The last decade has seen an explosion of interest in "youth development" as both a policy and a community approach to helping children achieve healthy outcomes as young adults. Despite the success of frameworks which have shifted the focus from intervening with teenagers who exhibited "high risk" behaviors to improving developmental outcomes as…

There is very little research that directly specifies what programs can do to facilitate positive adolescent development, or how to tailor these programs to the individual needs of adolescents. However, there is a broad base of knowledge about how development occurs that can be drawn upon. Research demonstrates that certain features of the…