Category: Young Adults

In this brief, authors Michael Staunton and Eleanor Jaffee review the key findings and recommendations from research conducted in the first half of the Coös Youth Study, which began in 2008 and is planned to continue through 2018.

This brief assesses trends in access to, enrollment in, and success in Advanced Placement (AP) coursework in relation to school district poverty, racial composition, and urbanicity. It uses data merged from the 2011–2012 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), the 2012 Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE), and the 2010 Decennial U.S. Census. Authors Douglas Gagnon and Marybeth Mattingly report that nearly one-half (47.2 percent) of rural districts have no secondary students enrolled in AP courses, compared with only 20.1 percent of town, 5.4 percent of suburban, and 2.6 percent of urban districts. Remote rural districts with small populations are nearly ten times less likely to offer access to AP courses than are larger rural districts on the fringe of urbanized areas. Even in districts that have some access to AP coursework, the proportion of students enrolled in an AP course in urban and suburban districts is roughly double that in town and rural districts. Students in more affluent districts have higher success rates than those in less affluent districts, regardless of place type.

In this data snapshot, author Kenneth Johnson discusses how New Hampshire is now gaining significantly more migrants from other U.S. destinations than earlier in the decade. The largest gains are among young adults.

This report provides a snapshot of how youth are doing in Carroll, Coos, and Grafton counties and describes some of the difficulties they and their communities face as they negotiate the transition to adulthood. The study is based on data from several agencies that collect county- and community-level information about youth, as well as from interviews with individuals working with youth in each of the three counties.

This brief explores the link between rural youths’ identification with their community, their self-esteem, and their future plans. The panel study of New Hampshire’s Coos County youth offers a snapshot into the dynamics of a population that is developing its identity in a region that is undergoing an identity transformation of its own. Place identity may be influential in how individuals think of themselves and their futures, particularly for youth in the process of forming an identity. The study reveals the importance of developing community programs and activities for youth that create social ties to form a positive identification with the place they live and consequently improve their self-esteem and the likelihood for staying or returning to their communities in later adulthood.

U.S. media and popular culture historically portrayed drug abuse as an urban problem, but in recent years, there has been more media attention on rural drug issues. Part of this growing attention pertains to the growing epidemic of narcotic painkiller abuse in rural America. Although all areas of the country experienced increases in painkiller prescribing, abuse, and mortality over the past two decades, the increases have been most pronounced in small towns and rural areas.1 This rural drug epidemic requires immediate attention from policy makers and practitioners.

When the nation goes to war, all Americans are expected to make sacrifices. Today's rural Americans, however, have fewer job opportunities within their communities, and are joining the military at higher rates. In turn, rural communities are facing military losses in disproportionate numbers to their urban counterparts.

A growing body of research has documented the alarmingly high rates among high school youth of dating aggression, defined as physical, sexual, or psychological aggression that happens between current or former dating partners, and sexual aggression, defined as any unwanted sexual behavior, ranging from sexual contact to completed rape, that can occur between any individuals regardless of whether they are or have been in a relationship.1 Dating and sexual aggression often co-occur (for example, someone who perpetrates physical dating aggression is also more likely to perpetrate sexual aggression toward an acquaintance), and, since they share many of the same etiological risk factors, are often examined together in research and targeted concurrently in prevention programming.2 Research documents the deleterious consequences associated with dating and sexual aggression,3 and these consequences underscore the critical importance of developing and implementing evidence-based dating and sexual aggression prevention efforts for adolescents. One type of prevention effort that has been recognized as a critical component to dating and sexual aggression programming is bystander intervention education and training.4 Such programs help participants develop behaviors that aid in the prevention of dating and sexual aggression and assist in victims’ recovery from dating and sexual aggression experiences.5 In order to address bystander intervention in programming efforts, it is important to understand the factors that facilitate or hinder bystander intervention. However, there is little research focusing on dating and sexual aggression bystander intervention among high school youth. The current study examined this gap in the literature by administering surveys and conducting focus groups with 218 high school youth from three high schools in New England (one rural, two urban).

When it comes to deciding whether to stay in New Hampshire's rural Coös County or leave for other opportunities, young people are listening to their parents. Surveying 78 percent of all seventh and eleventh graders in public schools in Coös County, researchers found that young peoples' future intentions to migrate from Coös in search of economic or educational opportunities or to remain in Coös to pursue a future close to home are closely aligned with the messages their parents deliver to them.