This article explores how Indigenous youth understand and define leadership, challenging dominant conceptions that positions leadership as an individual trait or outcome of capacity-building. Grounded in a decolonial approach, the study draws on a year-long participatory process with the Youth Advisory Committee of the Quebec Youth Research Network Chair’s Indigenous Stream. Through dialogues, creative activities, and group reflections, youth co-created a visual ‘postcard’ that serves as both a representation and framework for Indigenous youth leadership. Findings reveal that leadership is understood as deeply relational, emerging through connections to community, culture, and land. Rather than a fixed role, leadership is described as a shared and evolving process, shaped through collective responsibility, intergenerational teachings, and everyday practices of care and action. Youth emphasize that leadership is cultivated through experiences, including navigating challenges, stepping into and out of spaces, and learning through both guidance and relationality. By centering Indigenous youth perspectives, this article highlights the importance of creating spaces that support diverse expressions of leadership and affirms the role of youth, as contributing to the collective and to decolonization.
The current study examined natural mentoring experiences across the college years among underrepresented students attending a predominantly White institution (N = 340) and how various dimensions of these experiences (i.e., quantity of natural mentors, relationships with institutional natural mentors, natural mentor support, and the retention of natural mentors) may be associated with subsequent educational attainment. A latent class analysis revealed 5 distinct classes, with students who had a greater number of natural mentors more consistently across time showing greater educational attainment relative to students with consistently fewer mentors or those whose mentor quantity declined shortly after starting college. Regression analyses suggested that the total quantity of institutional natural mentors, natural mentor support, and quantity of natural mentors retained across two or more time points were positively associated with greater educational attainment. Findings suggest that more natural mentor presence, received support, and sustained connections may bode well for underrepresented students’ future educational attainment.
Racial disparities in out-of-school suspension (OSS) persist as a social justice concern. This study examines the associations between out-of-school suspension (OSS) and subsequent academic achievement and juvenile justice system involvement among Black and Indigenous children, controlling for exposure to multiple structural risk factors including child welfare history, poverty, disability, and emotional/behavioral disabilities. Using integrated administrative datasets from child welfare, education, and juvenile justice systems, this secondary analysis tracked a cohort of 3rd grade students (N = 60,025) attending public schools in a Midwestern state between 2008 and 2014. Results from multiple regressions indicated that OSS alone was not significantly associated with any of the academic or juvenile justice outcomes after interaction terms were included in the models. In models incorporating interaction terms, poorer academic performance and greater juvenile justice system involvement were associated with several factors, including African American and Indigenous identities, poverty, disability, and child welfare system involvement. OSS was associated with poorer academic outcomes to a significantly greater extent among Indigenous students’ academic outcomes. For Black students, the OSS experience notably increased the odds of juvenile justice involvement. The findings highlight the complexity of the relationships between OSS, intersecting social identities, and both academic and juvenile justice outcomes.
Self-determination is widely recognized as a key determinant of Indigenous peoples’ well-being. The New Pathways Foundation (NPF), a First Nations youth organization in Québec, supports the development of youth self-determination through initiatives such as Décidaction, a participatory budgeting process. Yet, little is known about how self-determination is understood and experienced by First Nations youth themselves. This article was written collaboratively with NPF members and four Décidaction youth participants to center their voices and lived experiences. Using photovoice methodology and interviews, youth shared photographs representing self-determination and its significance in their lives. Their narratives revealed that self-determination is a dynamic, relational, and evolving process that is expressed through: reclaiming identity, rights, and culture; personal and collective experiences; and meaningful and diverse forms of self-expression. Rather than offering a single definition, this article highlights the multiple meanings of self-determination rooted in youth’s lived realities. Supporting First Nations youth self-determination is therefore essential not only for their individual flourishing, but also for the well-being of their communities.
Indigenous youth in Canada experience disproportionate mental health challenges, highlighting the need to better understand behavioural and contextual factors that influence wellbeing. This study examined associations between lifetime alcohol use and self-reported mental health among Indigenous adolescents, with attention to gender and age differences. Cross-sectional data from 64 participants in the Smart Indigenous Youth (SIY) study were analyzed using Fisher’s exact tests, stratified analyses, and logistic regression. In bivariate analyses, lifetime alcohol use was associated with lower odds of positive self-reported mental health (OR = 0.31, 95% CI [0.09–0.96], p = 0.042); however, this association attenuated after adjustment for gender (OR = 0.64, p = 0.631). Male youth had higher odds of positive mental health than female youth (OR = 4.99, 95% CI [1.65–15.10], p = 0.004). Although male participants reported greater land-based activity participation, land-based activity was not independently associated with mental health. Findings highlight the importance of considering gender alongside behavioural and contextual factors and support larger longitudinal studies using culturally relevant measures.
As previous research in the context of primary and secondary schools in Italy demonstrates, intersectional needs of multilingual disabled migrant students are siloed. Similarly, when transitioning into adulthood and independent living, this group of students is pushed into disability or migration/language services, according to the perceived needs or availability of support. As part of the CRPD national implementation process, Italy has recently passed a disability reform legislation, emphasizing the emancipation of disabled people. The main tool established by the reform legislation to overcome the fragmentation of support services is Progetto di Vita Individuale, Personalizzato, Partecipato [Individual, Personalized, Participatory Life Project—IPPLP]. We believe that the implementation of this tool holds the potential to re-frame and re-organize support services available to multilingual disabled migrant youth in intersectional terms. Drawing from the integrated framework of Critical Disability Raciolinguistics, this paper advances understanding of how the IPPLP pushes for innovative practices to train educators and providers in services available to multilingual disabled migrants. For this purpose, we focus on services in the Piedmont region, because of its recent policies on the transition into adulthood of marginalized youth (Delibera Dirigenziale-Administrative Decision, 2024).
TikTok is the fifth-most-popular social media platform worldwide and is particularly popular among young adults. In recent years, research on the association between TikTok use and mental health among young adults has increased substantially. Following the PRISMA guidelines, this systematic review examined empirical studies investigating this association. We conducted a comprehensive literature search across four electronic databases: PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and CNKI. We included and synthesized 11 eligible studies using narrative synthesis. The findings indicated that TikTok use was associated with both potential risks and benefits for the mental health of young adults. These psychological outcomes varied according to patterns of TikTok use and the content encountered on the platform. Individual psychological characteristics, sex, age, and algorithm awareness were also identified as potential factors that may shape this association. The existing literature was limited by the predominance of cross-sectional study designs, which precluded causal inference. Future research should prioritize longitudinal studies and randomized controlled trials to inform the development and evaluation of interventions to support healthier, more responsible for TikTok use among young adults.
Social leisure in preadolescence is a key space for socialization, identity, and wellbeing. In this context, intergenerational leisure stands out for its contribution to socio-emotional development and social cohesion. However, gaps persist in the analysis of its modalities, conditioning factors, and effects. The aim of this study was to analyze the kind of social leisure that young preadolescents share with their grandparents, as well as the satisfaction it generates. An ad hoc questionnaire was administered to 246 students aged 11 and 12 years from northern Spain, and subsequently, a descriptive study and an inferential analysis were conducted. Most grandchildren share leisure time with their grandparents, with face-to-face rather than virtual leisure predominating. The mother’s work situation emerges as the most influential factor, with higher rates of shared leisure observed when she is employed; the father’s work situation is also strongly associated. Face-to-face leisure is linked to greater overall satisfaction. The results underscore the importance of preserving these intergenerational spaces amid current societal changes.
Problematic pornography consumption (PPC) during adolescence has been associated with negative perceptions of one’s own body image, pressure to conform to beauty standards, self-objectification, and dissatisfaction with one’s own image, whereas sexuality education may promote critical thinking, self-knowledge, and healthy relationships. This cross-sectional study analyzed the relationship between received sexuality education, body self-esteem, and problematic pornography use among 1177 adolescents and young people aged 12 to 21 years, including 541 women and 636 men. The Body Self-Esteem Scale, the short version of the Problematic Pornography Consumption Scale, and an ad hoc questionnaire on received sexuality education were administered. Overall, 50.30% of adolescents reported having received sexuality education training, although it was mostly brief and had limited capacity to address their questions. In total, 19.63% of adolescents were at risk of negative body-image evaluation, and 10.62% were at high risk of body self-esteem problems. Moreover, 31.08% showed indicators of problematic pornography use, with higher levels among male adolescents and an increase associated with age. No significant associations were observed between the perceived quality of sexuality education and body self-esteem or PPC. However, PPC was negatively associated with body self-esteem among women. The results suggest the need to strengthen systematic, early, and comprehensive sexuality education programs.
As anti-DEI legislation reshapes belonging in American higher education, today’s Black doctoral students may one day become the educators and administrators who shape the experiences of young adults, which creates an indirect but significant connection between doctoral education and young adults. However, research on belonging in graduate education rarely connects doctoral student experiences to other sectors of education, including K-12 and undergraduate student relationships. Through a single focus group, this qualitative study explores the experiences of five Black higher education doctoral students cultivating and sustaining belonging in the current anti-DEI climate. Grounded in Hurtado and Carter’s framework, findings from the study reveal that Black doctoral students are architects of their own belonging by forming spaces to facilitate belonging through unacknowledged labor in the absence of formal institutional supports.
The digital age marks the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR), which has changed every aspect of our lives, including youth ministry globally and Southern Africa in particular. However, it is worth noting that the digital revolution has significantly transformed the lives of young people, bringing opportunities and challenges for youth ministry. This shift raises important questions about the nature of youth ministry as the church seeks to embrace digitalization and social media in conjunction with face-to-face pastoral care ministry among the youth. This article explores the challenges and opportunities presented by the digital era for youth ministry in Southern Africa. It argues that the digital era poses significant challenges that cause the risk of losing contact and the erosion of meaningful relationships in pastoral ministry, but at the same time provides opportunities for digital convenience in communication and collaboration to advance learning, sharing, and the participation of young people in the church. This article employs textual analysis for data collection and qualitative inductive critical data and content analysis. The church’s understanding of the challenges and opportunities of the digital era helps in designing and adapting new methods and strategies for nurturing young people for ministry in the church and society. The article contributes to the discourse on the integration of social media in youth pastoral ministry.
The transition into higher education is one of the most consequential junctures in a young person’s trajectory. Institutional retention is an institutional responsibility. When students leave before completing their degree, the default response has been to look at the student, their preparation, their motivation, their fit. This paper starts from a different premise: the cracks students fall through are structural. They form where offices operate in isolation, where handoffs go unowned, and where no unit is responsible for the space between them. Those cracks are most costly for students who were never given the social or political capital to navigate institutional complexity on their own: first-generation, Pell-eligible, and racially minoritized students, students with disabilities, LGBTQI-identified students, and others for whom the institution was not designed. This article introduces Embedded Institutional Process Mapping (EIPM), a framework adapted from business process mapping traditions and applied to higher education to help institutions map what their offices do and synchronize those efforts toward a shared institutional purpose. Drawing on loose coupling theory, administrative burden scholarship, and QuantCrit, EIPM surfaces where coordination fails and identifies which students bear the cost of that failure. A proof-of-concept application at a regional open-access institution, where 67% of students are first-generation, 58% are Pell-eligible, and 83% work while enrolled, demonstrates how EIPM makes structural misalignments visible that conventional program assessment routinely overlooks. In its widest application, EIPM operationalizes what equity work requires: disaggregated institutional data examined through a critical lens, to name who is being underserved and trace that outcome back to the institutional processes that produced it.
Digital ecosystems, misinformation exposure, mental-health vulnerability and unequal access to care create distinctive challenges for young people. Although youth participation in health governance is increasingly advocated internationally, structured evidence from youth deliberative processes remains limited in Portugal. This study synthesises priorities expressed in two national deliberative initiatives coordinated by the Sociedade Portuguesa de Literacia em Saúde: the Mini-Assemblies of Health 2022–2023, with particular attention to the 3rd Mini-Assembly on Fighting Health Misinformation, and the Youth Health Choices Forum 2024. Both processes used a structured nominal-group logic to support idea generation, clarification, recording and prioritisation. The analysis used low-inference cross-session thematic aggregation to preserve propositional integrity and remain close to participants’ formulations. Five priority domains were identified: digital health communication and misinformation control; curriculum-integrated and peer-mediated health literacy; low-threshold and non-stigmatising mental-health access; equity and functional accessibility of services; and institutional youth participation in health governance. Participant quotations are retained, in translated form, to preserve youth voice and to show how recommendations emerged from concrete deliberative formulations. The findings suggest that nominal group technique (NGT)-based youth deliberation can generate operational recommendations for policy and practice, including credibility mechanisms for digital health information, school-based health-literacy integration, autonomy-preserving access routes for mental-health support, and permanent youth participation structures. The findings support recognising young people not only as vulnerable recipients of health information but also as interpreters of digital health ecosystems and contributors to the design of more responsive health governance.
This study explores the educational transitions of university students with special educational needs in Türkiye, focusing on their experiences of moving from secondary to higher education and their expectations for the transition from university to employment. The study draws on semi-structured interviews with 15 university students with special educational needs, including two participants with immigrant backgrounds. Findings primarily reflect the experiences of the overall sample, while the accounts of the two participants with immigrant backgrounds are interpreted as exploratory observations. The interview questions focused on resources, transition-related experiences, and expectations. Guided by the Capabilities Approach, the analysis explores the barriers to a smooth transition process and their implications for career choices through the lens of central capabilities. The findings reveal that participants face a range of challenges during transition processes, including limited and inconsistent institutional support, barriers in accessing educational and vocational opportunities, and difficulties in navigating key transition stages. The two students with immigrant backgrounds additionally described challenges related to language barriers, unfamiliarity with the education system, and limited access to support networks, which appeared to further complicate their individual transition experiences.
Political consumerism is frequently celebrated as an expansion of youth political participation or critiqued for its structural ineffectiveness to advance young people’s political contestations. Moving beyond this evaluative binary, this article investigates its underexplored cultural and affective implications. It defines the paradox of political consumerism as a condition in which young people’s political intent is channelled through consumer choice, only to be pre-emptively neutralised by the very neoliberal ‘business ontology’ it seeks to resist. This article interrogates this paradox through a series of focus groups in the United Kingdom and Greece among ‘neoliberal natives’; a unique generational unit whose entire civic socialisation has occurred within a totalised market logic, anchored by the historic, unfulfilled promises of the Brexit and Grexit moments. Informed by Critical and Cultural theory, the analysis explores how political consumption functions simultaneously as a meaningful political gesture and an ideological constraint. Rather than dismissing youth commitments as superficial, the article situates them within a broader political economy that individualises responsibility, commodifies dissent, and constrains their political imagination. What emerges is an ambivalent subjectivity: a generation that knows very well the limits of their market-based engagement—yet continues to participate in it.
Background/Objectives: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with child socio-emotional difficulties, but when using parents’ reports, it remains unclear which scoring approaches are most informative about younger children. This study evaluated a Portuguese caregiver-report ACE assessment derived from the Finkelhor/Turner framework in a community sample of children aged 2–10 years. Methods: Caregivers provided reports on ACE exposure and socio-emotional adjustment for 341 children. Three ACE scores were compared: an approximate original ACE score, a full ACE pool score, and an adapted reduced caregiver-report score. Associations with socio-emotional adjustment were examined using correlations, adjusted regressions, ROC analyses, domain models, and latent class analysis. Results: Higher ACE exposure was associated with greater difficulties and lower prosocial behavior. The nine-item approximate original ACE score, which did not include emotional neglect, showed the strongest overall predictive and discriminative performance for caregiver-reported SDQ outcomes in this Portuguese sample. This finding should therefore be interpreted as evidence regarding the available approximation of conventional ACE indicators rather than the complete original ACE inventory. Among the two expanded ACE scoring approaches, however, the adapted reduced score consistently outperformed the full ACE pool, supporting a more parsimonious approach. ROC analyses indicated acceptable discrimination for elevated total difficulties, with the approximate original score showing the highest area under the curve (AUC); however, positive predictive values were low across all three scores, indicating limited stand-alone screening utility at the individual level. Domain analyses highlighted economic stressors, maltreatment, and family disorder as salient predictors. Latent class analysis identified low adversity, moderate family/economic adversity, and high polyadversity profiles. Both adversity-exposed classes showed poorer socio-emotional adjustment than the low-adversity class. Conclusions: Findings support the relevance of caregiver-report ACE assessment for understanding socio-emotional adjustment in young children, while also highlighting the need for developmentally sensitive, culturally adapted, and outcome-validated scoring approaches. More extensive ACE pools were not necessarily more informative than shorter empirically or theoretically grounded scores.
Child marriage remains a persistent barrier to girls and young women’s education, health, and socioeconomic advancement in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper examines the perceived economic empowerment initiatives contributed to expanding life choices, including the prevention of child marriage and the delay of early marriage, within the Girls Get Equal (GGE) project implemented between 2020 and 2024 across three districts (Nkasi, Kalambo and Sumbawanga DC) in the Rukwa Region of Tanzania between 2020 and 2024. The paper adopted an explanatory mixed-methods case study design to explain aggregated project outcome indicators with participants’ lived experiences captured through focus group discussions and key informant interviews. Endline evaluation interviews and focus group discussions were re-analyzed using a six-stage thematic analysis approach. The paper demonstrates that imparting skills in technical and business fields leads to robust job creation outcomes. A large majority of trained youth transitioned into employment or self-employment and a substantial proportion maintained stable income-generating activities. On top of that, community-based infrastructures, particularly savings and loan groups, emerged as important financial mechanisms as they enabled structures supporting enterprise development and household resilience. The integration of quantitative trends and qualitative narratives suggests that economic empowerment interventions can expand girls’ economic agency and influence their informed decision-making processes related to marriage. Finally, the findings suggest that combining vocational skills development with access to financial capital represents a promising pathway for addressing structural drivers of early and child marriage in economically vulnerable contexts.
Serious leisure theory proposes that deep engagement in leisure activities yields personal and social benefits, yet its application to adolescent risk behavior remains unexplored. This cross-sectional study examined whether specific qualities of serious leisure (effort/perseverance, talents/skills, self-expression, activity outcomes, financial benefit, and ethos) predicted four risk behavior domains (delinquency, cyberbullying, eating disorders, sexual risk) among 1141 Croatian adolescents (64.8% female; 60.0% younger cohort aged 14–17, 40.0% older cohort aged 18–20). Serious leisure qualities were assessed with subscales adapted from the Serious Leisure Inventory and Measure (SLIM) and risk behaviors with validated self-report instruments, both administered through an anonymous online questionnaire. Hierarchical regression models revealed that serious leisure qualities explained 5–11% of variance in risk behaviors beyond demographics, with significant age-moderation effects. For younger adolescents, effort and perseverance in leisure activities served as the primary protective factor (r = −0.14 to −0.17), whereas for older adolescents, perceived activity outcomes (satisfaction and personal growth) emerged as the dominant protector (r = −0.12 to −0.21). Conversely, financial benefit derived from leisure consistently predicted higher risk across all domains, particularly cyberbullying (r = 0.35 among younger participants). A significant developmental shift in leisure preferences was observed, with structured activities declining from 27.6% to 18.6% as participants aged (χ2 = 36.91, p < 0.001). These findings suggest that the subjective quality of leisure engagement, rather than the type of activity alone, shapes risk trajectories, with distinct protective mechanisms operating at different developmental stages. Implications for age-tailored leisure-based prevention programs are discussed.
Organized youth sport has considerable potential to promote young people’s physical health, well-being, and personal and social development. However, these positive outcomes are not guaranteed. When sport environments are poorly structured, excessively performance-oriented, or inadequately supervised, participation may also lead to exclusion, excessive pressure, and other harmful experiences. Creating genuinely youth-centered sport environments is therefore essential, both to foster positive developmental outcomes and to prevent transgressive behavior. Despite growing attention to these issues, the field of youth sport lacks an overarching framework for the development of pedagogically sound, development-oriented, and socially safe sport environments. This study aimed to develop an overarching framework that integrates the developmental, motivational, and safeguarding dimensions of youth sport into one coherent model for creating optimal learning environments. Through an iterative process, a practice-based framework was developed, theoretically grounded, and initially operationalized. Early versions of the framework were subsequently examined for conceptual alignment through expert opinions, focus groups, and group discussions with existing European youth sport initiatives. This process resulted in the development of the Youth Sport Compass (YSC), a coherent conceptual and practical framework designed to support youth-centered and socially safe sport environments. Experts from different countries and disciplines considered the framework highly relevant, conceptually robust, and broadly applicable in practice. The YSC provides a strong conceptual and practical foundation for coaches, sport organizations, and policymakers seeking to create pedagogically sound, youth-centered, and socially safe sport environments. Although the YSC is firmly grounded in theory and practice, it has yet to be empirically validated. Further research is needed to assess its validity and practical effectiveness.
Youth leadership plays an important role in addressing social challenges within environments with limited resources and institutional constraints. However, there is still a paucity of research that has examined how leadership develops in practice while facing such circumstances. In response, this study explores how participation in the Youth Citizens Action Programme (YCAP) in South African schools contributes to the development of leadership for social justice among young people, adopting a micro-macro lens. A qualitative, exploratory, and contextual design was adopted, using semi-structured interviews with nine purposively selected YCAP alumni. The results show that youth leadership for social justice emerges through young people’s responses to macro-level institutional inequalities as they must identify and address local social justice challenges. As a result, they develop a leadership identity at the micro level and the application of leadership skills as a micro-bridge. Furthermore, enabling and restricting macro-level conditions determine the extent to which youth leadership can be sustained. The results advance the idea that organised programmes such as YCAP may support meaningful youth participation and provide insight into how such initiatives can enable young people to address social justice challenges as leaders within their communities.
