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Background: Advances in knowledge of how to promote positive youth development (PYD) have significant potential to enrich intervention science. As part of a broader movement in the direction of a more fully integrated intervention science, PYD intervention research can provide practitioners in youth behavioral and mental health with an updated set of intervention tools beyond problem-focused strategies for reducing or preventing dysfunction. Objective: The objective of this commentary is to highlight potential contributions of PYD research to the development of more complete models of youth intervention, as well as to identify directions for future PYD intervention research. Method: This commentary discusses and expands on findings from the present articles that contribute to an empirical foundation for connecting PYD promotion with the science and practice of treatment and prevention. Results:The findings point to practical advantages that result from understanding the empirical links among PYD, treatment, and prevention on the way to achieving a more fully integrated intervention science, as well as methodological challenges involved in pursuing this agenda. Conclusions: In this context, the next generation of intervention science will be driven by integrating PYD's contextual, cultural, relational, global, and participatory values into the science of building and testing youth interventions.

This article addresses the debate concerning cultural differences in independent and interdependent self formation among Japanese youth. Independent self formation is defined as any purposive action to form a self actively through individual efforts. This study provides evidence that the majority of Japanese youth, despite their culturally collectivist backgrounds, form selves individually at the level of specific activities. High levels of active self formation were found among 41% of the sample. These findings contribute to the literature on both self development and identity formation, with the finding that both independent self formation and proactive identity formation occur among a significant proportion of Japanese students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advances in applied developmental science have contributed to the large literature on positive youth development (PYD) interventions. This study reports an investigation of a PYD program using an outcome-mediation evaluation model that drew on the treatment intervention science literature. The Changing Lives Program (CLP) is a community supported gender and ethnic inclusive PYD intervention framework. Using an empowerment approach, the CLP was implemented in a practice setting as a selective/indicated positive youth development program for multi-ethnic, multi-problem at risk youth in urban alternative high schools. The outcome-mediation evaluation model provided evidence in support of the direct outcome effects of the intervention. The model also proved effective in identifying at a micro process level a number of plausible causal mechanisms for use in the development of more conceptually complete models of the causal mechanisms that underlie intervention change. Implications for future development of theory informed empirically supported intervention models of PYD programs are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illustrates how developmental intervention science outreach research contributes to knowledge development on the promotion of positive identity development by describing results from the Miami Youth Development Project. The project is committed to the use of descriptive and explanatory knowledge about evidence-based individual and institutional intervention strategies for promoting developmental change in self and identity. Our efforts, described here, include a method for measuring theoretically and personally meaningful identity change, a procedure for integrating key aspects of qualitative and quantitative data through relational data analysis, and an evidence-based positive youth development intervention that fosters measurable and meaningful identity change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]