University of Michigan Girls Study Group

Project Summary for 200l-JP-FX-K002

The Girl Study Group (GSG), including University of Michigan (UM) scholars and national experts, slected to represent broad domains critical to understanding female delinquency and violence, will work to identify both social structural and institutional risk and protective factors and individual risk and protective behaviors affecting girls' delinquency. The GSG members will operate partially as a whole and partially within six working Groups (WGs), which will focus on: adolescent development and adjustment; abuse and violence; substance abuse poverty, racism and sexism; social institutions (e.g., justice, schools, families, welfare); prevention and intervention programs. In each of these areas, WGs will include additional UM and community resources beyond the GSG membership. The GSG will meet as a plenary at least twice each year, including a national conference at the end of year 2, WGs will hold additional meetings as needed. Each GSG member will identify a critical literature to review. The GSG and WGs will commission and carry out secondary analyses of national or other available datasets and prepare statistical summaries, fact sheets, and reports on these analyses as well as the GSG's response to the 5 articulated goals. These reports and bibliographies will be made available to interdisciplinary researchers, policy analysts and practitioners and will be posted on the project's web site.