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Early experience sampling research sought to map the ecology of adolescents' lives. Its contributions include discovery of similar patterns in psychological states across diverse samples: positive emotions with friends, more negative states alone, high challenge but low motivation during schoolwork, and wider variability in teens' than adults' emotions, including more frequent extreme positive states. Recent ambulatory assessment research has expanded this mission and methods in valuable ways. Yet it still demands problem‐solving (e.g., engaging participants, formulating analyses that represent teens' complex lives). A promising innovation is use of micro‐longitudinal analyses to examine sequential processes (e.g., linkages between stress–coping–emotions; relationship episodes). Qualitative data can add "zones" for development of empirically‐based theory about daily processes, such as adolescents' meaning‐making and learning self‐regulation.

Nations around the world are undergoing rapid changes that are altering the nature of adolescence in their societies. This volume examines current trends in adolescent experience across nations, with the objective of identifying emerging problems and opportunities in adolescents' preparation for adulthood. This introduction reviews methods used by futurists and how these methods are applicable to adolescence, and provides an overview of some of the macrochanges that are shaping the societies in which adolescents of the future will live. The macrochanges considered include demographic trends, globalization, trends in government, and changes in technology. Subsequent articles in this volume examine how these and other changes are altering adolescents' transition to adult work, preparation for adult interpersonal lives, civic and community engagement, and health and well‐being. The final article focuses on social policy and is followed by a conclusion with the main points and trends in the volume.

Emotional skills are now widely recognized to be essential skills for young people to survive and thrive across all aspects of their lives. Teens become able to develop powerful new skills for understanding and managing their emotions. They also are able to learn skills for using the valuable functions of emotions. But this learning isn't automatic; it depends on experience. In this commentary, we highlight key elements of youth programs that make them important contexts for youth's active engagement in emotional learning. We present examples from research on how program staff facilitate youth development of skills to manage and use emotions. We conclude with suggestions on practices and policies that support emotional learning.

The leaders of youth programs encounter a range of challenging situations that involve youth's parents or families. This qualitative study obtained data on the variety and nature of these family-related "dilemmas of practice." Longitudinal interviews with leaders of 10 high quality programs for high-school-aged youth yielded narrative information on a sample of 32 family dilemmas that they had encountered. Grounded theory analysis identified four categories of family dilemmas: 1) problems at home that become a concern to the leader, 2) parents' expectations are incongruent with program norms or functioning, 3) parents do not support youth's participation in the program or an aspect of the program, and 4) communicating with parents on sensitive matters. Each of these categories of dilemmas entailed distinct considerations and underlying issues that effective leaders need to be able to understand.

Youth's trust in program leaders is considered a key to the positive impact of youth programs. We sought to understandhowtrust influences youth's program experiences from their perspective. We interviewed 108 ethnically diverse youth (ages 12–19) participating in 13 arts, leadership, and technology programs. Analysis of these accounts suggested five ways in which youth's trust in leaders amplified program benefits. Trust increased youth's (1) confidence in leaders' guidance in program activities, (2) motivation in the program, (3) use of leaders for mentoring, (4) use of leaders as a model of a well‐functioning relationship, and (5) experience of program cohesiveness. Across benefits, trust allowed youth to draw on leaders' expertise, opened them to new experiences, and helped increase youth's agency.

This study examines one aspect of youth worker expertise, the ability to appraise and respond to the dilemmas of practice encountered in youth programs. To understand how expert youth workers differ from novices in their reasoning about these dilemmas, a sample of expert and novice practitioners read vignettes of dilemma situations and described their appraisals of the situations and how they might respond to them. Quantitative analyses confirmed four hypothesized differences between the two groups. Experts identified more considerations in the situations and generated more possible responses. Experts' responses were also more likely to be youth-centered and address multiple considerations. Qualitative analyses suggested that these differences were attributable to the experts having more elaborate mental models that allowed them to understand varied human systems – individual youth, group dynamics, parents, funders, etc. – and to tailor their responses accordingly. The experts engaged in more forecasting of events, anticipating contingencies, and formulating decision trees that took possible contingencies into account. Although preliminary, the findings have implications for how youth workers are trained.

AbstractYouth workers encounter numerous dilemmas in their daily practice, including tension created by relating to youth in a professional versus a personal way.

Cover; Half-title; Title; Copyright; Contents; Contributors; Preface; 1 Macrostructural Trends and the Reshaping of Adolescence; 2 Youth in Aging Societies; 3 The Transition from School to Work; 4 Criminal Justice in the Lives of American Adolescents: Choosing the Future; 5 Adolescent Health Care in the United States: Implications and Projections for the New Millennium; 6 Youth and Information Technology; 7 Social Space, the Final Frontier: Adolescents on the Internet; 8 Approaching Policy for Adolescent Development in the 21st Century; Index

The future of societies depends on their success in providing pathways whereby young people develop and prepare themselves to be contributing adults to their communities. When these pathways are well marked, stable, supported by the community, and inviting to adolescents, a society can be confident that new generations will join the ranks of adulthood well prepared. When these paths are hazardous, unpredictable, uninviting, or ill fitted to the demands of adulthood in that society, the future is insecure, both for adolescents and for society. This volume and the additional two volumes of this study group (Brown, Larson, && Saraswathi, 2002; Mortimer && Brown, 2002) suggest the following observations about the experiences of youth and how well they are being prepared for adulthood in the 21st century.