negative effects on functioning in school or at work. After a few years in the dance scene, leisure time becomes less important, and, as young adults, people who are part of the dance scene take up their social responsibilities.

Ownership and use of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media among ethnic minority youth in the Netherlands. The role of the ethno-cultural position.

The starting point of the present study is to investigate which environmental factors play a role in the media behavior of ethnic minority youth. To what extent do socio-demographic characteristics (gender, age, education, SES and country of origin) influence ownership and use of the media? We also address the role of religion, cultural origin and the cultural distance between ethnic minority youth and indigenous Dutch youth. Three numerically important groups of ethnic minority youth are discussed: Turks, Moroccans (as examples of a group with greater cultural distance from indigenous Dutch youth) and Surinamese (with less cultural distance from indigenous Dutch youth). In a survey conducted among Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese youth aged between 12 and 19, residing in the Netherlands, we investigated which environmental factors play a role in the media behavior of ethnic minority youth. A control group of indigenous Dutch youth was established and likewise exposed to the variables under study.

Routine Activities and Deviant Behaviors: American, Dutch, Hungarian, and Swiss Youth

The current investigation examined cross-national similarities and differences in routine activities, measures of deviance, and their relationship in representative samples of 7,000 adolescents aged 1519 years (mean age: 17.5 years) from Hungary, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States. For the majority of youth, most of their time was spent in solitary activities, followed by peer activities, community/sports activities, and family activities; Hungarian youth reported spending a much greater amount of time with the family than adolescents from other countries, while Dutch youth spent far more time in solitary activities than their peers. Rates of total deviance were remarkably similar for American, Dutch, and Swiss youth; Hungarian youth reported substantially lower rates than all other adolescents. Finally, findings indicated that routine activities accounted for 18% for males and 16% for females of the variance explained in total deviance. Furthermore, with the exceptions of alcohol and drug use, country had very little or no explanatory power in deviance. The current study suggests that the utility and the explanatory power of the routine activities framework replicates across national boundaries.

HIV Education for Young People: Intervention Effectiveness, Programme Development, and Future Research

Ph.D. Associate Professor in Health Education and Promotion at the Faculty of Health Sciences,Universiteit Maastricht. He is a social psychologist and was the principal researcher workingon the Long Live Love project, which involved a randomized control trial of a teacher-deliv-ered school-based sex education programme in the Netherlands. His current research includesHIV prevention among Dutch youth, migrant populations in the Netherlands, and youth insub-Saharan Africa.

Unemployment and mental health: A longitudinal perspective

Using longitudinal data, the current study examined the relation between mental health and unemployment. It was assumed that these concepts would mutually influence each other—that is, while the perceived characteristics of the situation of being unemployed affect mental health, mental health may also influence the intention to look for a job, amount and type of job-searching behavior, and the chances of finding a job. Drawing on partly longitudinal data from 229 unemployed Dutch youth, a model relating mental health, perceptions of the unemployment situation, job-searching behaviors, and employment status was tested using structural equation modeling and logistic regression analysis. While the expectations were largely supported, there were also several unexpected results, most notably that participants who felt powerless were more likely to be active job seekers, while only mental health (and not job-seeking behavior) was (weakly) related to the likelihood of finding a job.

Een cross-culturele vergelijking van emotionele problemen en gedragsproblemen bij Nederlandse kinderen en Turkse migrantenkinderen

Summary Professionals in somatic and mental health care have to adjust their methods, knowledge and skills to the needs of immigrant children and their parents in order to provide adequate care. Cross-cultural comparisons on the prevalence of emotional and behavioral problems and the factors that increase or reduce the risks for these problems will support clinical reasoning and practice. Described are two studies in which the prevalence of and risk factors for emotional and behavioral problems in multiple cultures are compared while using the Child Behavior Checklist, a parent checklist that produces problem scores. Dutch children and adolescents show low levels of emotional and behavioral problems in comparison to children in eleven other cultures measured with similar methodology. However, Dutch adolescents score remarkably high on attention problems and this score is above the omni-cultural mean. Sweden and Germany score lower on all syndromes indicating that opportunities exist for Dutch youth to reduce the levels of emotional and behavioral problems. Turkish immigrant childrenand adolescents score higher than Dutch children on internalizing and externalizing and higher than Turkish children on externalizing. The difference between Turkish immigrant children and Dutch children is larger than the difference between immigrant and Turkish children. Marked are these differences on the CBCL syndrome anxious/depressed where immigrant children score the highest. Support is found for the notion that increase in integration will lead to reduction in levels of problems in immigrant children and adolescents. Mental disorders in parents, convictions and incarceration, marital problems, poverty, and overburdening of mothers increase the risk for emotional and behavioral problems.

Religious Conscio Usness of Dutch Youth

This article offers a survey of the religious consciousness of Dutch secondary school students. From an educational point of view, this survey is understood as a description of the actual, initial situation of the student population that the comtemporary religious educator faces. Against the background of this survey, the question is raised, therefore, what can still be a ligitimate, general goal of religious education in school given the fact that these students hardly have any affinity with any religious tradition anymore. In order to provide an answer to this question, three concepts of religious education are discussed: education in religion, education about religion and education from religion. However, on the basis of empirical data and a number of pedagogical and theological minimum requirements, it is concluded, then, that none of these concepts offers a sufficient basis for religious education in school today. As a result, an alternative conception of religious education, which focusses on the formation of a personal religious identity, is presented as a possible and viable concept for religious education in the future.

Fast on 200 Beats per Minute

The youth culture of gabbers has been the most remarkable Dutch youth culture of the past decade. It has been subjected to many years of negative stereotyping in the media. In this article, a study is presented among 1,147 Dutch adolescents, comparing gabbers to their “normal” peers. The results show that gabbers clearly differ in their taste for music and clothes but differ less than expected in their ideas about a normal way of life, foreigners, enjoying life, and drugs.

Continuing positive secular growth change in The Netherlands 1955-1997.

Since 1858, an increase of mean stature has been observed in the Netherlands, reflecting the improving nutritional, hygienic, and health status of the population. In this study, stature, weight, and pubertal development of Dutch youth, derived from four consecutive nationwide cross-sectional growth studies during the past 42 y, are compared to assess the size and rate of the secular growth change. Data on length, height, weight, head circumference, sexual maturation, and demographics of 14,500 boys and girls of Dutch origin in the age range 0-20 y were collected in 1996 and 1997. Growth references for height and weight were constructed with a method that summarizes the distribution by three smooth curves representing skewness (L curve), the median (M curve), and coefficient of variation (S curve). The relationship between height and demographic variables was assessed by multivariate analysis. Reference curves for menarche and secondary sex characteristics were estimated by a generalized additive model using a logit transformation. A positive secular growth change has been present in the past 42 y for children, adolescents, and young adults of Dutch origin, although at a slower rate in the last 17 y. Height differences according to region, educational level of child and parents, and family size have remained. In girls, median age at menarche has decreased by 6 mo during the past four decades to 13.15 y. Environmental conditions have been favorable for many decades in the Netherlands, and the positive secular change in height has not yet come to a halt, in contrast to Scandinavian countries. Main contributors to the increase in height may be improved nutrition, child health, and hygiene, and a reduction of family size.

The Abstract Image of God: The Case of the Dutch Youth

A process of secularisation can be observed in all European countries: church membership declines and religious institutions lose their monopoly. This is strongest among Dutch youngsters, but it does not automatically lead to a loss of religion. Instead it is a process of individualisation of religion. Youngsters nowadays construct a personal framework of meaning by choosing from available religious traditions in a process of bricolage, just as they do when they construct youth culture. Since 82% of Dutch youngsters pray at least sometimes, prayer seems to be the most persistent religious element. There is great similarity between the way the young pray: it is psychological by nature in that it gives strenght to accept the inevitable like the death of a relative, and the action of praying is meditational in that youngsters ponder and think. Prayer functions as a mechanism to make an inventory of daily life and as a therapeutic ritual to keep their life in balance. It is typically performed when they are alone, in bed, at night. Youngsters spontaneously mention God as the direction of their prayer, but they define God using impersonal and abstract terms.

The Structure and Variety of Prayer

Although in Europe as a whole and in the Netherlands in particular, church membership is in steady decline, most Dutch youth still pray. In this study, praying is interpreted as a ritual, composed of seven structural elements: need, action, effect, direction, time, place and method. On theoretical grounds, we distinguish four varieties of prayer. In our sample, petitionary prayer and religious prayer were found to coincide. In both, direction (mostly towards God) is central and so they are labeled as religious prayer. In meditative prayer the focus is on action (meditating or pondering). In psychological prayer need (concrete problems, especially the death of loved ones) is central. The importance of time and place was greater than expected. Every type of praying has a specific set of adjuncts. Psychological prayer is mostly said at night, lying in bed. Religious prayer takes place at fixed moments in church. Meditative prayer is performed anywhere and anytime. Young people who pray always combine these three types of prayer, with the core of praying being psychological in nature and functioning as a self-directing style of problem-solving. For most young people, praying is a way of coping cognitively and actively with problems of daily life and unresolvable negative events in order to gain secondary control and maintain balance in their life.

The Effects of Parental Conflicts and Divorce on the Well-Being of Pupils in Dutch Secondary Education

The conclusions of this article, investigating the well-being of Dutch youth with a large national sample of more than 9000 pupils in Dutch secondary education, are: 1. The well-being of pupils living in single-mother families is higher than that of pupils living in two-parent families with much parental conflict ; 2.The well-being of pupils living in single-mother families with no parental conflict and with much contact with the departed father is lower than that of pupils living in two-parent families without parental conflict ; 3. The degree of parental conflict after divorce is more important for the well-being of the children than the degree of contact with the departed father

Die Anglo-Boereoorlog: ’n vertekende beeld vanuit die vreemde

The Anglo-Boer War: A distorted image from abroadThis article deals with the Dutch author Louwrens Penning (1854-1927) who wrote 18 novels on the Boer War, even though he never visited the country until 1924, long after the Anglo-Boer War had ended One of his books, entitled De held van Spionkop, is discussed as example. Penning s images of the Boer warriors and their endeavors were highly idealised and embedded in a certain view of race relations a n d war. He created idols, like the courageous boy named Blikoortjie, which became widely known among his Dutch readers, especially the Dutch youth. He facilely ignored historic facts and rather idealized a n d fantasized. His works thus became a peculiar mixture off act and fiction. Though he was not a literary master, he succeeded in writing gripping stories which were - up to a point - reprinted time and again. Through his writings he succeeded in creating a positive image of the Afrikaner which persisted in spite of the negative outcome of apartheid. Though one cannot be sure, it may even be true that Dutch immigrants came to South Africa because of a consistently positive image of Afrikaans and Afrikaans heroes as created by Penning in his books.

Measuring Career Mobility: An Empirical Comparison of Six Mobility Indexes

The current paper presents six indexes that can be used to characterize the course of a career during a particular time interval, respectively, (1) the total number of transitions during that interval; (2) the number of positive transitions; (3) the number of negative transitions; (4) the subtraction of the number of negative transitions from the number of positive transitions; (5) the relative uncommonness of the transitions; and (6) the subtraction of the number of negative transitions from the number of positive transitions, weighted by their uncommonness. Advantages and disadvantages of these six indexes are discussed. Further, an empirical example is presented that draws on data from a sample of 357 employed Dutch youth. Finally, our approach is compared to previous approaches (event-centered methods, such as survival analysis, and career-centered methods, such as clustering techniques). It is concluded that our simple approach complements these other approaches well.

Young Together: youth, ethnicity and education

This article presents a selection of results obtained in an ethnographic study of Dutch youth and the lessons dealing with mixed ethnic community and discrimination they receive in secondary schools. The concept of ethnicity and the meaning given to ethnie diversity are crucial in the development of a dynamic multi‐ethnic society in which ethnie divisions are challenged. The article discusses the identity policy implicit in the practice of intercultural education in nine secondary schools in the Netherlands. A static outlook on ethnie identity and a schematic view of the social positions of the Dutch and immigrants with regard to each other are evident from the contents of the lessons and the way the students are addressed. This outlook corresponds zvith the dominant representation of inter‐ethnic relationships of the mixed ethnie community, and runs counter to the diversity of interpretation models that the interviewed youth had.

Dutch Youth and Rock Music in the Fin de Siècle Era

Dutch Youth and Rock Music in the Fin de Siècle Era

Intergroup evaluation and self-esteem motivations: Self-enhancement and self-protection

According to Crocker et al. (1993) people with high collective self-esteem would be primarily concerned with enhancing the self leading to positive in group evaluation rather than derogation of outgroups. In contrast, people with low collective self-esteem would be primarily concerned with protecting the self making outgroup derogation more likely than positive ingroup evaluation. These predictions were confirmed among Dutch youth evaluating ethnic minorities.

Lessons from the Dutch Abortion Experience

Not only does the Netherlands have the lowest induced abortion rate in the world, but Dutch youth have the lowest rates of both adolescent pregnancy and abortion. This record is attributed to a general stance of openness and acceptance of sexuality as a healthy part of life that emerged in 1965-75 in response to recognition of the public health impact of unwanted pregnancy. Modern contraceptives (excluding condoms) are provided at no charge by the national health service and are easily accessible to teenagers. Sex education, which begins at an early age, seeks to instill skills that enhance partner communication and negotiation. By the late 1980s, unplanned births represented only 6% of all first births. In 1992, 38% of Dutch women terminated their first pregnancy compared with 47% in the US; that same year, the Dutch adolescent pregnancy rate was 9.2/1000 women 15-19 years old compared with 95.9/1000 in the US. In 1995, 85% of Dutch youth used contraception at first intercourse (46% condom, 13% pill, 24% pill and condom, and 1% other method). Overall, the Dutch experience suggests that a less ambivalent public approach to sexuality might encourage more responsible reproductive behavior in the US.

Book Reviews

The Afro‐Argentines of Buenos Aires 1800–1900. George Reid Andrews. Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years. Elizabeth Wayland Barber. The Saint: A Complete History in Print, Radio, Film and Television of Leslie Charteris' Robin Hood of Modem Crime, Simon Templal; 1928–1992. Burl Barer. Aspects of British Calendar Customs. Eds. Theresa Buckland and Juliette Wood. Reading the Social Body. Catherine B. Burroughs and Jeffrey David Ehrenreich, eds. Ethnomimesis. Robert Cantwell. Al Capp Remembered. Elliott Caplin. Holy Days and Holidays. Edward M. Deems. The Cultural Studies Reader. Ed. Simon During. Songs About Work: Essays in Occupational Culture For Richard A. Reuss. Ed. Archie Green. The Politics of Pictures: The Creation of the Public in the Age of Popular Media. John Hartley. Breaking the Ties that Bind: Popular Stories of the New Woman, 1915–1930. Ed. Maureen Honey. Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts and Criticisms. Ed. William H. Hynes and William G. Doty. Edward Stratemeyer and the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Deidre Johnson. Seven Minutes: The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon. Norman M. Klein. Meeting the Madwoman: An Inner Challenge for Feminine Spirit. Linda Schierse Leonard Speaking the Unspeakable: A Poetics of Obscenity. Peter Michelson. Feminism/Postmodemism. Ed. Linda J. Nicholson. Humor Scholarship: A Research Bibliography. Don L.F. Nilson. The Crawfish Book. Glen Pitre. Dick Tracy and American Culture: Morality and Mythology, Text and ContextS. Garyn G. Roberts. Gender in Popular Culture: Images of Men and Women in Literature, Visual Media, and Material Culture. Eds. Susan W. Rollins and Peter C. Rollins. Adult Comics: An Introduction. Roger Sabin. Society's Impact on Television: How the Viewing Public Shapes Television Programming. Gary W. Selnow and Richard R. Gilbert. Animating Culture: Hollywood Cartoons from the Sound Era. Eric Smoodin. Media and Public Policy. Ed. Robert J. Spitzer. Football and Its Fans: Supporters and Their Relations with the Game, 1885–1985. Rogan Taylor. The Less Noble Sex: Scientific, Religious, and Philosophical Conceptions of Woman's Nature. Nancy Tuana. Almanac for Americans. Willis Thornton. Christmas on the American Frontier 1800–1900. John E. Bauer. Happy Birthdays Round the World. Lois S. Johnson. Jewish Holidays and Festivals. Ben M. Edidin. Round the Year with the World's Religions. Royston Pike. Season Feasts and Festivals. E.O. James. Yearbook of English Festivals. Dorothy Gladys Spicer. Imagining America: Dutch Youth and Its Sense of Place. Mel Van Eltern The Remote Control in the New Age of Television. Ed. James R. Walker and Robert V. Bellamy, Jr. Professors, Politics and Pop. Jon Wiener.“It 's Time for My Story”: Soap Opera Sources, Structure and Response. Carol Traynor Williams. Bodylore. Ed. Katharine Young.