Character Development and Thriving among Youth in Ghana

• In Event: 1-023 - Designing Effective Organized Activities to Foster Youth Character: Perspectives from USA, Rwanda, Ghana, and Scotland

Integrative Statement

In line with the Positive Youth Development (PYD) perspective, character is one of the thriving indicators needed for youth and societal development (Lerner, 2004). It reflects integrity, moral commitment, and the respect youth have for societal and cultural rules. PYD suggests that character develops when an active, engaged, and competent youth interacts with a receptive, supportive, and nurturing context. This bi-directional relationship offers three features of 1) positive, sustained adult-youth relationships, 2) skill-building activities for youth, and 3) opportunities for participation and leadership in valued activities in youth contexts (e.g., home, school and community) (Lerner, 2004). Furthermore, character can be the basis on which other thriving indicators, such as competence, confidence, caring and connection develop (Lerner, 2018). In Ghana, character formation and moral education have been on the forefront in education and religion since the pre-colonial era (Asare-Danso, 2018). Besides the educational system, social institutions, such as home, local community and media are considered important partners in this endeavor. While there has been a shift from earlier emphasis on moral dependency (i.e., moral reasoning based on prescribed set of values) to current focus on moral autonomy (i.e., making moral decisions without external influences), the goal has always been to educate young Ghanaians to become responsible adults in the society. In this study, we explored the extent to which the three features above are reported among secondary school students (N = 858, 44% girls) in Ghana and how they relate to character. In addition, we examine how students with higher levels of character differ from those with lower levels in terms of their report of competence, confidence, caring and connection. A cross-sectional data on items measuring the different variables were collected during autumn, 2017. The psychometric properties of the items that measure character, competence, confidence, caring and connection have already been tested and found to be adequate (Wiium et al., under review). Results from regression analyses suggest that measures of positive, sustained adult-youth relationships (β = .12, p < .01), skill-building activities for youth (β = .12, p < .01), and opportunities for participation (β = .09, p < .05) were all positively related to character (Table 1). Opportunities for leadership (reported by only half of the participants), which was analyzed separately from participation was not significantly related to character. Furthermore, results from multivariate analysis of variance revealed statistically significant differences in the thriving indicators based on the level of character, F (4, 831) = 95.11, p < .001, Wilk's Λ = .686, partial η2 = .314. Pairwise comparisons showed that mean scores for all four thriving indicators, competence, confidence, caring and connection were significantly greater for participants with higher levels of character relative to those with low levels (p < .01) (Table 2). Ghana’s focus on character and moral education in formal and informal settings may be instrumental to the development of thriving among young people, and subsequently, youth participation and contribution. However, there is the need to create more opportunities for thriving, especially those that deal with youth leadership.

Authors

• Nora Wiium, University of Bergen
  Presenting Author

• Laura Ferrer-Wreder, Stockholm University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Radosveta Dimitrova, Stockholm University
  Non-Presenting Author