Individual Assets in Urban Adolescents from Ages 12 to 17: Gender Variation

Background and Purpose: Individual assets refer to an individual’s psychological and behavioral strengths, such as competence and a positive sense of self, which foster optimal development. Few studies investigated how individual assets might change over time in urban inner-city adolescents. Building on an ecological framework, the present study examined individual (e.g., gender, race), family (e.g., parental attachment, quality of home environment), and socio-environmental (e.g., violence exposure, sexual victimization, neighborhood disorder) factors to identify salient factors associated with individual assets over time. We also explored potential gender variation, as different societal gender-based norms become more pronounced during adolescence.

Methods: Participants were 371 adolescents (174 boys, 197 girls), primarily African-American, of low socioeconomic status, participating in a longitudinal, prospective study on the developmental effects of prenatal cocaine exposure from birth. Adolescents’ individual assets (Commitment to Learning, Positive Values, Social Competencies, Positive Identity) were assessed at ages 12, 15, and 17 with the 32-item Internal Assets subscale of the widely used Developmental Assets Profile, a youth self-report using a 4-point Likert scale. Scores > 20 indicate adequate assets. Parental attachment (α = .80), violence exposure (α = .75), and quality of the home environment (α = .83) were all assessed at age 12. Urban hassles (α = .79), neighborhood disorder in urban settings, were assessed at age 15. Sexual victimization (1=yes) was evaluated retrospectively using the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire at age 17. Mixed model repeated measures analyses with unstructured covariance structure were used to estimate the association of individual, family, and socio-environmental factors with the four domains of individual assets.

Results: After accounting for individual, family, and socio-environmental factors, all four domain scores of individual assets decreased from age 12 to age 15 in both boys and girls, with a gender-by-age interaction on Positive Value and Positive Identity. Although boys reported improvement in Positive Value and Positive Identity from ages 15 to 17, girls did not, yielding gender differences at age 17 on Positive Identity, M(SE) = 19.3 (0.41) in female vs. 21.0 (0.45) in male, p = .007, and on Positive Value, M(SE) = 18.0 (0.34) in female vs. 19.0 (0.37) in male, p = .066. Greater parental attachment was associated with higher scores in all four domains of individual assets (p’s < .01). A better quality of home environment was associated with higher scores in Positive Value and Social Competency (p’s < .03), while sexual victimization was associated with lower scores in Positive Value and Social Competency (p’s < .05). Black adolescents reported higher Commitment to Learning and Positive Identity scores than non-Black adolescents (p’s < .02).

Conclusions and Implications: Our findings indicate that early adolescence from age 12 to 15, typically spanning middle-school years, is vulnerable time, particularly for girls. Interventions promoting parental attachment may enhance individual assets in urban, inner-city adolescents who tend to navigate multiple ecological adversities.