Taiwanese Youth Research Articles

Youth Cinema: Young Taiwanese Lesbian on Screen

This study offers an analysis of lesbian affairs depicted in Hsiao-tse Cheng’s Miao Miao (2008). Reading this production alongside the representations of lesbian, the authors argue that homosexual affair represented in this film involves nothing more than interpersonal issues with lively audience interaction as this film skimms the surface of its subject matter, especially regarding ‘genital stage’ in personality development, and also, the survey conducted in Taiwan shows that there is a considerable number of young Taiwanese cinema-goers are more concern on psychosexual issues, compare with other themes. This film is an example of Taiwan-Hong Kong co-production and a feature debut by a Taiwanese young film director. Colours, natures, gestures and other means of expression therefore have exhibited a unique look for Taiwanese youth cinema. Keywords: LGBTQ, youth cinema, representations of homosexuality, Taiwanese films, Taiwan

Young people as social capital: Policing and preventing crime among young people ‘at risk’ in Taiwan and England

This article is a comparison of the Taiwanese and English youth justice systems. The Taiwanese system is characterised by the integration of the police and informal social control, with a strong emphasis on voluntary and community involvement and paternalistic discipline; the English system in contrast is on the basis of more centralised control and low local community involvement when dealing with young people. Both approaches however are concerned with ‘risk’ – those young people posing a risk of offending and those ‘at risk’ from other young offenders. Our article reviews the different youth justice systems and places them into their social, political and cultural contexts. We then discuss the different approaches used in dealing with offenders and ‘young people at risk’ of offending and the sanctions available to the respective youth justice systems. Finally, while accepting cultural differences, we conclude that the Taiwanese approach has the welfare of the young person/child as its focus but in a paternalistic way in contrast to England where surveillance, control and formal prevention are regarded as of paramount importance.

Adolescent premarital sex and health outcomes among Taiwanese youth: perception of best friends' sexual behavior and the contextual effect

This study explores premarital sex among adolescents and its health outcomes in a typical East Asian society, Taiwan. As a collective society in terms of cultural heritage, a particular target of this study was perceived peer pressure and its contextual influence. The data were taken from the Taiwan Youth Project, 2004 and 2007, and never married youth aged 20 years constituted our sample (N=3530). Best friends' sexual behavior and other context-related factors, such as school attendance and community participation, are presumed to influence adolescent premarital sex as well as their health status. Logistic regression models show a positive and significant association between the perception of friends' sexual behavior and the likelihood of adolescent premarital sex engagement, after adjusting for the youth's own sex-related experience and attitudes, individual characteristics, and family background. The analysis also confirms that school attendance and community participation are significantly associated with a lower likelihood of having premarital sex. Furthermore, adolescent premarital sex was found to be linked to the perceived health status of the youth (self-rated health, smoking, and drinking), as expected. These findings demonstrate the importance of peers and social context, which suggests that HIV prevention and health promotion programs for youth need to take friendship networks and social context into consideration.

Constructing Educational Resilience: The Developmental Trajectory of Vulnerable Taiwanese Youth

This study contends that the growth trajectory of disadvantaged youth does not need to follow the expected negative path. Diversified developmental patterns may be observed due to the resilience acquired in the process. To consider the cultural background of Taiwan, we selected five parent-youth dyads from economically poor families and explored possible mechanisms contributing to the educational success of children. Data are taken from in-depth interviews of Taiwan Youth Project (TYP). Drawing from memories of both parent and youth on how family practice and family relations contribute to resilience, we are able to document that educational resilience is the key to alter the negative developmental course. Among various individual and family strategies examined, parents’ high aspiration and expectation of children’s educational achievement is found to be the most pronounced factor leading to the positive outcome in terms of educational mobility. Analyzing the retrospective accounts of both generations, it is clear that parental expectation needs to be well perceived and accepted by children in order to achieve its goal. Furthermore, supportive parenting, actively monitoring children’s homework since young, and providing better educational resources are conducive to constructing educational resilience. The implication of shared educational norms across different social classes is briefly discussed.

Generational Change and Ethnicity among 1980s-born Taiwanese

This paper aims to show that Taiwanese born in the 1980s constitute a “post-reform” generation whose perception of cultural difference and ethnicity may challenge the efficiency of the “four major ethnic groups” categorization as an analytical framework for research on Taiwanese youth's identity, political behaviour and social interactions. Using quantitative data from a questionnaire distributed in 15 universities nationwide in 2010 and qualitative data from interviews, this paper first focuses on the attitudes of Taiwanese born in the 1980s toward what are generally considered the three core elements of ethnic group-making in a Chinese socio-cultural context: patrilineality, locality and language. Then it shows that the combined effects of democratization, Taiwanization and contacts with mainland China have decisively impregnated their life experiences and influenced their perceptions of cultural difference. Consequently, the different aspects/ factors that contributed to the formation and the deepening of ethnic boundaries and ethnic conflict up until the 1990s are not effective anymore, nor are they significant for Taiwanese in their twenties. This process is transforming ethnicity rather than erasing it. Thus “having an ethnic identity” is still considered important by a majority, but its meaning and salience have changed, leading to the necessity to redefine, a process that could be undertaken using the concept of “symbolic ethnicity”.

Youth in the Street and Landscape - Taiwanese Youth in the Industrial Society of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Films

Youth in the Street and Landscape - Taiwanese Youth in the Industrial Society of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Films

Body mass index and individual physical fitness tests in Taiwanese youth aged 9–18 years

To evaluate the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and four components of physical fitness in a national cross-sectional sample of Taiwanese youth. A subsample of 102 765 youth (50 940 girls, 51 825 boys) 9-18 years was selected from a nationwide sample. Height, weight and four fitness items were measured: sit and reach (flexibility), standing long jump (power), sit-ups (abdominal muscular strength/endurance), and 800/1 600 m run/walk (cardiorespiratory endurance). BMI was calculated. Sex-specific regressions using a non-linear quadratic model of each fitness item on BMI were done in four age groups: 9-10, 11-12, 13-15, 16-18 years. The relationship between BMI and fitness varied among tests. Lower fitness in three items (sit-ups, jump, distance run) was evident in boys and girls with higher BMIs in each age group. Slopes of decline with increasing BMI varied by age group and sex. Relationships became parabolic for the three fitness items with age and peaks of the parabola were sharper in adolescent boys than girls. Relationships for the sit and reach contrasted with the other tests and differed among age groups and between sexes. BMI significantly and differentially influenced individual fitness tests, but effects varied with age and sex. Higher BMIs were generally associated with lower fitness.

Jean-Pierre Cabestan, Tanguy Le Pesant, L’esprit de défense de Taiwan face à la Chine, la jeunesse taïwanaise face à la tentation de la Chine

Jean-Pierre Cabestan, Tanguy Le Pesant, L’esprit de defense de Taiwan face a la Chine, la jeunesse taiwanaise face a la tentation de la Chine (Taiwan’s will to fight as China looms large, Taiwanese youth and the mainland’s pull), Paris, L’Harmattan, 2009, 256 pp., bibliography. This book is interesting on three counts: it throws the spotlight on a new generation of Taiwanese (in their 20s and 30s); it shows the gradual enrichment and refinement of identity representations in a “post-modern” s...

Gangs as contractors: the social organization of American Taiwanese youth gangs in Southern California

This paper examines the organizational structure and operations of Taiwanese organized crime and youth gangs in Southern California. In-depth interviews were used as the principle method of research. In contrast to transnational criminal conspiracy claims and the La Cosa Nostra model of vertically integrated organizations, our findings suggest that these criminal groups consist of discrete local Taiwanese youth gangs which operate as largely independent economic units that show no substantive and operational ties to criminal organizations in Taiwan. The formation of Taiwanese criminal organizations and gangs in Southern California is primarily governed by the availability of financial opportunities. Furthermore, both the inter-gang relations and intra-gang structures exhibit a distinct form of contractor arrangement which consists of market-like weak ties that are simultaneously circumscribed by the criminal embeddedness. We argue that that these economic weak ties, which seem to render conventionally understood criminal organizational boundaries administratively less meaningful, still function as an operationally significant governance mechanism of the organizational structures of American Taiwanese youth gangs. In addition, the paper discusses the implications that the embeddedness has on the somewhat paradoxical and incoherent organizational structure.

A study of the entrepreneurship of Taiwanese youth by the Chinese Entrepreneur Aptitude Scale

PurposeThe purposes are as follows. First, this paper aims to explore the reliability and validity of the Chinese Entrepreneur Aptitude Scale (CEAS) and to establish a normative score among surveyed students. Second, this paper seeks to compare the scaling scores differences between the genders, departments, and classes in the sample. Finally, this paper aims to compare the student sample's CEAS results with models of Taiwanese entrepreneurial youth.Design/methodology/approachCompleted questionnaires from 1,053 students from the Transworld Institute of Technology in Taiwan and the CEAS, constructed by Chen and Wu, formed the basis of the empirical analysis.FindingsThis paper tests the performance of the CEAS for Taiwanese students at a technological institute that puts entrepreneurial education into practice. The results match those of Chen and Wu, which used qualitative methods to conduct a content analysis of the biographies of models of entrepreneurial youth in Taiwan. Both groups rank high in autonomy and self‐discipline, indicating that entrepreneurial models and potential entrepreneurs have a high sense of mission and responsibility to society. And, this paper finds significant differences between the two groups; the entrepreneurial models rate higher overall on CEAS constructs than the institute students. In particular, the sample students score low on social networking, indicating that the undergraduates lack social and networking experience.Originality/valueThe main contribution of this paper has been to test the applicability of the CEAS in Taiwanese Institute of Technology students, including comparisons between genders, grades, and colleges. The results offer insights for institutes and universities seeking to improve their entrepreneurial education offerings. Moreover, the results offer lessons for fostering entrepreneurial abilities and behavioral traits in undergraduates.

Born Glocal: Youth Identity and Suburban Spaces in the U.S. and Taiwan

Inside a San Francisco Bay area four pan-Asian teens head spin and body pop to modern Taiwanese and American hip hop beats. In these hallways of what western observers have termed the Asian mall, these youth have found a place to express the complex cultural milieu that they inhabit as both Asians and Americans. As they contest and simultaneously redefine the cultural norms of this space, they work to build a hybrid culture from the materials they encounter as diasporic youth. This paper explores this struggle among transnational Taiwanese youth who spend their lives straddling cultural and national borders, as part of what Shenglin Chang has termed transpacific commuter families.

Collaboration among East Asian Intellectuals in the Taisho Period as Glimpsed in "The Asia Kunglun" Magazine ―Centering on Exchanges among Taiwanese and Korean Youths Residing in Tokyo―

Collaboration among East Asian Intellectuals in the Taisho Period as Glimpsed in "The Asia Kunglun" Magazine ―Centering on Exchanges among Taiwanese and Korean Youths Residing in Tokyo―

Tai/kuso/camp: ‘new opeila’ and the structure of sensibility

The valorization of ‘bad taste’ has emerged as a central element in Taiwanese subcultural and avant‐garde style since 2000. This paper looks at the politics of this emerging sensibility by analyzing the performances of two theater troupes that rework opeila, a formerly abject form of Taiwanese local opera. The Golden Bough Theater's opeila‐inspired comedy series is characterized by both sincere nostalgia for working‐class culture and an ironic and exaggerated citation of opeila's pastiche of mass‐media clichés. The Formosa Zephyr Opera Troupe attempts to reconstruct the queer charisma of opeila's stars – the female actresses who play the male leading roles – while simultaneously emphasizing the phantasmatic nature of nostalgic, iconic roles and the costs of trying to embodying them, especially for 21st‐century educated Taiwanese youth.

The Impact of Foreign Programs on Taiwanese Youth and the Significant Role of Media Education

As cable television channel bloomed and grew in Taiwan, more and more teenagers watched a wide variety of foreign TV programmers through hundreds of channels. The impact of this media trend among Taiwanese youth stresses the importance of research to assess whether local college students learn from foreign television programming. In this research, which supports the theoretical discussion in this paper, the nature of these learnings was analyzed as well. In general, this study aims to explore the relevant literature and examine whether college students engage in critical thinking when viewing foreign television programs. This research used a popular Korean series shown in Taiwan to examine various perspectives and views related to the issue. Based from the gathered findings, college students appear to pay more critical attention to the program script, character, rhythm, plot and cultural differences. In relation to aesthetic, ideology and cultural identity issues, less response on the educational impact of the program was obtained from the participants. This confirms the claim that Taiwanese youth view television as an entertainment medium rather than an educational one. For this reason, the role of media education, specifically the integration of visual literacy and critical thinking, is highly significant to generate less passive television viewers.

The Relationship Between Individualistic, Collectivistic, and Transitional Cultural Value Orientations and Adolescents’ Autonomy and Identity Status

In an effort to validate the use of a Western model of adolescent development with Asian youth, 781 urban and rural Taiwanese high school students (56% female) completed questionnaires about their development. Adolescents were first divided into cultural value orientations (i.e. collectivistic, individualistic, or transitional) and compared geographically. There were statistically significant differences in cultural value orientations only for rural youth. Identity statuses and levels of cognitive autonomy were then compared according to cultural value orientations and gender. Adolescents who self-identified as collectivistic were significantly more likely to self-identify as achieved rather than diffused compared to transitional adolescents. Gender, more than cultural value identifications, significantly differentiated these youth in regard to issues of cognitive autonomy measured in this study (i.e. evaluative thinking, voicing opinions, making decisions, self-assessing, and comparative validation). Taken in whole, these findings support the use of a Western model of adolescent development for Taiwanese youth.

The Psychological Well-Being of Taiwanese Youth

This study examines the growth trajectory of the psychological well-being of Taiwanese adolescents from early to late adolescence. Under the competitive educational system in Taiwan, family and school context are two major loci accounting for the developmental outcome. Data are taken from the Taiwan Youth Project, which is a longitudinal panel study of 2696 students since the year 2000. The study uses individual depressive symptoms as the dependent variable. Family cohesion, family educational strategy as well as classroom effects at school are chosen to indicate the potential contextual influence. Using the latent growth curve method, the analysis confirms that family and school factors do produce different effects over time. Family context is salient at the initial status, but not for subsequent development. Class cohesion as well as adolescents' perceptions of unfairness by teachers determine the depressive level, the linear slope and the non-linear quadratic growth curve. In other words, once the adolescent gets used to junior high school, the school context tends to exert more pronounced effects. Further analysis on gender comparisons indicates that selective family and school effects are more pronounced among females, with a greater degree of depressive symptoms over time. The article concludes that while family and school have different impacts on the growth curve of individual depressive symptoms, the school context exerts salient effects over an adolescent's life course.

BMI and Health-Related Physical Fitness in Taiwanese Youth 9-18 Years

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the cross-sectional relationship between BMI and a physical fitness index (PFI) based on four indicators of fitness in a national sample of Taiwanese youth. Height, weight, and four measures of physical fitness (sit-ups completed in 60 s, standing long jump, sit and reach, and 800- or 1600-m run/walk) were measured in a national sample of 102,765 Taiwanese youth 9-18 yr of age: 50,940 girls and 51,825 boys. BMI was calculated for each subject. Within each sex-specific half-year age group, students were classified into five BMI categories based on national percentiles: very low, BMI < 5th percentile; low, BMI >or= 5th but < 15th percentiles; normal, BMI >or= 15th but < 85th percentiles; high, BMI >or= 85th but < 95th percentiles; and very high, BMI >or= 95th percentiles. Z-scores based on sex- and age-specific means and standard deviations were calculated, and the sum of z-scores for the four fitness tests was used as a PFI. Differences in PFI between BMI categories within each sex-specific half-year age group were compared with ANOVA with Bonferroni adjustments. Sex-specific regressions of PFI on BMI, using a nonlinear quadratic model, were done in four broader age categories. Relationships between BMI and PFI are nonlinear and vary with age from late childhood through adolescence. With increasing age during adolescence, the relationship becomes parabolic, and the peaks of the parabola are sharper in adolescent boys than girls. PFI declines in a curvilinear manner with increasing BMI among youth 9-18 yr of age, but the slope of the relationship varies with age.

Understanding the Design of Mobile Social Networking

Understanding the Design of Mobile Social Networking

Grandparents, Adolescents, and Parents

This article examines intergenerational relations from the perspective of Taiwanese youth. Specifically, the major focus is on how the relations between second and third generations may be affected by prior family experiences between first, second, and third generations. Possible effects of the three-generation living arrangement on intergenerational relations are also explored. Panel data of 2,500 seventh graders in 2000 in northern Taiwan show that half of teenagers were raised in coresidence living arrangement with grandparents. Results confirm that relations between grandparents and parents and between grandparents and grandchildren do affect parent-teenager relations. Notably, more so than coresidence, the early family experience of being cared for by paternal grandparents produces significant positive effects on adolescent-father relations and negative adolescent-father relations if cared for by maternal grandparents. It is suggested that the impact of earlier family process on subsequent family relations is worth further investigation.

China-Taiwan: Young People Confront Their History

This article reports on the first results of a survey of the new generation of Chinese and Taiwanese youth. The aim is to throw light on how these young people see their national history and, in particular, the 1949 split that divided the Chinese community between two armies, and later into two separate political entities. Reaching beyond the official historical account, our interest here is in the young people’s perceptions, and the points on which they agree or disagree. Acknowledged or not, a heritage of history and memory is shared between them: we seek to evaluate the part it plays in the political development of relations across the Taiwan Strait.