First Eight Years of the 4 - H Study of Positive Youth Development

2 | Visit 4-h.org/about/youth-development-research to learn more. OVERVIEW The 4-H Study was designed to test the idea that when the strengths of youth are aligned across adolescence with family, school, and community resources, positive youth development will occur. These resources include those provided by community-based, out-of-school time youth development programs, such as 4 In the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development (PYD) we use a form of longitudinal sequential design (Lerner et al., 2005). Our study began with fifth graders in the 2002–2003 school year, a time period labeled Wave 1. As in all longitudinal studies, we knew we would lose some participants over time for a variety of reasons. Hence, we added new groups (cohorts) of participants at other waves so that statistical analyses would maintain their power. By the end of Wave 8, the research team and our land-grant university partners had collected data from more than 7,000 participants from 44 states. We gathered data through a student questionnaire, a parent questionnaire, and for a subset of the sample from school and government sources such as the U.S. Census (Lerner, et al., 2005). We measured several individual characteristics of youth, e.g., behavioral and cognitive strengths such as whether a youth could select positive life goals, optimize what he or she needed to achieve those goals, and compensate for obstacles that stood in the way. (We term this process SOC: selection, optimization and compensation; Gestsdottir & Lerner, 2008). In particular, we studied career goals related to science, engineering and computer/technology, as well as school engagement and achievement. We also assessed youth civic identity and civic engagement (CICE), a construct that has behavioral, cognitive, and socioemotional components. We assessed sexual behavior and engagement in activities such as exercise and healthy eating. In addition, we appraised engagement in risk/problem behaviors, such as smoking, drinking, bullying, and the presence of characteristics related to depression. In this report, we first show models for several long-term trajectories involving PYD, Contribution, depressive characteristics , and risk/delinquent behaviors. For the trajectories of development through Grade 12 we used information from students who participated in two or more years of the study, and also who have outcome data on at least one of the variables of interest Next, we present findings related to a range of outcomes for youth in 4-H, including positive and negative indicators of development, academic achievement, and civic engagement. For these analyses, we …