Why do some teenagers attend afterschool programs and others don't? Afterschool programs refer to sports and clubs that help youth work toward building skills and achieving goals. Many Latino youth are unlikely to reap these potential benefits as their attendance is often low. We are interested in what motivates Latino teenagers to participate in these programs. We use both quantitative and qualitative data to capture the lived experiences of Latino teenagers and their families.

SECCYD is the most comprehensive study of children and the many environments in which they develop. Working with more than 1,300 children and their families from when the children were infants until they turned 15, the researchers collected information and analyzed how different child care arrangements related to measurements of the children's health, behavior, school performance and other indicators of development in infancy, early childhood, middle childhood and middle adolescence

Youth civic engagement leads to reduced risky behavior, increased success in school and leads to greater civic participation later in life. However, youth today are less likely than those in earlier generations to exhibit many important characteristics of citizenship. Educating young people for responsible citizenship should be the primary goal of our schools.

The National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR), initiated in 2001, is a longitudinal study of the religious and spiritual lives of American adolescents from the teenage years (ages 13–17) onward. The purpose of the NSYR is to research the shape and influence of religion and spirituality in the lives of American adolescents.

African American males are typically over-represented at the bottom rungs of the achievement ladder on most student performance measures. The data presented are derived from a yearlong, 2008-2009, case study of twenty African American adolescent males enrolled in an extra-curricular social and academic academy in a largely urban city in Southern California.