Richard Jessor

University of Colorado Boulder | CUB · Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS)

These reflections, spanning six decades of involvement with developmental behavioral science, report on several salutary trends that have shaped that field of social inquiry, e.g., its increasingly trans-disciplinary character. They also take note of some of its enduring limitations, e.g., its failure to engage with theory. In addition, the reflect...

In commenting on the similarity of findings about adolescent problem behavior emerging from comparative, cross-national studies in markedly different societies, this chapter provides a brief exegesis on the difference between description and explanation. While description is an account at the observable, apparent, or phenotypic level and emphasizes...

Home-leaving is considered an important marker of the transition to adulthood and is usually framed as an individual decision. We move beyond this limited assumption to examine a broader conceptualization that might better illuminate home-leaving among youth in impoverished circumstances. We adopt the Problem Behavior Theory-framework to investigat...

The aim of this chapter has been to contribute to clarification of the relations between environmental, personality, and behavioral variables. It was argued that the diverse concepts of environments could be ordered along a distal-proximal dimension, with those near the proximal end capable of being experienced by an actor, and, hence, constituting...

Adolescent involvement in problem behaviors can compromise health, development, and successful transition to adulthood. The present study explores the appropriateness of a particular theoretical framework, Problem Behavior Theory, to account for variation in problem behavior among adolescents in informal settlements around a large, rapidly urbanizi...

This chapter reports a major groundbreaking study of how young people in disadvantaged neighborhoods of Denver and Chicago nevertheless manage to overcome adversity and “make it.” The research reveals that within neighborhood variation is large and often larger than that between neighborhoods. Understanding neighborhood effects, therefore, requires...

This chapter is concerned with the degree to which developmental change between adolescence and young adulthood shows continuity or stability. It argues for a significant degree of stability despite major changes in personality, the perceived environment, and behavior across the intervening years. Data are presented from a longitudinal study of jun...

Many adolescents living in contexts characterized by adversity achieve positive outcomes. We adopt a protection-risk conceptual framework to examine resilience (academic achievement, civic participation, and avoidance of risk behaviors) among 1,722 never-married 12–19 year olds living in two Kenyan urban slums. We find stronger associations between...

The role of psychosocial risk and protective factors in successful adolescent development under circumstances of socioeconomic disadvantage was investigated among 1,638 high school students in a large, urban school district. Success referred to two important developmental tasks: engagement in school and avoiding more than minimal involvement in pro...

This chapter advances an argument in favor of psychological concepts that have meaning for persons rather than concepts like stimulus and response that are derived from physics and biology. Phenomenological theories of personality engage the perspective of the person and, thereby, the meaning that situations may have for individuals. Since this pos...

This chapter was an early argument for the scientific legitimacy of theories that engaged a subjectively-defined social environment in which behavior occurred, theories that may appropriately be termed phenomenological. Such theories, in sharp contrast with the then dominant behaviorist theories that relied on physical or geographic definitions of...

This chapter is an exegesis on the concept of the perceived environment and a test of its role in accounting for variation in adolescent problem behavior. The multiple environments in which an adolescent is simultaneously embedded are ordered along a dimension of explanatory or causal closeness to action from distal to proximal. Most distal is the...

The limitations of traditional discipline-based inquiry are noted in this brief address to the Society for Adolescent Medicine. Contemporary attention to societal problems, adolescent health as an example, has required new ways of organizing knowledge that transcend conventional disciplinary boundaries, and this has resulted in the emergence of new...

This chapter considers the openness of the post-Positivism climate to engagement with ethnographic or qualitative method in social inquiry. It explores the main reasons for the historic move away from a strict positivist approach, a consequence largely of a pervasive sense of disappointment in its failure to yield a rich account of individual perso...

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 a...

This paper has had as its aim the instigation of renewed attention to the doctrine of reductionism, especially in terms of its implications for the relationship of physiology and psychology. Despite the empirical character of the ultimate answer, it is asserted that the questions involved in the doctrine may properly be the concern of a logical ana...

A theoretical framework about protective factors (models protection, controls protection, support protection) and risk factors (models risk, opportunity risk, vulnerability risk) was employed to articulate the content of 4 key contexts of adolescent life-family, peers, school, and neighborhood—in a cross-national study of problem behavior among 7th...

This chapter addresses the role that social context plays in the application of problem behavior theory to various problems across societies and settings as diverse as the slums of Nairobi; the middle schools of Beijing, China; and the inner city neighborhoods of Chicago and Denver. It provides an exposition about the multiple environments or conte...

Examined the relation of psychosocial and behavioral conventionality-unconventionality to health-related behavior in cross-sectional data from 1,588 male and female 7th to 12th graders. Conventionality-unconventionality was represented by personality, perceived social environment, and behavior variables selected from the social-psychological framew...

This chapter reports a cross-national study of developmental change in health-enhancing behavior—healthy eating and regular exercise—among adolescents in China and the United States. The application of a conceptual framework comprising psychosocial and behavioral protective and risk factors—both proximal and distal and at both the individual and so...

Junior and senior high-school students were studied over a 4-year period. The likelihood of initiating drinking was directly related to the degree of transition- or problem-proneness, and a developmental relationship between onset of drinking and other sociopsychological attributes was found. It is concluded that becoming a drinker is an integral a...

Problem Behavior Theory, consisting of personality, perceived environment, and behavior systems, was employed to account for variation in marijuana use among junior high, senior high, and college students, both male and female. The research design enabled both cross-sectional comparisons between nonusers and users on variables in each of the system...

Longitudinal data were used to examine the relationship of psychosocial unconventionality—rejection of societal norms and a propensity to engage in nonconforming behavior—to early initiation of sexual intercourse in an urban sample of 1,330 White, Hispanic, and African-American male and female middle-school and high-school students. Measures of unc...

Personality, environmental, and behavioral variables representing psychosocial risk factors for adolescent problem behavior were assessed in a 1974 national sample study of over 10,000 junior and senior high school students. Significant correlations were found with marijuana use, and the relationships held across differences in age, sex, and ethnic...

This chapter presents research to show that driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) and risky driving more generally are elements in a larger organization of problem behavior, a pattern of behavior that can be considered a lifestyle. The research also shows that variation in drinking-driving and risky driving can be accounted for significantly...

A social psychology of problem behavior was employed to account for variation in an aspect of development—the transition from virginity to nonvirginity. Personality, perceived environment, and behavioral measures were collected by questionnaires administered annually to high school and college males and females. In cross-sectional comparisons, nonv...

This chapter is a report of the testing of Problem Behavior Theory in longitudinal research on adolescent and young adult marijuana use. Samples of high school and college youth were followed over a four-year period, and data on their use of marijuana and on a large number of theory-derived psychosocial and behavioral measures were collected. A var...

Men and women classified as problem drinkers while adolescents or college students (1972–1973) tended to be nonproblem drinkers as young adults (1979), although young men tend to be at greater risk than young women to maintain problem drinking. Those whose earlier personality, perceived-environment and behavior scores indicated greater theoretical...

The principal aim of this chapter is to review the contribution that psychosocial research has made to an understanding of marijuana use by young people in the late seventies. A time of increasing acceptance in societal attitudes about its use. After a review of the epidemiology of marijuana use, research documenting the influence of the social env...

Problem Behavior Theory is a social-psychological framework which helps to explain the nature and development of alcohol abuse, drug misuse and other problem behaviors. The aims of this paper are to present a brief overview of the theory, to review some of the research that has been generated and to appraise the usefulness of the theory when applie...

A five-item measure of value on health, a new variable in the Personality System of Problem Behavior Theory (Jessor & Jessor, 1977), was construct-validated using cross-sectional data from 1588 male and female 7–12th grade students. Three aspects of construct validity were explored: first, the convergent and discriminant validity of the Value on He...

This chapter explores the psychosocial and behavioral factors associated with variation in contraceptive use among adolescents. Because regular use of contraception may be seen both as a conventional behavior and as a health-protective behavior, analyses assess the association between psychosocial conventionality and positive health orientation, on...

This chapter introduces the Problem Behavior Theory research that has, over recent decades, advanced the understanding of variation in adolescent health. It initially articulates a broader concept of health that goes beyond physical and biological parameters to engage both behavior and the social context in a psychosocial perspective on health. Fro...

This chapter reports a longitudinal study of the social-psychological process of ‘becoming a drinker,’ that is, of making the transition from abstainer status to drinker status. Applying the personality, perceived environment, and behavioral system predictors of Problem Behavior Theory to junior and senior high school adolescents who had not yet be...

This chapter documents the increased prevalence of both marijuana and cocaine use among different local and national samples of adolescent and young adults since the 1970s. Given this increase, some experience with marijuana having become statistically normative by the early 1980s in these samples, the study examines the degree of invariance betwee...

The role of religiosity, a cognitive-level personality variable, was examined in relation to other personality attributes (values, attitudes, and beliefs) and to involvement in normative transgressions (early sexual experience, marijuana use, delinquent-type behavior) in samples of high school and college youth. An eight-item measure of religiosity...

A theory-based protection and risk model was applied to explain variation in college students’ cigarette smoking. Key aims were to examine whether psychosocial and behavioral protective and risk factors can account for cross-sectional and developmental variation in smoking, and to examine whether protection moderates the impact of risk on smoking i...

Objective: A theory-based protection/risk model was applied to explain variation in college students’ heavy episodic drinking. Key aims were (1) to establish that psychosocial and behavioral protective factors and risk factors can account for cross-sectional and developmental variation in heavy episodic drinking, and (2) to examine whether protecti...

The role of psychosocial protective factors in adolescent health-enhancing behaviors—healthy diet, regular exercise, adequate sleep, good dental hygiene, and seatbelt use—was investigated among 1,493 Hispanic, White, and Black high school students in a large, urban school district. Both proximal (health-related) and distal (conventionality-related)...

This chapter examines the application of Problem Behavior Theory as an account of variation in adolescent problem drinking among high school and college youth followed longitudinally into young adulthood. The theory provided a highly significant and substantial account of problem drinking variation, both cross-sectionally and over time, for both ma...

Data from a 3-wave, statewide mail survey of young adult drivers (1,025 men, 634 women) in Colorado were used to examine correlates and antecedents of risky driving, controlling for both drink driving and drug-related driving. The strongest predictor of risky driving, cross-sectionally, was behavioral unconventionality, followed by psychosocial unc...

Longitudinal psychosocial data are used to predict the transition from virginity to nonvirginity among adolescents, all of whom were virgins at the initial testing in 1970. By the most recent follow-up, in 1979, 93% reported having had sexual intercourse experience. Variation in time of onset of initial intercourse was categorized into six time per...

This chapter seeks to embed variation in involvement in health-related behavior within the larger psychosocial, explanatory framework of Problem Behavior Theory. It explores the relation of personality and perceived environment variables that are distal from health-related behavior, i.e., that do not directly imply it, to variation in involvement i...

Relations among measures of adolescent behavior were examined to determine whether cigarette smoking fits into a structure of problem behaviors—behaviors that involve normative transgression—or a structure of health-related behaviors, or both. In an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of 1782 male and female high school adolescents, fou...

This chapter considers the adolescent life stage as one of increased health risk due to the initiation of various health-compromising behaviors and the establishment or consolidation of the factors that are their determinants. The emergence of the new concept of ‘behavioral health’ has enlarged thinking about health beyond medicine and biology to e...

A social psychology of problem behavior was employed in a longitudinal study of high school youth to predict time of onset of marijuana use. Measures of 19 personality, perceived environment, and behavioral variables among nonusers of marijuana in 1970 were shown to account for a significant amount of the variance in time of onset of use over the s...

An explanatory model of adolescent health-enhancing behavior based on protective and risk factors at the individual level and in 4 social contexts was used in a study of school-based samples from the People’s Republic of China (n = 1,739) and the United States (n = 1,596). A substantial account of variation in health-enhancing behavior—and of its d...

This chapter traces the development of Problem Behavior Theory from the early 1960s to the present and the influences on the author that were responsible for the initial framing of the theory and the various transformations it underwent as successive tests of its adequacy cumulated over time. It is both history of the theory and intellectual biogra...

An earlier study of ours that used data collected in 1972 found that a single common factor accounted for the positive correlations among a number of adolescent problem behaviors, including problem drinking, marijuana use, delinquent-type behavior, and precocious sexual intercourse. The present maximum-likelihood factor analyses replicated this fin...

This chapter reports a re-formulation of Problem Behavior Theory into the risk and protective factor concepts of epidemiology. A comprehensive risk and protective factor conceptual framework is presented, and Problem Behavior Theory is shown to be a particular approach embedded in that larger, explanatory framework. The concepts of risk and protect...

The relation of psychosocial protective factors to involvement in problem behavior—alcohol and drug use, delinquency, and sexual precocity—was investigated in a longitudinal study of 7th-, 8th-, and 9th-grade adolescents in a large, urban school district. Protective factors were drawn from the personality, the perceived environment, and the behavio...

This chapter provides a reflective overview of the current formulation of the Problem Behavior Theory conceptual framework. The present framework is presented in Fig. 12.1, and its properties and dynamics—the co-variation among and between risk behaviors and pro-social behaviors; the notion of lifestyle; the engagement of both person and context; t...

An explanatory model of adolescent problem behavior (problem drinking, cigarette smoking, and general delinquency) based on protective and risk factors in the individual and in 4 social contexts (family, peer group, school, and neighborhood) is employed in school-based samples from the People’s Republic of China (N = 1739) and the United States (N...

This study investigates the different roles played by protective factors and risk factors—and by particular protective and risk factors—when the concern is with accounting for adolescent problem behavior than when the concern is with accounting for adolescent pro-social behavior. The protective and risk factor literature on adolescent problem behav...

The development of Problem Behavior Theory over more than half a century, from its inception in the late 1950s to its current formulation, is sketched out in this introductory chapter. Three major, sequential, research projects, each of which resulted in influential books, are briefly described: The Tri-Ethnic Community Study; The Socialization of...

This chapter is a summary of the theory and research findings from the Socialization of Problem Behavior in Youth Study. It reviews the contributions of the Personality System variables and the Perceived Environment System variables in Problem Behavior Theory to an explanation of problem behavior in samples of adolescents in High School and young p...

This chapter provides a summary of the theory and findings of the Young Adult Follow-Up Study, a two-wave, longitudinal research project that followed samples of high school and college youth who had participated, some eight and nine years earlier, in a four-wave longitudinal study. By the time of the second, young-adult data wave, the high school...

This chapter is a summary of the theoretical approach and the findings of The Tri-Ethnic Community Study initiated in 1960 in a small community in the Rocky Mountain west made up of Native Americans (Indians), long-time Spanish American residents, and Anglos (Whites). The formulation of an interdisciplinary, social-psychological theory to account f...

Earlier bivariate findings suggested that diverse problem behaviors, including problem drinking, illicit drug use, delinquent-type behavior, and precocious sexual intercourse, may comprise a single behavioral syndrome in samples of normal adolescents. A multivariate test of this possible syndrome was carried out through a series of maximum likeliho...

This book, the first in a series of collected works, traces the evolution of Problem Behavior Theory from its inception to its current status as a widely used framework for understanding and addressing risky behavior in youth and young adults. The theory is explored from its beginnings as a study of deviant behavior and alcohol abuse in a tri-ethni...

This study investigates the different roles played by protective factors and risk factors—and by particular protective and risk factors—when the concern is with accounting for adolescent problem behavior than when the concern is with accounting for adolescent pro-social behavior. The protective and risk factor literature on adolescent problem behav...

Home-leaving is considered an important marker of the transition to adulthood and is usually framed as an individual decision. We move beyond this limited assumption to examine a broader conceptualization that might better illuminate home-leaving among youth in impoverished circumstances. We adopt the Problem Behavior Theory-framework to investigat...

Many adolescents living in contexts characterized by adversity achieve positive outcomes. We adopt a protection–risk conceptual framework to examine resilience (academic achievement, civic participation, and avoidance of risk behaviors) among 1,722 never-married 12–19 year olds living in two Kenyan urban slums. We find stronger associations between...

This article reports a cross-national study of developmental change in health-enhancing behavior—healthy eating and regular exercise—among adolescents in China and the United States. The application of a conceptual framework comprising psychosocial and behavioral protective and risk factors—both proximal and distal and at both the individual and so...

Adolescent involvement in problem behaviors can compromise health, development, and successful transition to adulthood. The present study explores the appropriateness of a particular theoretical framework, Problem Behavior Theory, to account for variation in problem behavior among adolescents in informal settlements around a large, rapidly urbanizi...

A theory-based protection and risk model was applied to explain variation in college students' cigarette smoking. Key aims were to examine whether psychosocial and behavioral protective and risk factors can account for cross-sectional and developmental variation in smoking, and to examine whether protection moderates the impact of risk on smoking i...

This is a study of successful youth development in poor, disadvantaged neighborhoods in Denver and Chicago - a study of how children living in the worst neighborhoods develop or fail to develop the values, competencies and commitments that lead to a productive, healthy responsible adult life. While there is a strong focus on neighborhood effects, t...

An explanatory model of adolescent health-enhancing behavior based on protective and risk factors at the individual level and in 4 social contexts was used in a study of school-based samples from the People's Republic of China (n = 1,739) and the United States (n = 1,596). A substantial account of variation in health-enhancing behavior--and of its...

This article is a nontechnical introduction to the use of structural equation models in personality research Although such models can be fruitfully used to address a variety of important theoretical issues, the substantive focus in this article is on the use of such models for elucidating the construct validity of personality measures We include nu...

A theory-based protection/risk model was applied to explain variation in college students' heavy episodic drinking. Key aims were (1) to establish that psychosocial and behavioral protective factors and risk factors can account for cross-sectional and developmental variation in heavy episodic drinking, and (2) to examine whether protection moderate...

A theoretical framework about protective factors (models protection, controls protec-tion, support protection) and risk factors (models risk, opportunity risk, vulnerability risk) was employed to articulate the content of 4 key contexts of adolescent life, fam-ily, peers, school, and neighborhood, in a cross-national study of problem behavior among...

An explanatory model of adolescent problem behavior (problem drinking, cigarette smoking, and general delinquency) based on protective and risk factors in the individual and in 4 social contexts (family, peer group, school, and neighborhood) is employed in school-based samples from the People's Republic of China (N=1,739) and the United States (N=1...

This book, first published in 2002, represents a systematic discussion of the Gateway Hypothesis, a developmental hypothesis formulated to model how adolescents initiate and progress in the use of various drugs. In the United States, this progression proceeds from the use of tobacco or alcohol to the use of marijuana and other illicit drugs. This v...

Relations among measures of adolescent behavior were examined to determine whether cigarette smoking fits into a structure of problem behaviors—behaviors that involve normative transgression—or a structure of health-related behaviors, or both. In an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of 1782 male and female high school adolescents, fou...

To establish the role of psychosocial risk and protective factors in cross-sectional variation in adolescent problem drinking, and in the transition into problem drinking over time. The data were from a four-wave (1989-1992) longitudinal study of 1,591 adolescents in a large, urban school district. School district officials selected schools for the...

Research conducted in the 1970s demonstrated that Problem Behavior Theory could account for approximately 40% of the variance in problem drinking in both local and national sample studies. The present analyses sought to determine whether the personality, perceived environment, and behavior variables of the framework continue to contribute to the ex...

The rote of psychosocial risk and protective factors in successful adolescent development under circumstances of socioeconomic disadvantage was investigated among 1,638 high school students in a large, urban school district. Success referred to 2 important developmental tasks: engagement in school and avoiding more than minimal involvement in probl...

In this collection of chapters, leading scholars of adolescent risk behavior present the most recent ideas and findings about the variety of behaviors that can compromise adolescent development, including drug use, risky driving, early sexual activity, depression, and school disengagement. In particular, the volume emphasizes new perspectives on de...

In this collection of chapters, leading scholars of adolescent risk behavior present the most recent ideas and findings about the variety of behaviors that can compromise adolescent development, including drug use, risky driving, early sexual activity, depression, and school disengagement. In particular, the volume emphasizes new perspectives on de...

The role of psychosocial protective factors in adolescent health-enhancing behaviors--healthy diet, regular exercise, adequate sleep, good dental hygiene, and seatbelt use--was investigated among 1,493 Hispanic, White, and Black high school students in a large, urban school district. Both proximal (health-related) and distal (conventionality-relate...

Studies of human development have taken an ethnographic turn in the 1990s. In this volume, leading anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists discuss how qualitative methodologies have strengthened our understanding of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral development, and of the difficulties of growing up in contemporary society. Part 1, info...

Relations of contraceptive behavior, problem behaviors, and health-protective behaviors were examined in an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of sexually active adolescents. First-order latent variables representing contraceptive use, alcohol use, drug use, aggression, delinquency, diet, exercise, seatbelt use, and dental hygiene were...

• The aim of the present research is to explore the role of psychosocial protective factors in adolescent problem behavior. The authors' first concern is to determine whether protective factors are, indeed, associated with lower levels of involvement in problem behavior. The authors' second concern is to determine whether protective factors moderat...

The purpose of this paper is to determine psychosocial and behavioral factors that are associated with variation in contraceptive use among adolescents. Because regular use of contraception may be seen both as a conventional behavior and as a health-protective behavior, analyses assess the association between psychosocial conventionality and health...

The relation of psychosocial protective factors to involvement in problem behavior—alcohol and drug abuse, delinquency, and sexual precocity—was investigated in a longitudinal study of 7th-, 8th-, and 9th-grade adolescents in a large, urban school district. Protective factors were drawn from the personality, the perceived environment, and the behav...

Longitudinal data were used to examine the relationship of psychosocial unconventionality-rejection of societal norms and a propensity to engage in nonconforming behavior-to early initiation of sexual intercourse in an urban sample of 1,330 White, Hispanic, and African-American male and female middle-school and high-school students. Measures of unc...