First-year High School Students Research Articles

Stress symptoms among adolescents: The role of subjective psychosocial conditions, lifestyle, and self-esteem

Stress-related problems are increasing among Swedish adolescents, especially among females. The aims of this study were to survey the incidence of stress symptoms among 16-year-olds, to investigate the related gender differences, and to understand the factors that may contribute to stress symptoms. The study is questionnaire based, and the sample included 304 first-year high school students from two comparable schools. More than 30% of the high school students reported serious stress symptoms. Almost every second girl and every fifth boy reported that they felt stressed to a high degree. 8.2% were found to have severe stress symptoms, which would be considered a sign of chronic stress in adults. Besides the perception of high demands, low levels of global self-esteem, sleep disturbances, and poor social support played a crucial role in the prediction of stress symptoms. The findings highlight the need to develop and implement adequate stress prevention measures for adolescents.

Sexual behaviour and contraceptive use among Swedish high school students in two cities: Comparisons between genders, study programmes, and over time

Objectives To investigate sexual behaviour and contraceptive use among first-year high school students in two Swedish cities in 2009, to compare male and female students, students in theoretical and vocational study programmes, and their sexual behaviour with that reported in 1979, 1989 and 1999.Methods In a cluster sample of 20 classes, students (N = 387), median age 16 years, completed a questionnaire consisting of 46 questions.Results More girls than boys had experienced petting (p ≤ 0.003) and had received oral sex (p ≤ 0.01). More boys than girls had masturbated (p ≤ 0.0001) and watched pornography (p ≤ 0.0001). The median age at first sexual intercourse was 15 years. Students in vocational programmes were more sexually experienced compared to their theoretical peers. The proportion of students having had sexual intercourse (p ≤ 0.0002), and contraceptive use at first (p ≤ 0.0001) and latest (p ≤ 0.0001) sexual intercourse increased from 1979 to 2009. Alcohol use at first intercourse decreased over the period (p ≤ 0.0001).Conclusions Girls were more sexually experienced than boys, as were students in vocational programmes compared to their theoretical peers; this should be considered when tailoring sex education and counselling. Over time, an increase in students having had sexual intercourse, and contraceptive use at first and latest sexual intercourse was found.

Can We Make Definite Categorization of Student Attitudes? A Rough Set Approach to Investigate Students’ Implicit Attitudinal Typologies Toward Living Things

This study investigates the possibility of analyzing educational data using the theory of rough sets which is mostly employed in the fields of data analysis and data mining. Data were collected using an open-ended conceptual understanding test of the living things administered to first-year high school students. The responses of randomly selected 60 students among the participants were analyzed using rough set approach on the basis of “nine attitudinal typologies toward wildlife” defined by Kellert (1996). Student responses were tabulated to be used in rough sets and upper and lower approximation analyses were carried out. Students were found to display the characteristics of four out of nine typologies. Analyses revealed that some students who possessed characteristics of a certain typology may partially display the characteristics of other typologies and these typologies could be determined using rough set theory.

Are Animals ‘More Alive’ than Plants? Animistic-Anthropocentric Construction of Life Concept

This study investigated the characteristics students use in attributing value to and classifying the living things; the relational construction of the life concepts and the living things and the place of human in this construction. Participants were first-year high school students from seven schools in Izmir (a large western city in Turkey). An open-ended conceptual understanding test was developed and administered to students. Semistructured interview forms were applied to students and biology teachers, one from each school; and this provided additional data to clarify ambiguous points in students’ responses to the conceptual test. Results revealed that students constructed the life concept by associating it predominantly with ‘human’. The most frequently associated concept to the life concept was found to be motion. Students tended to use their own classification criteria instead of biological classification. Generally, we noticed classifications in the form of ‘human-animal-plant’

Promoting Interest and Performance in High School Science Classes

We tested whether classroom activities that encourage students to connect course materials to their lives will increase student motivation and learning. We hypothesized that this effect will be stronger for students who have low expectations of success. In a randomized field experiment with high school students, we found that a relevance intervention, which encouraged students to make connections between their lives and what they were learning in their science courses, increased interest in science and course grades for students with low success expectations. The results have implications for the development of science curricula and theories of motivation.

Preventing heavy alcohol use in adolescents (PAS): cluster randomized trial of a parent and student intervention offered separately and simultaneously

To evaluate the effectiveness of two preventive interventions to reduce heavy drinking in first- and second-year high school students. Cluster randomized controlled trial using four conditions for comparing two active interventions with a control group from 152 classes of 19 high schools in the Netherlands. A total of 3490 first-year high school students (mean 12.68 years, SD=0.51) and their parents. Intervention conditions (i) Parent intervention (modelled on the Swedish Örebro Prevention Program) aimed at encouraging parental rule-setting concerning their children's alcohol consumption; (ii) student intervention consisting of four digital lessons based on the principles of the theory of planned behaviour and social cognitive theory; (iii) interventions 1 and 2 combined; and (iv) the regular curriculum as control condition. Main outcome measures Incidence of (heavy) weekly alcohol use and frequency of monthly drinking at 10 and 22 months after baseline measurement. A total of 2937 students were eligible for analyses in this study. At first follow-up, only the combined student-parent intervention showed substantial and statistically significant effects on heavy weekly drinking, weekly drinking and frequency of drinking. At second follow-up these results were replicated, except for the effects of the combined intervention on heavy weekly drinking. These findings were consistent across intention-to-treat and completers-only analyses. Results suggest that adolescents as well as their parents should be targeted in order to delay the onset of drinking, preferably prior to onset of weekly drinking.

Reflexões sobre a importância da experimentação no ensino de física

The main objective of this paper is to determine the degree of importance that experimentation has in physics education. To that end, a project was developed with 18 first-year high school students from a private institution in Maringá, Paraná State, during the 3rd bimester of the 2006 school year. Research and production were done by the students outside school hours, and every 15 days a physics class was given to answer questions. Over the course of these classes, we noticed that, in spite of the difficulties faced by the students, what effectively happened were moments full of joy, enthusiasm and motivation, which really got our attention, as the students had been put in a new situation. During that period, information was collected through reports by the participants in the project, as well as photos and videos produced by them. Ten months later, an interview was conducted with each student who had participated in the project to observe whether the experimentation can contribute effectively with the teaching and learning process, providing good results in student learning.

Apprenticeship Training and the Business Cycle

Dual apprenticeship training is a market-driven form of education at the upper secondary level, taking place in firms as well as in vocational schools. So far, little is known about the impact of the business cycle on the number of apprenticeship programs offered by firms. Using panel-data of Swiss cantons from 1988-2004, we find that the influence of the business cycle is statistically significant, but small in size. Instead, supply of apprenticeship programs is driven to a much greater extent by demographic change. Conversely, the number of first-year high school students is not affected by the business cycle. We find, however, that enrollment increases if the population at age 16 grows, but access to high schools does not become more restricted in times of negative growth.

Association between Blood Pressure and Carotid Intima-Media Thickness

To investigate the association between blood pressure and carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) in healthy adolescents. Study participants included 285 first-year high school students (mean age, 15.2 years) at a rural high school in Korea. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP) were measured with an oscillometric automated sphygmomanometer. The carotid arteries were evaluated with high-resolution B-mode ultrasound scanning. IMT value was determined with the average of the maximal IMT at each common carotid artery. Increased IMT was defined as sex-specific top quartile. The odds ratio (OR) for increased IMT per 1 SD increase of SBP and DBP was estimated after adjusting for age, sex, body mass index, waist circumference, fasting glucose level, and total/high-density lipoprotein cholesterol ratio. Adjusted OR for increased IMT was 1.70 (P = .003) per 12.4 mm Hg SBP and 1.25 (P = .125) per 7.0 mm Hg DBP. When the analyses were performed by sex, increased IMT was associated with both SBP (OR, 2.67; P = .003) and DBP (OR, 1.68; P = .019) in girls, but it was not associated with either SBP (OR, 1.46; P = .093) or DBP (OR, 0.99; P = .972) in boys. These results suggest that higher blood pressure level may be associated with increased carotid IMT in apparently healthy adolescents.

School Attendance Revisited

Urban African American first-year high school students' absenteeism was found to be negatively related to grade point average (GPA) and avoidance as a means of coping (use of substances as a way to escape—food, alcohol, smoking, caffeine, etc.) and positively related to use of social support as a means of coping (efforts to stay emotionally connected with people through reciprocal problem solving and expression of affect). Nonattenders tend to have lower GPAs, report using avoidance less often as a means of coping, and report using social support more often. In other words, those students who attend school most frequently tend to have higher GPAs, use avoidance more often as a means of coping, and use members of their social support less often than do those who have more absences. Implications are discussed for educational reform, school counseling service delivery, and future research.

Post-hoc IRT equating of previously administered English tests for comparison of test scores

Despite growing concerns about declining scholastic abilities of Japanese students throughout Japan prior to the implementation of the revised Courses of Study in 2002, little empirical evidence was available at that time to support this perceived decline in academic performance. This research describes post-hoc IRT equating of previously administered English tests for retrospective comparison of test scores. Eight forms of a prefecture-(state-)wide English test for high school students administered from 1995 to 2002 were analyzed through the two-parameter IRT model. Because there were no common items and no common examinees among the eight forms, seven composite tests were created for equating with a common-examinee design. Using the mean and sigma method to estimate equating constants, the ability parameter estimates of approximately 140,000 examinees became comparable on a common IRT scale. The results showed that the mean scores among first-year high school students were in a declining trend during the eight-year period. This is a first step toward demonstrating trends in English ability among Japanese students year by year based on IRT using previously administered large-scale English tests. The post-hoc equating method presented here is applicable to any similar circumstance in language testing research.

Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level foreign language classrooms: A study of guided planning and relativization

This study investigated whether pre-task planning that embeds grammatical guidance to attend to a specific L2 form might be a suitable pedagogical choice in beginning-level foreign language classrooms. First-year high school students of English in Japan were asked to do an oral story-retelling task with a class partner under one of three conditions: without any prior planning ( n = 17), after 5 minutes of unguided planning ( n = 20), or after 5 minutes of planning with guidance in the form of a grammar handout about English relative clauses ( n = 19). The resulting narratives were analyzed for task essentialness, amount and quality of use of relativization, and global complexity and fluency. It was found that the guided planning group produced more and more accurate relative clauses in their narratives than the other two groups, to both statistically significant and large degrees, while at the same time exhibiting global levels of complexity and fluency that were similar to those of the other two groups. The results show that guided planning can succeed in creating favorable conditions for striking a pedagogical balance between communication and grammar, even with high school learners at incipient levels of proficiency and under conditions that are typical of many foreign language contexts.

Risk Factors for and Protective Factors Against Adolescent Suicidal Behavior in Turkey

This study investigated the possible role of depression, self-esteem, problem solving, assertiveness, social support, and some socioeconomic factors on adolescent suicidal behavior in youth in a small city located in the southwestern part of Turkey. Participants in the study were 805 (367 girls) first-year high school students between the ages of 13-18 years. Some 23% of participants reported having thought of killing themselves during the past 12 months or their lifetime. The percentage of students who said that they had attempted to kill themselves was 2.5. Suicidal ideation during one's lifetime or during the past 12 months was more frequent among girls than among boys but suicidal attempts were equally common in girls and boys. Girls scored significantly higher on depression and the Suicide Probability Scale (SPS) but also on assertiveness and perceived social support from friends than boys. Boys tended to score higher on self-esteem than girls. Depression and low self-esteem were the most consistent and independent predictors of suicidal thoughts, attempts, and SPS scores in both girls and boys. The results are discussed in terms of relevant literature with special reference to developmental and sociocultural issues. The implications of findings for the assessment and treatment of suicidal youths are highlighted.

The structure of students’ knowledge and self-concepts. Part A: The structure of students’ knowledge formed in information education

The purpose of this study was to examine the structure of students’ knowledge formed in information education at junior high-school level. Seventy-two 7th graders (first-year junior high-school students) and 78 10th graders (first-year high-school students) participated in the study. A cluster analysis was performed on 40 items of knowledge that was included in “Information and Computers.” The results of the analysis indicated that students’ knowledge composed from the perspective of two clusters: “Practical knowledge” and “Systematic knowledge.” In addition, “Systematic knowledge” was significantly correlated with “Processing ability,” which is one of the subordinates to “the ability of practical use of information.”

男子中学生・高校生の口臭と歯の着色に関する意識調査

This study investigated the oral health awareness of aesthetic problems among adolescents. In 2002, a questionnaire survey on oral malodor and teeth stains was conducted at a junior and senior high school for males in Tokyo. The subjects were 783 students. The following results were obtained. (1) The rate of students who were concerned about other persons' oral malodor was significantly higher for the students in the senior high school than in the junior high school. The attitudes toward oral malodor varied depending on whether the target was family or friends. (2) Forty percent of junior high school students and first-year senior high school students answered that they had been conscious about their oral malodor. The rate was 60% for second- and third-year senior high school students. There was a significant difference between the two groups. (3) Thirty-five percent of the students who were conscious about their oral malodor felt some difficulties in daily life such as communication with other persons. (4) Fifty percent of the students replied that they had been conscious about their teeth stains. However, most of them felt no difficulties in daily life. From these results, it was revealed that almost half of the junior and senior high school students had been concerned about oral malodor and teeth stains. It is necessary to provide adequate dental health education on oral malodor and teeth stains for students through school oral health promotion activities as well as in dental clinics.

Applying Pedagogical Principles To Grammar Instruction

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of two experimental methods of teaching the present progressive verb tense based on four instructional principles: teach form-function relations, compare similar grammatical forms, promote learner autonomy, and provide opportunities for generative use. Ninety-nine Japanese first-year high school students participated in the study. A 3 (groups) x 1 (test) Analysis of Variance procedure revealed no statistical differences among the three groups at the beginning of the study; however, both an immediate and a delayed post-test showed statistically significant differences between the control group and the two experimental groups ( p < .001). The findings support the idea that a communicative grammar explanation coupled with structure-based communicative tasks designed around specific instructional principles constitutes one effective approach to grammar instruction.

A longitudinal study of the relationship between support reciprocity and mental health among elementary and high school students

At both the beginning and the end of a school year, 124 sixth-year elementary school students and 242 first-year high school students completed questionnaires regarding mutual support in friendships and stress responses. For elementary school students, support reciprocity did not correlate significantly with stress responses at either the beginning or end of the school year. For high school students, support reciprocity related significantly to stress responses at the end of the year but not at the beginning. These results suggest that the relationship between support reciprocity and mental health is influenced by the developing relationship between two people as well as the state of each individual's development at the time of mutual support.

Carotid intima media thickness and left ventricular changes in children with end-stage renal disease

To investigate the association between blood pressure and carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) in healthy adolescents.Study participants included 285 first-year high school students (mean age, 15.2 years) at a rural high school in Korea. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP) were measured with an oscillometric automated sphygmomanometer. The carotid arteries were evaluated with high-resolution B-mode ultrasound scanning. IMT value was determined with the average of the maximal IMT at each common carotid artery. Increased IMT was defined as sex-specific top quartile. The odds ratio (OR) for increased IMT per 1 SD increase of SBP and DBP was estimated after adjusting for age, sex, body mass index, waist circumference, fasting glucose level, and total/high-density lipoprotein cholesterol ratio.Adjusted OR for increased IMT was 1.70 (P = .003) per 12.4 mm Hg SBP and 1.25 (P = .125) per 7.0 mm Hg DBP. When the analyses were performed by sex, increased IMT was associated with both SBP (OR, 2.67; P = .003) and DBP (OR, 1.68; P = .019) in girls, but it was not associated with either SBP (OR, 1.46; P = .093) or DBP (OR, 0.99; P = .972) in boys.These results suggest that higher blood pressure level may be associated with increased carotid IMT in apparently healthy adolescents.

A novel hepatitis B vaccination regimen for adolescents: two doses 12 months apart

Background: Two- and three-dose hepatitis B vaccinations for adolescents are usually administered using dosing schedules of 6 months duration. This does not suit all circumstances. A 12-month schedule would be useful in schools and settings where only annual vaccination is the most practical option. Aim: To examine the efficacy of a 12-month dosing interval for two-dose hepatitis B vaccination of adolescents. Subjects: Four hundred and fifty-eight healthy first-year high school (Year 7) students. Vaccination regimen: Engerix-B (GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals) 20 μg: two doses, 12 months apart. Serum collection: #1, same day as first vaccine dose given; #2, >1 month after second vaccine dose. Results: Of the 458 children: 15 did not provide serum #1, 17 had prior vaccination, 2 had prior infection, 18 moved, 7 failed to provide serum #2, 12 withdrew (only 1 cited vaccine adverse reactions as the reason). Three hundred and eighty-seven (210 males, 177 females) aged 11.8–14.2 years (mean: 12.9±0.42 years) at entry completed both injections 321–381 days (mean: 359±10.7 days) apart and supplied serum #2, 30–57 days (mean: 41±5.6 days) after the second vaccine dose. Anti-HBs responses: 379 of the 387 subjects (97.9%; 95% CI: 95.9–99.1%) achieved anti-HBs ≥10 mIU/ml (range 10–170,460 mIU/ml, geometric mean concentration (GMC) 4155 mIU/ml—95% CI of mean: 3381–5106 mIU/ml). Sex was the only determinant of anti-HBs concentration (206 males: GMC 3073 mIU/ml—95% CI: 2285–4134 mIU/ml; 173 females: GMC 5944 mIU/ml—95% CI: 4508–7851 mIU/ml; P=0.001). Conclusion: A high seroprotection rate and GMC were achieved using two 20 μg doses of Engerix-B administered 12 months apart. These results are similar to those achieved by others using 6-month three- and two-dose regimens in adolescents.

Sex behavior among high school students in Sweden: improvement in contraceptive use over time.

To investigate sexual behavior and attitudes toward sexuality among first-year high school students in Sweden in 1999 and to compare the sexual behavior with that reported from similar studies in 1979 and 1989. In Spring 1999, a questionnaire with 47 questions mainly of multiple-choice nature was administered to a random sample of 20 classes in senior high school in two medium-sized cities in Sweden. The median age of the students was 16 years. Differences in sexual behavior and attitudes were evaluated with the Chi-square and Student's t-test. Almost half of the students (46%) had had intercourse, showing that the age of coitarche had not decreased during the past two decades. The median age at intercourse of those who had had intercourse was 15 years in both genders. More students in practical (vocational-technical) programs (60%) than in theoretical (college preparatory) ones (37%) had had sexual intercourse. More teenagers in theoretical (90%) than in practical programs (64%) had used contraceptives at their first intercourse, an increase from 65% in 1979 to 76% in 1999. One-fourth of the teenagers were under the influence of alcohol at the first intercourse, a decrease, compared with 1979. Contraceptive use at coitarche has increased and alcohol use decreased over the 20-year-period. The tendency noted 10 years ago that students attending practical programs put themselves at more health risk than students in theoretical programs continues. This fact should be considered when planning for counseling and sex education.