Youth gang involvement is a serious public health challenge as adolescents involved in gangs are more likely than others to engage in violence and aggression. To better understand gang involvement, we examined the role of protective (empathy and parental support) and risk (peer deviance and lack of safety at school) factors, as well as their interactions, in predicting adolescent gang affiliation. The study involved a sample of 26,232 students (53.4% females; mean age = 14.62, SD = 1.69) participating in the California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS), a survey investigating a wide range of youth health and risk behaviors administered in all California schools every 2 years. Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), findings indicated that high levels of empathy and parental support were associated with a lower likelihood of affiliating with a gang. Associating with deviant peers and perceiving the school as unsafe were positively correlated with gang membership. At the school level, lack of safety and type of school (special education, vocational, or alternative school vs. comprehensive schools) were associated with greater probability of gang membership. Empathy mitigated the association between deviant peers and gang membership.

Civic engagement, defined as involvement in community life, is influenced by reciprocal relationships between individuals and contexts and is a key factor that contributes to positive youth development. The present study evaluates a theoretical model linking perceived democratic school climate with adolescent civic engagement (operationalized as civic responsibility and intentions for future participation), taking into account the mediating role of civic discussions and perceived fairness at school. Participants were 403 adolescents (47.9 % male) ranging in age from 11 to 15 years old (mean age = 13.6). Path analysis results partially validated the proposed theoretical model. Higher levels of democratic school climate were associated with higher levels of adolescent civic responsibility; the association was fully mediated by civic discussions and perceived fairness at school. Adolescents' civic responsibility, then, was positively associated with a stronger intention to participate in the civic domain in the future.

This study examined the association between two characteristics of school climate (sense of community and teacher support, measured both at the individual and at the school level) and students' feelings of being unsafe at school. The study involved a sample of 49,638 students aged 10-18 years who participated in the 2010-2012 California Healthy Kids Survey. Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), our findings revealed that, at the individual level, students perceiving higher levels of sense of community and teacher support at school were less likely to feel unsafe within the school environment. At the school level, sense of community was negatively associated with unsafe feelings, whereas there was no association between school-level teacher support and feelings of being unsafe at school.