Successful adolescent development among youth in high-risk settings.

Abstract

A new, interdisciplinary paradigm is emerging in developmental psychology. It includes contextual as well as individual variation and is more consonant with the complexity of adolescent behavior and development than traditional research paradigms. Social problems, such as poverty and racial discrimination, and the ways that young people negotiate adolescence successfully, are objects of research. A research program sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation, that embodies the new paradigm, is described.