Orienting and welcoming first-year students to campus and to honors programs are often key components of program development. At an institutional level, successful orientation programs can positively affect retention rates from the first to second year. The greater a student's involvement and integration into the life of the university, the less…

Creativity is essential in soccer due to the unpredictable and complex situations occurring in the game, where stereotypical play gradually loses its efficiency. Further, creativity is an important psychological factor for the development of soccer expertise, and valuing creativity increases satisfaction and well-being. Although creative players…

Policy scoping reviews are an effective method for generating evidence-informed policies. However, when applying guiding methodological frameworks to complex policy evidence, numerous, unexpected challenges can emerge. This paper details five challenges experienced and addressed by a policy trainee-led, multi-disciplinary research team, while…

Career development events develop career and life skills in youth, but limited work has been done to assess the motivation of students who participate in these events. The purpose of this study was to validate an instrument developed to measure youth motivation to participate in career development events. An instrument grounded in expectancy-value…

The intervention evaluated here is one of two "youth social action" projects jointly funded by the Education Endowment Foundation, the U.K. Cabinet Office, the Pears Foundation and the Stone Family Foundation. It was delivered by the Youth United Foundation (YUF) and involved uniformed youth organisations being established in schools in…

A great deal has been written about immigrant children and youth. Drawing on work done in the USA, this paper focuses on implications for school improvement policy and practice. Discussed are (1) the increasing influx of immigrants into schools, (2) different reasons families migrate, (3) concerns that arise related to immigrant students, (4)…

The exploratory study examined science interest and perceived science competency in middle and high school youth (N=116) who took part in science-related contests (n=49) and non-competitive special interest science programs (n=67). Study participants were dispersed between females (48.3%) and males (51.7%). Three-fourths (75.1%) of the…

The decline of youth engagement in agriculture worldwide amidst an increasing global population remains a big challenge to ensuring food security for future generations. This phenomenon is worsened by the shortage of professional female agriculturists, though they comprise about 60% to 80% of the traditional workforce in the agriculture sector of…

Structured afterschool programs are often perceived as a service for young children only. Communities often overlook teenagers, expecting more substantial benefits from investments in programs for younger children (Hall & Gruber, 2007). Of about 8.4 million children participating in afterschool programs nationwide, only 1 million are high…

Evaluation is a key component to learning about the effectiveness of a program. This article provides descriptive statistics of the newly developed National 4-H Common Measures (science, healthy living, citizenship, and youth development) based on data from 721 California 4-H youth. The measures were evaluated for their reliability and validity of…

At this moment, the role of community-based organizations (CBOs) has never been more important. The country is facing a dual crisis in youth unemployment and low postsecondary completion rates. Both are especially prevalent among low-income and minority young people. Across the nation, nearly 7 million young people are neither in school nor part…

Few Americans know the importance of community-based organizations, or CBOs, in helping tens of thousands of undereducated, underemployed young people find a job or go back to school. But the role of CBOs is growing more critical as the business, education, and philanthropic sectors increasingly recognize the need to enable the nation's millions…

The limited understanding on why Latino parents endorse organized activities is problematic given that these beliefs can help elucidate why they overcome barriers to support their children's participation. In this study, we analyzed interviews from a diverse group of 34 Mexican-origin parents who resided in Arizona. Results of the study indicate…

"Children's Budget 2018" captures and analyzes historical funding data and spending trends across a wide range of policy areas including child welfare, early childhood, education, health, housing, income support, nutrition, safety and training, tracking federal investments in nearly 200 different programs. To determine the amount of…

The release of the latest LEGO Mindstorms EV3 robotics platform in September 2013 has provided a dilemma for many youth robotics leaders. There is a need to understand the differences in the Mindstorms NXT and EV3 in order to make future robotics purchases. In this article the differences are identified regarding software, hardware, sensors, the…