Background: Female students with mild intellectual disability at special-needs high school and part-time high school are vulnerable to sex crimes. Nevertheless, their situation is not clarified well. How their teachers are involved in their problems remains unknown.

Objective: This study was designed to use a teacher's narrative viewpoint to elucidate the state of high-risk sexual behavior of female students with mild intellectual disability at special-needs high school and part-time high schools and to explore how teachers should care for and support such students.

Methods: Relevant data were obtained from a group interview and individual interviews of seven special-needs high school teachers and two part-time high school teachers. The interviewees responded to the following inquiries: “What are recognizable high-risk sexual behaviors of female students with mild intellectual disability?” “What are the backgrounds of female students' sexually high-risk behaviors?” and “How do teachers care for and support female students?” The responses were categorized.

Results: High-risk sexual behaviors of female students with mild intellectual disability were categorized from a teacher's narrative viewpoint into three categories: “money-related dating and labor and sex industry,” “improper sexual activity,” and “dangerous sexual behavior.” Several factors were related to female students and their background. The personal characteristics were of two categories: “intellectual delay” and “low self-esteem.” Their background comprised two categories: “complex home environment” and “impact of the information society.”

　A teacher's care and support of female students included the following: “individual and polite education,” “sex education according to the current situation,” “education for independence,” and “cooperation.”

　When providing support to female students, the troubles which teachers often experienced were the following: “difficulty of sex education,” “necessity of support and guidance after graduation,” and “difficulty of surrounding social systems.”

Conclusion: These results are expected to help prevent and support problem behaviors, giving advice from a professional viewpoint.

Background: Previous studies have indicated that drinking among Japanese adolescents has decreased. However, the average drinking prevalence among them is not sufficiently lowered, and the drinking level remains problematic.

Objectives: The purposes of this study were to clarify the active and passive influential social factors and examine their relative levels of influence in the current drinking behaviors of junior and senior high school students in Japan.

Methods: A total of 5,333 students (3,169 boys, 2,164 girls) from seventh to twelfth grades among five junior high schools (n＝2835) and five senior high schools (n＝2498) in one prefecture of Japan completed an anonymous, self-administered questionnaire. The contents of the questionnaire included the following: 1) the drinking behavior of subjects, their family members (father, mother, and older siblings), and friends (close friends, boy/girlfriend); 2) offers of alcohol as an active social factor (at least one or more offers in the past month); and 3) estimation of peers' and adults' alcohol use and perceived attitudes of parents and friends toward the respondent's drinking as passive social factors. Multiple logistic regression analysis was used to examine the association of current drinking (defined as drinking at least once a month) with active and passive social factors among the participants. All variables were entered simultaneously as independent variables. Additionally, the models were adjusted according to school grade, and school type (only senior high school).

Results: The multiple logistic regression analysis revealed the following relationships. Among both junior and senior high school students, there are significant relationships between the participants' current drinking behavior and explicit offers of drinks and perceived favorable attitudes of parents toward the respondent's drinking habit. Among high school students, there was a marked relationship between their drinking behavior and the overestimation of peers' drinking. Among girls, there was a tendency for the perceived attitudes of parents to be the most important influential social factor. Among boys, however, results suggest that drinking behaviors among people around the subjects promoted their drinking.

Conclusion: When developing drinking prevention programs in the future, it is necessary to pay attention not only to active influential social factors such as explicit offers of drinks but also to passive influential social factors such as parents' strict attitudes toward drinking.

Background: Recently, sleep education is urged to facilitate positive behavioral change among children, who are often reported as staying up late and having reduced sleep time.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to develop a Stages of Change Scale and a Decisional Balance Scale pertaining to “early to bed, early to rise” habits among upper elementary school and junior high school students.

Methods: Two hundred and twenty-three students in the fifth and sixth grades of two elementary schools as well as seven hundred and thirty students in the first through third grades of three junior high schools in the different municipalities of the Aichi prefecture were asked to complete an anonymous self-administered questionnaire between May and July 2017. The survey inquired about respondents' sleeping habits and included draft scales of Stages of Change and Decisional Balance, both of which were designed to encourage “early to bed, early to rise” habits in students. Each draft was prepared based on preliminary survey results and was later revised to reflect opinions of elementary and junior high school teachers. The validity of the Stages of Change Scale was confirmed through its relation to sleeping habits. With regard to the Decisional Balance Scale, the data for elementary and junior high school students were analyzed separately. The factor structure of the Decisional Balance Scale was examined by exploratory factor analysis. Subsequently, the scale's reliability and validity was ascertained by confirmatory factor analysis as well as its relation to the Stages of Change Scale. To verify the temporal stability of the scales, one hundred and four elementary school students were surveyed two weeks later by the retest method.

Results: All of the respondents answered the questionnaire. Sleeping habits recorded using the Stages of Change Scale showed that those in the maintenance/action stage tend to go to bed early, get up early, and sleep more hours, validating the Stages of Change Scale. The results of the retest method showed a concordance rate of 83.0% and κ coefficient of 0.789 for the Stages of Change. Both values generally confirmed the scale's temporal stability. Regarding the Decisional Balance Scale on “early to bed, early to rise,” the exploratory factor analysis results showed a two-factor structure consisting of 4 “Pros” items (α = 0.826) and 6 “Cons” items (α = 0.893) in elementary school students, 6 “Pros” items (α = 0.880) and 6 “Cons” items (α = 0.896) in junior high school students. As a result, the scale's internal consistency was verified. Tolerable goodness-of-fit indices were obtained in confirmatory factor analysis (elementary school students: CFI = 0.981, GFI = 0.955, AGFI = 0.926, and RMSEA = 0.052, junior high school students: CFI = 0.962, GFI = 0.948, AGFI = 0.924, and RMSEA = 0.068). The results of one-way analysis of variance confirmed differences in the decisional balance scores by stage, in both elementary and junior high school students (p < 0.001, p < 0.001). This correlates with the TTM theory. The retest reliability was in an allowable range.

Conclusions: This research generally confirmed the reliability and validity of the Stages of Change and Decisional Balance Scales, both of which were developed for “early to bed, early to rise.” The results demonstrated the availability of the scales.

Background: Although teachers are expected to respond to students' health and safe related matters appropriately, it has not been clarified what kind of problems there are.

Objective: This study identifies problems in teachers' response to students' health and safety from the perspective of the principal as a school health and safety manager and establishes the necessity for teacher preparation.

Methods: After stratifying elementary schools, junior high schools, and high schools across the country by prefecture, 2992 randomly selected schools were targeted. The survey collected information on the type of school, the prefecture, the age, the number of years of experience as a principal, the acquired educational staff license, the gender, the presence/absence of problems in teachers' response to the health and safety of students, and the necessity of teacher preparation.

Results: In more than 80% of all schools, “students' developmental disabilities” and “mental health care of the students” were cited by principals as those problems of students' health and safety that were most frequently experienced by teachers. The other problems with high values were: “coordination with parents (health),” “first aid for injuries,” and “coordination with parents (safety)” in elementary schools; “first aid for injuries,” “coping with heatstroke,” “coordination with parents (health),” in junior high school; and “the coping to heatstroke,” “cooperation with parents (health),” and “cooperation between teachers (safety),” in high schools.

　The items that teachers most needed to be prepared for were responding to “developmental disorders,” “mental care,” “allergic diseases,” and “heat stroke.”

Conclusion: It was clarified that school principals feel the necessity for preparing teachers to be able to respond to “developmental disorders,” “mental care,” and other urgent health and safety problems. It is necessary to scrutinize the contents of health and safety programs need to be learned at the teacher preparedness from surveys such as Yogo teachers in addition to surveys of principals.