Chapter 8 - The contribution of the developmental assets framework to positive youth development theory and practice
Introduction
The framework of developmental assets, first posited in 1990 (Benson, 1990) and refined in 1995 (Benson, 1997, Benson, 2006), was explicitly designed to provide greater attention to the positive developmental nutrients that young people need for successful development, not simply to avoid high-risk behaviors, and to accent the role that community plays in adolescent well-being. As described in a series of publications (Benson, 2002, Benson, 2003, Benson et al., 1998, Leffert et al., 1998, Scales and Leffert, 1999, Scales and Leffert, 2004, Scales et al., 2000), the framework establishes a set of developmental experiences and supports hypothesized to have import for all young people during the second decade of life. Recent work is taking a broader lifespan perspective, positing that developmental assets reflect developmental processes that have age-related parallels in infancy, childhood, and young adulthood (Leffert et al., 1997, Mannes et al., 2003, Scales et al., in press, Scales et al., 2004a, VanderVen, 2008). This work will be addressed later in this chapter.
The framework synthesizes research in a number of fields with the goal of selecting for inclusion those developmental nutrients that (a) have been demonstrated to prevent high-risk behavior (e.g., substance use, violence, dropping out of school), enhance thriving, or strengthen resilience; (b) have evidence of generalizability across social location; (c) contribute balance to the overall framework (i.e., of ecological- and individual-level factors); (d) are within the capacity of communities to effect their acquisition; and (e) are within the capacity of youth to proactively procure (Benson and Scales, (in press), Benson et al., 2006).
Because the developmental assets framework for adolescents ages 12–18 was designed not only to inform theory and research but also to have practical significance for the mobilization of communities, the 40 assets included in the model (Benson et al., 2006) are placed in categories that have conceptual integrity and can be described easily to the residents of a community. As seen in Table I, the assets are grouped into 20 external assets (i.e., environmental, contextual, and relational features of socializing systems) and 20 internal assets (i.e., skills, competencies, and values). The external assets comprise four categories: (a) support, (b) empowerment, (c) boundaries and expectations, and (d) constructive use of time. The internal assets are also placed into four categories: (a) commitment to learning, (b) positive values, (c) social competencies, and (d) positive identity. The scientific foundations for the eight categories and each of the 40 assets are described in more detail in Scales and Leffert, 1999, Scales and Leffert, 2004. An exploratory factor analysis conducted with 150,000 6th–12th grade students showed that 14 scales emerged for middle school students and 16 for high-school students, all conceptually reflecting the eight a priori asset categories; in addition, a second-order factor analyses identified two major superordinate scales, labeled individual assets and ecological assets, that mirrored the a priori designation of assets into internal and external classes (Theokas et al., 2005).
The developmental assets approach has become acknowledged as one of the most widespread and influential frameworks for understanding and strengthening positive youth development (PYD; Eccles and Gootman, 2002, Small and Memmo, 2004). Google Scholar shows that the developmental assets approach and/or Search Institute have been referenced in more than 17,000 peer-reviewed journal articles and other academic/professional publications since 1999. In addition to the assets framework, some of the most well-known approaches to PYD include the social development model and Communities That Care (promulgated by the University of Washington's Social Development Research Group), the 5Cs of PYD, and the 5 Promises of the America's Promise Alliance. A search in December 2010 of three major citation sources, Google Scholar, Academic Search Premier, and Psychinfo, showed that citations of the developmental assets approach and/or Search Institute far outstripped all the others in the 5 years from 2005 to 2010, with developmental assets/Search Institute being named 12,567 times, the social development model/Communities That Care cited 2182 times, the 5 Promises named 149 times, and the 5Cs cited 97 times. Google Scholar does not distinguish peer-review mentions from others, but in the Academic Search Premier and Psychinfo listings, developmental assets/Search Institute had a total of 1618 citations, compared with the closest other PYD approach, the social development model/Communities That Care, with 324 peer-reviewed mentions.
In addition to its predominance in the literature, the developmental assets framework has become a central organizing feature of youth programming in major national systems, such as the Y (formerly the YMCA of the USA) and Y Canada, Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Girl Scouts of the USA, the American Camp Association, the Salvation Army, major national religious denominations spanning the conservative to progressive spectrum, thousands of service-learning programs in schools, congregations, and youth organizations (through the National Youth Leadership Council and the support of the Corporation for National and Community Service), and more than 600 formal community coalitions trying to strengthen their communities as environments for young people, by focusing on initiatives for building the assets. In 2009 alone, more than 10,000 schools and youth programs were using Search Institute resources, and in the last 15 years, more than 20 million of the Institute's books and other resources have been disseminated worldwide. In the past decade, more than 300,000 leaders in education, health, social services, religion, youth development, and other fields have been trained in the assets framework, and more than 5 million people from over 180 countries have visited the Institute's Web site (www.search-institute.org). Scholars, educators, religious leaders, and youth work practitioners in more than 60 countries across the globe are using the asset approach in programs and data collection.
The national and international spread of the research on and practice of developmental assets is rooted in five strategies, each of which has fueled interest and action in the framework. First, the extensive research on the asset framework has, as noted earlier, created considerable attention within a number of fields of inquiry, including developmental psychology, community psychology, education, social work, and clinical/counseling psychology. This multidisciplinary exposure not only has fueled research by scholars and graduate students but has also activated practitioners in these fields to apply the research in countless communities and programs. Second, a long-term effort at the diffusion of the developmental asset research and its implications has brought the work, via Search Institute's training, public speaking, consulting, media communications, and conferences, to scholars and practitioners in every state and multiple nations. Third, the asset framework names developmental nutrients that are—in the words of many practitioners—both practical and actionable. Accordingly, thousands of professionals and citizens bring the work to local agencies and communities as an approach that helps deepen the impact of a wide range of other initiatives, including mentoring, service learning, youth leadership development, after-school programming, and parent education. Fourth, the asset framework, with its broad ecological approach, empowers many sectors—family, school, neighborhood, after-school programs, faith communities—to take action. Fifth, and perhaps most importantly, the asset framework (as shown by the research that undergirds it) can be positioned in a city or state or nation as a set of nutrients that matters, developmentally and behaviorally, for all youth regardless of race, ethnicity, family composition, gender, parental education, or geographic location. Hence, the asset model has the potential to create the kind of shared vision that can lessen fractured and siloed approaches that inhibit cooperation and collaboration.
Section snippets
Developmental Assets: Overview of Research
The foundational appeal of the assets framework is that it is rooted in and anchored by a vast scientific literature in child and adolescent development. The assets framework was originally conceived in 1990, with a review of the prevention, youth program evaluation, and resilience literatures yielding an initial framework of 30 developmental assets arrayed across six broad developmental categories that seemed rather consistently to be linked to a variety of indicators of youth well-being (
Application of the Asset Framework to Policies and Programs
The research base suggests the likely efficacy of a dual-pronged applied policy and program strategy, of both attempting to build all 40 assets throughout young people's ecologies and especially targeting the promotion of specific clusters of assets that will vary depending upon the PYD goals of a program, organization, neighborhood, or community, for example, whether they are promoting school success (Starkman, Scales, & Roberts, 2006) or preventing substance abuse (Scales & Fisher, 2010).
One
Research from New Measures of Developmental Assets
The Search Institute Attitudes and Behaviors: Profiles of Student Life (A&B) survey is a 160-item instrument that includes measures of the 40 individual assets, numerous risk-taking behaviors, and several indicators of positive behavior. It is the most widely used assets survey, accounting for more than 80% of the more than 3 million assets surveys the institute has administered over the past two decades. Its great strength lies in the clarity and simplicity of its accompanying data reports,
Tracking Change in Developmental Assets Over Time
Because the DAP was designed for pre–post applications (so long as survey administrations are at least 3 months apart), it is rapidly becoming an instrument of choice to include in youth program evaluations and assessments. It already is a principal instrument in a major quasi-experimental study of community coalitions’ impact on PYD (the AGTO project in Maine, described above); a large school district's long-term strategic data collection to assess its progress on College and Career Readiness
Developmental Asset Profiles
To date, nearly all the research on developmental assets has been variable centered. For this chapter, we also undertook a person-centered approach, using latent class analysis (LCA) to identify classes or subgroups of youth, differentiated on the basis of their respective patterns of reported assets. Variable-centered analysis is useful in understanding the typical or average experiences of young people but leaves unexplored the interindividual variability and complexity that is a hallmark of
Next Steps in Research and Practice
The growing research on developmental assets supports many of the hypotheses central to the theory of PYD (Benson et al., 2006). Among these are
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developmental nutrients such as assets are cumulative for enhancing thriving and reducing risk behaviors;
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developmental ecologies (e.g., schools, after-school programs) can be intentionally altered to enhance developmental assets;
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ecologies are also cumulative, in the sense that youth gain strength when multiple ecologies support and nourish assets;
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