Youth participation in community-based, structured out-of-school time programs (OST) has been found to promote positive developmental outcomes by providing youth with resources to build interpersonal relationships and essential life skills. The increasing prevalence and multiplicity of youth participation in these activities leads us to expand the…

It is well established that positive youth development (PYD) programs improve adolescent psycho-social wellbeing; however, it remains unclear if PYD programs developed for able-bodied adolescents can be implemented with adolescents with disabilities in low-resource settings. We conducted a pragmatic trial of an evidence-based PYD program…

A survey of 1,860 15-year-olds from across the United States found that mentees' perceived positive regard from caring adults was associated with a range of personal, school, and civic outcomes. A structural equation modeling analysis found that for youth who have a mentor or other caring adults that they feel "gets them," this perceived…

This paper analyzes the dataset collected from students participating in the Boy With A Ball (BWAB) program, a faith-based community outreach group, through the Hemingway Measure of Adult Connectedness©, a questionnaire measuring the social connectedness of adolescents. This paper first approaches the data in the conventional method provided by…

Youth Thrive believes that all young people should be valued, loved, and supported to reach their goals. To achieve this, Youth Thrive works with youth-serving systems and its partners to change policies, programs, and practices so that they build on what we know about adolescent development, value young people's perspectives, and give youth…

A critical need exists for adults who are properly prepared to meaningfully engage with adolescents. While utilizing teens in leadership and teaching roles has been gaining popularity and application, a developmental and skills-based approach for improving "trusted adult" capacity to engage with adolescents has not been comprehensively…

This paper aims to provide strategies for youth-serving organizations to maximize opportunities for youth to develop leadership skills within the out-of-school time program context. The sample includes 5 youth-serving agencies who participated in the Youth Driven Spaces initiative led by a Midwest program. Data for this project included…

Southeast Pennsylvania 4-H Extension educators identified a need for professional development in order to further develop current urban 4-H programs. The expectation was that increased awareness and knowledge would lead to increased skills competency in planning, implementing, and evaluating urban 4-H youth development programs. An interstate…

The proportion of teenagers engaging in sex has declined in recent decades, and rates of teen births in the United States have reached a historic low (Osterman et al., 2022). However, risky sexual activity, which can result in teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), remains a concern. To help reduce teen pregnancies and STIs…

Youth who form bonds with supportive, nonparent adults within their existing social networks (i.e., natural mentors) experience a range of positive outcomes, but a relatively minimal amount is known regarding the psychosocial factors that prospectively predict the formation of natural mentoring relationships. Analyzing longitudinal youth data from…

Background: Understanding the parental influences on the career development of non-engaged youth (NEY) has been an underdeveloped research area. Furthermore, psychometrically valid and reliable tools for assessing how parents of NEY support their children in dealing with career issues remain largely unavailable in academia. Objective: This…

Objectives: Based on 859 student diaries, the present study evaluated a positive youth development program entitled "Tin Ka Ping (TKP) Positive Adolescent Training through Holistic Social programs (P.A.T.H.S.)" project implemented in mainland China during the 2015-2016 academic year. Method: To understand the perceived effectiveness of…

A promising approach to support positive youth development is having adolescents serve as teachers for younger children. Through a qualitative interview study, we explored adolescents' development in their role serving as teachers for younger elementary-age children during out-of-school time; programs were managed by the University of California…

In this thought leader commentary, we review the potential devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on young people, including trauma, impacts on mental health, socioemotional distress, and changes in academic learning. Stating that 4-H is uniquely positioned to mitigate these effects through intentional positive youth development efforts, we…

Background: Sport-based youth development (SBYD) programs aim to teach life skills to youth within a physical activity context. An explicit objective of most SBYD programs is that youth learn to apply, or transfer, life skills beyond the sports program. Limited research has been conducted on the cognitive processes that help youth understand how…