The former HEW National Strategy for Youth Development (NSYD) model was created as a community-based planning and procedural tool to promote youth development and prevent delinquency. To assess the predictive power of NSYD Impact Scales in classifying youths into low, medium, and high delinquency levels, male and female students aged 10-19 years (N=1,561) completed self-report questionnaires. Analyses of Impact Scales data with subjects self-reported delinquency (SRD) data showed that 58.2% of the sample were correctly classified. The results strongly supported the predictive validity of the Impact Scales for correctly classifying the general population of youths sampled into low, medium, and high levels of delinquency. Results also indicated that the most potent predictors of delinquency level were social relationships rather than educational and occupational access variables. The data suggest a dilemma, since human service agencies have tended to pour resources into programs aimed at areas which appear unlikely to reverse the tide of crime and delinquency; yet broad programmatic intervention in human relationship variables most associated with delinquency (i.e., friendship and family networks) would be strenuously resisted on moral and civil grounds. (WAS)