Factors Related to Individual Assets in High-Risk Adolescents

Background and Purpose: Individual assets refer to an individual’s psychological and behavioral strengths that contribute to healthy development, including self-esteem and school engagement. Limited research has examined individual assets in high-risk adolescents. Positive youth development (PYD) emphasizes the importance of ecological resources on youth’s inherent capacity to grow and thrive. Guided by PYD, our study examined factors from individual, family, and neighborhood contexts that may contribute to individual assets in high-risk adolescents. We also explored whether the factors are associated with individual assets differently by gender.

Methods: The study includes 356 (191 females, 165 males) 15-year-old adolescents recruited at birth from an urban county hospital for a longitudinal prospective study of developmental effects of prenatal poly-drug exposure. Individual-level (prenatal cocaine, alcohol, marijuana, tobacco exposure, gender, race, IQ), family-level (parental attachment, parental monitoring, family conflict, child maltreatment, home environment), and neighborhood-level (violence exposure, urban hassles) factors were assessed. Individual assets were assessed at age 15 using the 32-item Internal Assets subscale (α = .90) of the widely used Developmental Assets Profile, a youth self-report rated on a 4-point scale, reflecting commitment to learning, positive values, social competencies, and positive identity. Parental attachment (α = .80), violence exposure (α = .75), and quality of the home environment (α = .83) were assessed at age 12. Urban hassles (α = .79), social and environmental stressors in urban settings, were assessed at 15. An ordinary least squares multiple regression analysis was conducted to identify factors related to individual assets. Multicollinearity was examined using variance inflation factor.

Results: Participating adolescents were primarily African American (82%) and recipients of free lunch (84%), with a mean IQ of 82.61 (SD = 12.61). Forty-one percent of their mothers (n = 150) had not finished high school, with a mean of 11.74 years of education (SD = 1.53). Two-third of the adolescents (n = 235) were prenatally exposed to ≥ 2 substances, with 51% exposed to cocaine, 64% to tobacco, 73% to alcohol, and 30% to marijuana. The adolescents in this sample had a mean internal assets score of 18.28 (SD = 4.08), with 249 (70%) adolescents in the range considered either challenged or vulnerable (≤ 20). Being African-American (b (SE) = 1.30 (.56), p = .02), having better parental attachment (b (SE) = .96 (.34), p = .005), a better home environment (b (SE) = .08 (.03), p = .02), and lower levels of urban hassles (b (SE) = -1.97 (.77), p = .01) were associated with greater individual assets (R² = .11). No gender interaction with any factors was found.

Conclusions and Implications: Our study indicated that being African-American, having higher parental attachment, a better home environment, and fewer urban hassles were associated with higher individual assets, demonstrating that factors at multiple levels influence adolescent asset development. Interventions supporting parental attachment or policies reducing neighborhood-level stressors may enhance individual assets in high-risk adolescents. Future study should examine whether and how individual assets predict emerging adulthood outcomes, such as high school graduation, employment, substance use, and antisocial behavior.