Life experiences among urban adolescents: Examining the role of context

Interest in the influence of context on the psychosocial development of ado lescents led to the examination of neighborhood effects on the experience o f adolescent life stress. Because of concerns regarding the population and ecological validity of existing measures of adolescent life events, the res earch group developed a scale for the measurement of life events among urba n adolescents based on data from focus group interviews in the community of interest. Investigators utilized three strategies to examine the impact of neighborhood on adolescents' perceptions of life stress in a sample of 114 adolescents (mean age = 15). Results indicated that life stress in the pee r domain varied by the adolescent's neighborhood of residence. In addition, family/community stress was linearly related to neighborhood indices of ec onomic resources.