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Executive Summary
Pages 1-18

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From page 1...
... In recent decades, a number of social forces have changed both the landscape of family and community life and the expectations for young people. A combination of factors have weakened the informal community support once available to young people: high rates of family mobility; greater anonymity in neighborhoods, where more parents are at work and out of the home and neighborhood for long periods, and in schools, which have become larger and much more heterogeneous; extensive media exposure 1
From page 2...
... On the other hand, cigarette smoking, HIV infection, school violence, and obesity have increased during this period, particularly among youth in high-risk urban neighborhoods and very poor rural communities. In addition, many youth are entering the labor market with inadequate knowledge skills, such as the ability to communicate effectively, resolve conflicts, and prepare for and succeed in a job interview.
From page 3...
... All are part of a new direction in public policy that places children and adolescents once again at the center of neighborhood and community life, where they can engage with caring adults inside and outside their families, develop a sense of security and personal identity, and learn rules of behavior, expectations, values, morals, and skills needed to move into healthy and productive adulthood. Recent increases in funding from federal agencies, foundations, state and local governments, and the private sector have given impetus to these efforts and, at the same time, focused attention on the need to assess program effects and provide objective, reliable information to guide future investment.
From page 4...
... All those supporting this study share a common desire to understand more about how community programs for youth can be designed to promote the positive development of youth. Foundations seek guidance about wise investments in adolescent programming; policy makers seek guidance regarding effective prevention and youth development approaches; and program practitioners and managers seek assistance as they work to design and evaluate their programs.
From page 5...
... Although the committee stresses the importance of providing support for all youth regardless of economic status, we were also particularly interested in understanding community programs for young people who have the greatest need coupled with the fewest resources. We found very little research to talk specifically about the kinds of programs that would be particularly appropriate for these disadvantaged and underserved youth, including youth who are gay and lesbian, youth who are bullied at school, and youth who have experienced sexual and other forms of harassment.
From page 6...
... Box ES-1 summarizes the four domains and specifies the assets within each. Conclusions ~ Individuals do not necessarily need the entire range of assets to thrive; in fact, various combinations of assets across domains reflect equally positive adolescent development.
From page 7...
... ~ Continued exposure to positive experiences, settings, and people, as well as opportunities to gain and refine life skills, supports young people in the acquisition and growth of these assets. Moving now from the individual to the environment, young people develop these positive personal and social assets in settings that have the following features.
From page 8...
... ~ Community programs can expand the opportunities for youth to acquire ner.con~1 and coci~1 ~.c.cet.c and to e~nerience the broad range of -my -- - r -- - - -- I- ~ -- ~ - - -- I- I -- -- - ~ -- ~ - - -- -r features of positive developmental settings. Among other things, community programs can incorporate opportunities for physical, cognitive, and social and emotional development; opportunities to address issues of ethnic identity, sexual identity, and intergroup relationships; opportunities for community involvement and service; and opportunities to interact with caring adults and a diversity of peers who hold positive social norms and have high life goals and expectations.
From page 9...
... . integration; opportumtles for SOC10 cultural identity formation; and support for cultural and bicultural competence.
From page 10...
... Efforts promote both current adolescent well-being and future successful transitions to adulthood. Serving Diverse Youth at the Community Level Many different individual organizations provide community programs for youth; each has its own unique approach and activities.
From page 11...
... Even with the best staff and best funding, no single program can necessarily serve all young people or incorporate all of the features of positive developmental settings. The complexities of adolescent development and the increasing diversity of the country make the heterogeneity of young people in communities both a norm and a challenge.
From page 12...
... ~ Despite its limitations, research in all settings in the lives of adolescents families, schools, and communities is yielding consistent evidence that there are specific features of settings that support positive youth development and that these features can be incorporated into community programs ~ In the committee's judgment, current evidence supports the replication of a few specific integrated programs for positive youth development: the Teen Outreach Program, Big Brothers, Big Sisters, and Quantum Opportunities are three prime examples.
From page 13...
... Recommendation 6 Public and private funders should support research on whether the features of positive developmental settings identified in this report are the most important features of community programs for youth. This research should encourage program design and implementation that meets the diverse needs of an increasingly heterogeneous population of youth.
From page 14...
... Such summative evaluation can be done in conjunction with strong theory-based evaluation or as a more preliminary assessment of the potential usefulness of novel programs and quite complex social experiments in which there is no well-specified theory of change. In other words, program evaluation and study can help foster accountability, determine whether programs make a difference, and provide staff with the information they need to improve service delivery.
From page 15...
... Thus, it is particularly useful to both the policy and research communities, as well as the practice community. In order to generate the kind of information about community programs for youth needed to justify large-scale expenditures on programs and to further fundamental understanding of the role of community programs in youth development, comprehensive experimental program evaluations should be used when: · the object of study is a program component that repeatedly occurs across many of the organizations currently providing community services to youth; · an established national organization provides the program being evaluated through many local affiliates; and · theoretically sound ideas for a new demonstration program or project emerge, and pilot work indicates that these ideas can be implemented in other contexts.
From page 16...
... Although the nonexperimental methods tell us less about the effectiveness of particular community programs than experimental program evaluations, they can, when carefully implemented, provicle information about the strengths and weakness in program implementation and can be used to identify patterns of effective practice. They are also quite helpful in generating hypotheses about why programs fail.
From page 17...
... Data Collection and Social Indicators Over the past decade, social indicator data and technical assistance resources have become increasingly important tools that community programs can employ to support every aspect of their work from initial planning and design, to tracking goals, program accountability, targeting services, reflection, and improvement. There are now significant data and related technical assistance resources to aid in understanding the young people involved in these programs.
From page 18...
... Individual programs and communities would benefit from opportunities to improve their capacity to collect and use social indicator data. Recommendation 9 Public and private funders should support the fielding of youth development surveys in more states and communities around the country; the development, testing, and fielding of new youth development measures that work well across diverse population subgroups; and greater coordination between measures used in community surveys and national longitudinal surveys.


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