The chapters in this book represent a unique selection of current research on adolescent risk behaviors. The behaviors addressed no longer include the “usual suspects,” such as alcohol and drug use or delinquency, and show that many advances have been made in this area of research. In addition to these, other externalizing behaviors, such as sexual behavior and the widely overlooked risky driving, are dealt with. Internalizing behaviors such as depression are also discussed.

It is also clear, from the age span covered in the chapters, that the study of risk behaviors in adolescence includes their childhood precursors and young adult consequences. Although it does not yet have a true life-span perspective, the research looks much more developmental than in the past and overcomes the preponderance of approaches concentrating on individual differences rather than intraindividual change.

Moreover, contexts from family to school to work really seem to matter. This was not always true in a field that for decades was characterized by research concentrating either on individuals without contexts or on contexts without individuals (Bronfenbrenner, 1986).

And yet, important as these advances are, the new perspectives offered actually go further. I see four main areas: a new emphasis on the person of the adolescents, that is, the organized, unique pattern of adaptive and maladaptive behaviors rather than the concentration on a single risk behavior; the distinction between various developmental trajectories that lead to risk behaviors characterized by different persistence across the life span, lending itself to new approaches in intervention; the growing awareness that the biological underpinnings of risk behaviors and their interplay with other levels of behavioral organization deserve more attention; and a new interest in psychologically relevant dimensions of contexts.