Positive youth development programs such as those offered by Boy Scouts of America (BSA) provide sources of support and opportunities for leadership and character development. Programmatic experts from BSA collaborated with researchers to develop a visual theory of change (pathway model) for youth development in Scouts BSA and for adult volunteer…

Intentional Self-Regulation (ISR)--broadly defined, goal-directed behavior--is an important skill in promoting positive and adaptive development across the life span. The Selection-Optimization-Compensation (SOC) model of ISR describes goal directed behavior among children, adolescents, and adults. This study used an inductive and deductive…

The transitional years of early adulthood, with key tasks of identity and intimacy development, engender both opportunities and risks for well-being. We propose that the conceptualization and measurement of early adults' well-being can be improved through (a) an integration of ideas from developmental and psychological science on well-being, (b)…

Despite recognition that youth civic engagement is multidimensional, different modeling approaches are rarely compared or tested for measurement invariance. Using a diverse sample of 2,467 elementary, middle, and high school-aged youth, we measured eight dimensions of civic engagement: social responsibility values, informal helping, political…

The importance of engaging in high quality program evaluation is a generally accepted principle underscored by external pressure from funders. High quality evaluation necessarily begins with good evaluation planning. This paper outlines Evolutionary Evaluation and specifically the Systems Evaluation Protocol, an approach that emphasizes…

Matching theories about growth, development, and change to appropriate statistical models can present a challenge, which can result in misuse, misinterpretation, and underutilization of different analytical approaches. We discuss the use of "derivatives": the change of a construct with respect to the change in another construct.…

Positive development models shift focus for intervention from avoiding problems, deficits, or psychopathology to promoting skills, assets, and psychological well-being as the critical interests in development and intervention. The field can be characterized as multiple parallel lines of empirical inquiry from four frameworks: Social Competence,…

In suspected child sexual abuse some professionals recommend multiple child interviews to increase the likelihood of disclosure or more details to improve decision-making and increase convictions. We modeled the yield of a policy of routinely conducting multiple child interviews and increased convictions. Our decision tree reflected the path of a…

Borrowing the term "translational research" (TR) from medicine, along with some of the ideas and practices that define it, holds promise as a way of linking research more closely to the practice of youth development. However, doing so entails substantial adaptation. TR is more than a new name for applied research. It comprehends the…

Evidence points to associations between the socioeconomic composition of neighborhoods and children's and adolescents' development. A minimal amount of research, however, examines how timing of exposure to neighborhood socioeconomic conditions matters. This study used longitudinal data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development…

This article examines the problem of national and civic detachment among American youth. Using a developmental theoretical framework that integrates the ecological aspects of development with the phenomenological experiences of the developing individual, I argue that young Americans have difficulty developing an attachment to their identity as…

In this article we present a framework for understanding the indirect effects of fathering on child development in the context of the marriage. We discuss three central pathways of influence: through relations between marital quality and fathering, through children's exposure to father expressions of marital discord, and through relations between…

Modeling the Dynamics of Paternal Influences on Children over the Life Course Is a heuristic model, which identifies sets of variables that predict father involvement, variables that interact to predict involvement, and variables that influence father characteristics and thereby influence involvement. It also suggests moderators and mediators of…

Ethnic, socioeconomic, and contextual predictors of parenting and family socialization practices were examined among African American and European American families. This is one of a set of coordinated studies presented in this special issue (Le et al.). With the goal of sampling African American and European American children and families that…

A conceptual model was tested in which mentoring relationships were hypothesized to reduce substance use both directly and indirectly through improvements in adolescents' self-perceptions and close relationships. The study included 928 young adolescents (M age = 12.25), all of whom applied to Big Brothers Big Sisters programs. The adolescents were…