Kirsten Christensen

San Diego City College

Misinformation has become a pervasive issue in society. In relation to human behavior and cognitive processes, psychological myths can have detrimental effects by distorting our perceptions. This study employed correlational and regression analyses with 86 community college students in Southern California to examine the relationships between sociod...

Supervised practice pairs behavioral rehearsal (i.e., the practice of skills) with constructive and supportive feedback so that learners can enact new skills accurately and develop the motivation to consistently apply these skills. The current review study takes stock of the literature on supervised practice through second-order meta-analysis, a ri...

After‐school programmes (ASPs) often provide youth with a safer alternative to unstructured time while providing a context for building skills and forging positive relationships with programme staff and peers. ASPs may be particularly effective for youth with marginalized identities, including youth of colour and youth from low‐income backgrounds....

Background Rates of mental health problems among youth are high and rising, whereas treatment seeking in this population remains low. Technology-delivered interventions (TDIs) appear to be promising avenues for broadening the reach of evidence-based interventions for youth well-being. However, to date, meta-analytic reviews on youth samples have pr...

Residential summer camps, one of the most popular organized programs for children in the United States, may promote several aspects of positive youth development. These positive outcomes may stem in part from camp counselors, who often forge close relationships with youth, but few studies have examined these relationships. To facilitate this resear...

Natural mentors are important developmental assets for youth. To understand the nature and influence of natural mentors, scholars have often adopted Granovetter’s (1973) model, where “strong ties” refer to individuals in one’s close social network and “weak ties” refer to a broader network of heterogeneous relationships with nonfamilial others. Thi...

Research suggests that mentoring programs may promote a range of positive outcomes in youth populations. Less is known, however, about the extent to which such programs are effective in specialized youth populations, such as youth involved in the foster care system. The current study aimed to investigate the extent to which mentoring interventions...

In the current study, we sought to determine the effects of parent visits on a range of psychological outcomes among children of incarcerated parents. Drawing on data from the Mentoring Children of Incarcerated Parents Enhancement Demonstration Project, a recent, large-scale evaluation of mentoring programme practices, we hypothesized that ongoing...

Non-parent mentoring relationships are important protective factors for first-generation college students. Previous research has focused on singular mentoring relationships measured at one time point, failing to capture the breadth and dynamic nature of social networks. The current study is a longitudinal investigation of first-generation students’...

Youth workers play an important role in youths’ experiences in after-school programs. Although many staff competency frameworks exist, little attention has been given to understanding how characteristics related to youth and their community and program contexts inform staff competencies. A systematic search of review papers in four databases yielde...

This study investigated associations between mentor-mentee activities and relationship outcomes of school-based mentoring. Multigroup three-step latent profile analysis (LPA) assessed whether youth could be classified into distinct profiles based on their mentoring relationship activities, and whether these profiles were similar when taking into ac...

Objective As understanding of the neurobiological basis of cognitive impairment in Down syndrome (DS) advances and new pharmaceutical interventions targeting neurodevelopment become available, an in-depth understanding of the family perspective is essential to inform research efforts. A mixed methods study was conducted with parents of individuals...

Despite decades of increased research and funding, youth mentoring programs, overall, yield small effects on youth outcomes. As a result, there are growing calls for programs to utilize the mentoring relationship as context for intentional, targeted skills development, in which mentors employ targeted skills designed to match the presenting concern...

Organized sports are among the most common youth activities in the United States, and athletic coaches can often become important mentors to their players. Nonetheless, few studies have examined the characteristics of youth who form mentoring relationships with coaches and whether such relationships are associated with later academic outcomes. This...

Despite the potential benefits of afterschool arts-based programs on development, urban youth in low-income areas are unlikely to participate in these activities. The aim of the current study was to investigate motivation and engagement in an arts and leadership afterschool program among 10 urban, predominantly African American youth. We took a mix...