Measuring Quality in Youth Programs

improving youth development and well-being requires improving the everyday settings where development occurs. In this volume, we asked scholars who study three different settings—classrooms, youth programs, and mentoring dyads—to reflect on what constitutes quality in their setting and how to think about measuring it. We urged these authors to focus specifically on quality " at the point of service, " meaning the specific practices, processes, and interactions that occur among adults and youth in the setting. We also asked them to offer advice to practitioners about effective and manageable ways to incorporate assessment into their work in order to improve quality. Two articles focus on better understanding and measuring what occurs between teachers and students in classrooms. Correnti emphasize the importance of the content of instruction and what can be learned from teacher logs, while Robert C. Pianta and Bridget K. Hamre focus on the nature of teacher-student interactions, describing an observational measure and its role in anchoring teacher professional development. Nancy L. Deutsch and Renée Spencer discuss the components of high-quality mentoring relationships and the utility of using different techniques such as interview, survey, and observation to assess the quality of mentoring. Focusing on youth program settings, the advantages of using qualitative research methods to understand practitioner expertise, or how staff respond to specific events, people , and dilemmas on the job.