Search

Positive youth development programs such as those offered by Boy Scouts of America (BSA) provide sources of support and opportunities for leadership and character development. Programmatic experts from BSA collaborated with researchers to develop a visual theory of change (pathway model) for youth development in Scouts BSA and for adult volunteer leader development. The pathway model was then validated through focus groups with Scouts BSA youth and adult leaders across the country. Practice mapping was employed to assess the consistency of pathway models with core adult training curricula. The models were aligned with research literature through evidence mapping. The theory of change embedded in the Scouts BSA program was aligned with the Big Three features of positive youth development programs.

Background: The goal of the study was to develop and verify a pathway model (or theory of change) for STEM Scouts, an out-of-school time (OST), positive youth development program for elementary through high school-aged youth. Pathway models include connections between hypothesized activities to short-, mid-, and long-term outcomes. STEM Scouts is offered across the United States and a secondary goal of the study was to understand the STEM ecosystem in the communities where STEM Scouts is currently implemented. Results: Evidence mapping was conducted to determine the extent to which the theory of change was consistent with the extant literature; 69% of the connections on the key pathways were supported by research. For connections where supporting evidence was not found, the connections were either removed or retained because the connection between constructs was understudied. The literature review also led to the addition of outcomes and language revisions to more closely align with terminology used in the literature. Focus groups were conducted to determine the extent to which the pathway model was consistent with youth and adult participants' lived experience and to better understand STEM ecosystems. The pathway model resonated with most participants' experiences with STEM Scouts. Participants across multiple focus groups suggested adding outcomes related to learning and leadership. Parents and other family members, the availability of OST STEM programs, and schools were frequently noted as critical elements of the STEM ecosystem. Conclusions: Careful evaluation planning, including the development and validation of a detailed theory of change, is a critical step in STEM education program evaluation. This study revealed the value added when such steps are taken. Critical outcomes and connections would have been missed without the development and validation of the theory of change which will form the basis of a future evaluation. OST STEM programs should strive to engage in careful and detailed evaluation planning in advance of engaging in program evaluation.

Although experts agree that diverse stakeholder inclusion enhances quality and equity in evaluation designs and implementation, diverse voices are often omitted. Particularly antithetical to principles of youth character development, evaluations for these programs should strive to include voices from various social, economic, community, and demographic perspectives. One innovative national evaluation capacity building initiative, the Partnerships for Advancing Character Program Evaluation (PACE) project, paired practitioners from youth programs in community-based organizations with evaluation professionals to enhance stakeholders' roles in evaluation. PACE promoted stakeholder identification and inclusion through group exercises, partnership work, and coaching sessions. Using a mixed methods design with interviews, retrospective pretest-posttest surveys, and observational data, triangulated data addressed diverse stakeholders in the evaluation process, diverse perspectives on program performance, and connecting diverse input to evaluation design. Postprogram findings indicate that participants included more varied and diverse stakeholder perspectives in all the three areas. Implications for programs and evaluations are discussed.

This study investigates how adolescents begin to demonstrate skills and approaches that help them pursue their aspirations. The qualitative study examined emergent forms of key indicators of adolescent thriving: the 5Cs of positive youth development and sense of purpose. Pre- and post-program interviews with 24 S2 (~seventh grade) Scottish adolescents who participated in a school-based character program explored the presence, absence, and elucidations of each of the 5Cs as well as their conceptualizations of a sense of purpose. Findings showed great variability within the sample, despite participants' similarities in age, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. This work informs future study and measurement of potentially nascent forms of the 5Cs and purpose among early adolescents.

Non-formal education (NFE) programs -- those existing separately from hierarchically and chronologically organized schools -- have a long history with distance and online learning, both of which have been essential to NFE programming. NFE programs like Scouts BSA, the Boy Scouts of America's (BSA) co-ed program for 11-17 year olds, rely upon online learning to train adult volunteers. The purpose of this case study was to investigate non-formal educators' online training experiences and the extent to which these educators felt prepared for their roles.

Evaluation capacity building (ECB) is still an emerging area of study in the field of evaluation. The purpose of ECB is to assist program practitioners with implementing higher‐quality evaluation; however, we need better tools and resources to effectively assess ECB efforts. Existing measures typically depend on self‐report as opposed to assessing the artifacts of ECB training. Among the few non‐self‐report tools that support the assessment of ECB efforts are Relational Systems Evaluation rubrics designed to evaluate logic models, pathway models, and evaluation plans. These rubrics were first developed and tested several years ago. The purpose of the current study is to update the Relational Systems Evaluation rubrics to reflect current ECB knowledge. The updated rubrics have good to excellent inter‐rater reliability and high internal consistency. The results of this study contribute to the ECB field by providing measurement tools for assessing the quality of ECB artifacts. The rubrics can also be used by organizations and funders who need a systematic approach for assessing (and comparing) the quality of evaluation plans and visual theory of change models (e.g., logic models). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This modified sequential explanatory mixed methods study explores how the components of purpose (personal meaningfulness and a beyond-the-self orientation) impact youth mental health outcomes (depressive and anxiety symptoms) in the context of COVID-19. We hypothesized that youth with higher scores on the components of purpose (goal-directedness, personal meaningfulness, and beyond-the-self orientation) would be less likely to experience anxiety and depressive symptoms during COVID-19. We also explored in what ways youths’ descriptions of their own prosocial behavior align with the relation between purpose and mental health. Data are from two waves of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) Building Evidence in Scouting Together study. Quantitative data are from 4,896 youth and a subsample of 94 youth completed qualitative personal communication Results indicate the personal meaning component of purpose is protective against depressive and anxiety symptoms. However, the beyond-the-self orientation of purpose is associated with higher levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms. In addition, differences were found between youth who reported higher and lower levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms, and personal meaning and a beyond-the-self orientation for the following themes: 1) Empathy for others, 2) Desire to change the situation, 3) Solutions to change the situation, 4) Helping at home, 5) Following health advice, and 6) Scouting-specific examples. Taken together, this study provides useful insights into how each component of purpose can uniquely promote or provide a buffer for depression and anxiety among youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of engaging in high quality program evaluation is a generally accepted principle underscored by external pressure from funders. High quality evaluation necessarily begins with good evaluation planning. This paper outlines Evolutionary Evaluation and specifically the Systems Evaluation Protocol, an approach that emphasizes practitioner-evaluator collaboration, results in tangible products for programs, and culminates in an evaluation plan appropriate for a specific program's lifecycle stage. A case study of Inspire>Aspire, a program developed by Character Scotland and used widely in Scotland's schools and elsewhere is presented and includes a discussion of creative breakthroughs, or 'Aha!' Moments, that occurred.

School-based character education (CE) programs provide an opportunity to increase the moral fortitude of adolescents. This study is a preliminary evaluation of Inspire Aspire, a CE program that was implemented with 13- to 14-year-olds in Scotland. A relational developmental systems meta-theoretical approach and person-centered analyses were employed to understand whether teacher implementation variability is associated with student outcomes. The study aimed to: assess variation in program implementation across teachers; assess student poster quality, which served as a youth outcome measure; and, assess the relationship between variations in program implementation and poster quality. Teachers who fully integrated Inspire Aspire with the broader curriculum (as opposed to using it as a standalone program) as well as teachers who made more modifications to Inspire Aspire tended to have students with higher quality posters. This finding stands in contrast to the common narrative regarding evidence-based programs that requires teachers to strictly adhere to program guidelines in order to maintain implementation fidelity.

This article presents how character development practitioners, researchers, and funders might think about evaluation, how evaluation fits into their work, and what needs to happen in order to sustain evaluative practices. A broader view of evaluation is presented whereby evaluation is not just seen as something that is applied at a program level, but as an endeavor that considers the ecologies and systems within which programs are embedded. The evaluation landscape for youth-serving and character building programs is considered. Strategies for enhancing evaluation practices at the organizational (macro) level are addressed as well as strategies for enhancing evaluation practice at the program (micro) level. Organizational level strategies include deliberate efforts to engage in evaluation capacity building and cultivating evaluative thinking. We also discuss the role of evaluation policy and the need to consider program ecosystems through portfolio analysis. The program level strategies focus on using the Systems Evaluation Protocol to articulate and assess program theories of change.

Whether discussing the process involved in positive youth development (PYD), articulating an approach (or philosophy) of youth programs associated with PYD, or enacting a program aimed at promoting PYD, ideas derived from relational developmental systems (RDS) metatheory are pertinent. Accordingly, we discuss the RDS metamodel and explain the approach to PYD research and to PYD program evaluation associated with it. We suggest that the approach to research and evaluation derived from RDS-based ideas offers developmental scientists a set of ideas and tools for research and evaluation methodology that contrast in several ways to methodology associated with different metatheoretical bases. We present a model of program evaluation, termed Evolutionary Evaluation, as a sample case of such an RDS-based approach. We discuss RDS-based approaches to understanding causality and, as well, to using theory-based research and evaluation to promote social justice.

The positive youth development (PYD) perspective emphasizes that thriving occurs when individual [double arrow] context relations involve the alignment of adolescent strengths with the resources in their contexts. The authors propose that a key component of this relational process is the strength that youth possess in the form of self-regulatory processes; these processes optimize opportunities to obtain ecological resources that enhance the probability of PYD. They use the selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) model of intentional self-regulation to discuss the role of self-regulation in the PYD perspective among diverse youth.

Extracurricular activities provide a key context for youth development, and participation has been linked with positive developmental outcomes. Using data from the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development (PYD), this study explored how the intentional self regulation ability of youth interacted with participation in extracurricular activities to affect PYD among adolescents living in neighborhoods with relatively low ecological assets. In total, 545 youth were included in the study (50.3% female). Most of the youth were European American (41%) or Latino (37%; African American, 10%; Asian American, 7%; Native American, 4%; and other, 1%). In general, youth with the greatest capacity to self regulate benefitted the most, as compared to their peers with less capacity to self regulate, from involvement in extracurricular activities. Consistent with a developmental systems perspective, and specifically with bioecological theory, the findings from this study confirmed that, within lower asset settings, children with the most positive person-level factors (intentional self regulation) benefit the most from proximal processes such as extracurricular activity involvement.

Developmental system theories recognize that variables from multiple levels of organization within the bioecology of human development contribute to adolescent development, including individual factors, family factors and the neighborhood which includes extracurricular activities. Extracurricular activities provide a context for youth development, and participation has been linked with positive developmental outcomes. This study uses data from a subsample of early adolescents in the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development to determine whether neighborhood assets moderate the effect of adolescent activity involvement on positive and negative developmental outcomes. The relationship between activity involvement and neighborhood assets was different for girls as compared to boys when assessing outcomes of positive youth development, risk behavior, and depression. Consistent with a developmental systems perspective, the findings affirm the need for researchers and practitioners to consider multiple contextual influences when seeking to understand or promote, respectively, positive youth development. (Contains 5 tables and 8 figures.)

Program evaluation and planning is at the heart of efforts to integrate the domains of practice and research. Traditionally, research and practice have operated in independent spheres with practitioners focused on the implementation of programs that affect individual behavior and researchers focused on the development and testing of theory. Evidence-based practice (EBP), practice-based evidence, and translational research have attempted to unite these worlds, and although significant advances have been made, there is a continued need to find mechanisms that enable a seamless connection between knowledge generation and application. We propose a method that builds on the traditions of theory-driven evaluation, logic modeling, and systems science and uses evaluation and program planning as the bridging mechanism between research and practice. Included in this approach are methods that aid in the explicit expression of implicit theories, management of evaluation resources, and linkage of program theory and evaluation measures to a research evidence base. (Contains 2 figures and 1 note.)

Due to its increasing popularity, youth development (YD) has become a buzzword that is attached to a variety of programs. Several attempts have been made to articulate a unified definition of YD that would enable the field to progress toward measuring the effectiveness of YD programs. In order to determine what constitutes a YD program, we must establish the criteria for inclusion. This is an exploratory study of a collaborative approach to understanding the components and characteristics of YD programs. The objective of this study is to compare and contrast responses across four participant groups (policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and youth) using a community-based participatory approach, in order to reach consensus and explore the perceived hierarchy of key characteristics for YD programs from multiple stakeholder perspectives. (Contains 5 tables, 2 figures and 6 footnotes.)

A Positive Youth Development (PYD) perspective emphasizes adolescents' potential for healthy, successful development. Researchers have introduced a variety of constructs that may promote PYD. For example, Intentional Self‐Regulation (ISR) enables youth to seek out and use resources in the environment; purpose can help youth navigate and overcome obstacles. We examine connections between ISR, purpose and two PYD outcomes: confidence and connection. Data come from 763 Scottish youth (ages 12–14). We estimated fixed‐effects regression models predicting confidence and connection from both ISR and purpose, confirming outcomes were independently associated with one or both predictors. Our findings are especially salient to the field of youth purpose, linking purpose with specific PYD outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]