2-070 - Positive Youth Development in Organized After-school Programs

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

The call for a strength-based rather than a problem-centered model of development has grown strong in research with youth and adolescents. Increasingly, researchers and practitioners are seeking to assess if and how the lives of diverse youth can be enhanced through engagement with community-based youth-development programs, especially if these programs align features of both youth and program strengths.
Development of different positive attributes among youth involved in different organized after-school activities are examined in the three papers presented in this symposium. The first paper discusses longitudinal bi-directional associations between participation in organized activities and socio-political values among youth. Comparisons between rural youth and youth from mid-sized city support the importance of considering contextual variability in understanding youth experiences in different settings. The second paper explores the construct of intentional self regulation and its association with school success among elementary school boys who were or were not Cub Scouts. Intentional self regulation drawing on internal versus external resources was identified and self regulation using internal resources showed significant associations with school success among participating youth. Paper 3 presents developmental trajectories of 10 self-rated positive attributes across two years of elementary school among girls, boys, and (in particular) boys involved in Scouting. All youth had high ratings on all attributes despite small variations in initial ratings and across-time changes.
In sum, these three papers investigate the importance of positive youth development in the context of organized after-school programs by using change-sensitive developmental research methods.

Sub Unit

• Moral Development

Chair

• Jun Wang, Tufts Univ

Discussant

• Sandra Denise Simpkins, Arizona State University

Individual Presentations

• Longitudinal associations among organized activities and socio-political values: The moderating role of rural context - Presenting Author: Ben Oosterhoff, West Virginia University; Kaitlyn A Ferris, West Virginia University; Aaron Metzger, West Virginia University

• The relation between self regulation and school success over time among Cub Scouts and non-Scouts - Presenting Author: Paul A. Chase, Tufts University; Richard M Lerner, Tufts University

• Developmental Trajectories of Youth Self-rated Positive Attributes and the Role of Scouting: A Four-wave Longitudinal Study - Presenting Author: Jun Wang, Tufts Univ; Richard M Lerner, Tufts University