Research on subjective well-being indicates that it is associated with academic success and positive school functioning. Despite a wealth of empirical research demonstrating the benefits of interventions aimed at increasing middle and high school students' well-being, few educational institutions have adopted evidence-based curricula that address this construct as a means of promoting future academic and social achievement. In addition, numerous studies have begun to identify several factors that contribute to well-being and thus have helped children and adolescents to be successful in both academic and social domains. These critical factors include personal goal setting, structured mentoring or life coaching, increasing gratitude, problem solving, and interpersonal skills. The present article provides a broad discussion of relevant research findings on these factors and advocates for the adoption of curricula that incorporate these components in order to ensure that best practices are utilized in the school environment and for positive youth development. Lastly, a theoretical proposal for empirically based assessment and interventions that encompass key components associated with increased child and adolescent well-being is provided.

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Although extensive research suggests that attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and conduct problems (CP; symptoms of oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, and antisocial personality disorder) contribute to risk for substance use, why these symptoms increase risk for substance use remains unclear. Given that research indicates that perceived peer tolerance and perceived peer substance use affect substance use, we evaluated the degree to which these peer-perception constructs mediated the association that ADHD symptoms, CP symptoms, and their interaction share with substance use (i.e., alcohol use, marijuana use, and illicit drug use). Participants were college students (N = 627; 60% female; 47% European American) with a mean age of 20.23 years. Results indicated that perceived peer use significantly mediated the association of ADHD symptoms with alcohol, marijuana, and illicit drug use, whereas perceived peer use only mediated the association between CP symptoms and alcohol use. Perceived peer tolerance significantly mediated the association that both CP and ADHD symptoms had with marijuana use, but not alcohol or illicit drug use. Finally, CP symptoms moderated the indirect effect that ADHD symptoms had on alcohol use through perceived peer tolerance. At low levels of CP symptoms, increases in ADHD symptoms corresponded to increases in perceived peer tolerance, which was related to increased alcohol use. However, at high levels of CP symptoms, increases in ADHD symptoms corresponded to decreases in perceived peer tolerance, which was associated with decreased alcohol use. Implications of findings are discussed.

Although institutions of higher education have placed a large emphasis on increasing the number of underrepresented minority (URM) students matriculating in higher education, the disparities in STEM retention and graduation rates between URM and non-URM students emphasize the dire need for increased support to help URM students navigate challenges including stereotype threat, impostor phenomenon, and lack of social connectedness that disproportionately affect URM students in majority-dominated fields. Prior research has demonstrated that structured mentoring has the potential to generate substantial improvements in academic, social, and career outcomes for URM STEM students. In particular, network-based mentoring approaches that allow for students to receive both professional and peer mentoring, as well as the opportunity to mentor other students, have demonstrated success in this realm. In this article, we discuss how the current state of academia often fails URM STEM students and faculty, review literature regarding the ways in which structured mentoring approaches can alleviate barriers to success among URM groups in STEM fields, and offer recommendations regarding how academic institutions can successfully implement holistic student and faculty mentoring programs.

Traditional methods of evaluation are limited in their ability to answer key questions often of interest to process evaluators, such as heterogeneity in the ways individuals adopt new programs. In this article, we demonstrate how a statistical approach, Latent Class Analysis, can help improve the quality of process evaluations and illustrate its use in an evaluation of an educational technology integration program in a large school district. In this illustration, we were interested in detecting variability in the ways teachers adopted the new program. We defined classes based on a set of innovative teaching strategies associated with educational technology. Results showed five distinct subgroups of teachers, based on level of program adoption. Results also demonstrate that specific school support strategies (professional development and personalized computing devices) facilitated program adoption. These findings can help to inform individualized support for teachers to optimize the ease and quality with which they are able to adopt new skills in the classroom.