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Many teens work part-time during the school year, and the current economic climate, more people can have jobs to help with family finances. However, caution is advised: Among high school students, working over 20 hours a week during the school year can lead to academic and behavioral problems.

That's the finding of a new study by researchers at the University of Washington, the University of Virginia and Temple University. Appears in the January / February issue of Child Development.

In a new analysis of longitudinal data collected in late 1980, researchers examined the effects of getting a job or leaving work among middle-class teenagers in grades 10 and 11. From the total sample of about 1. 800 people, the researchers compared the adolescents who got jobs similar to non-working adolescents and young people who left jobs similar to adolescents who continued working.

Using advances in statistical methods, the researchers combined the teenagers in a long list of background characteristics and personality that are known to influence whether a young person decides to work, using this technique allows a safer estimate of the effects working on adolescent development in the original analysis of the data.

The researchers found that worked for more than 20 hours per week was associated with decreases in school attendance and the extent to which adolescents are expected in school, and increased behavioral problems, such as theft, possession of weapon , and the use of alcohol and illegal drugs. They also found that things did not improve when the teens who worked more than 20 hours a week reduce their hours or stopped working altogether. By contrast, working 20 hours or less a week had negligible effects academic, psychological or behavioral problems.

"Part of working time during the school year has been a fixture of American adolescents over 30 years," said Kathryn C. Monahan, a postdoctoral research scientist at the University of Washington, who led the study. "Today, a substantial proportion of U.S. high school students have part-time jobs during the school year, and a large number of them work over 20 hours a week.

"Despite working in high school is unlikely to turn the law-abiding teens into criminals or cause students to fail at school, to the extent of the side effects are not trivial, and even a small decrease in school participation or increased behavior problems may be cause for concern for many parents, "he adds.

The bottom line, Monahan suggests: "Parents, educators and the authorities should monitor and limit the number of hours, whereas adolescents who are enrolled in high school."