Carolyn Cass Lorente

Promoting Identity Development in Marginalized Youth

This studytested a school-based intervention developed for use with urban minority youth vulnerable to multiple negative developmental outcomes. A quasi-experimental design (pre-and post-follow-up with matched comparison condition) was used to evaluate the impact of the intervention on promoting positive change in four developmental domains (skills/knowledge, attitudes, orientations, exploration/commitment) related to identitydevelopment. The final set of participants comprised a matched sample of 92 youngsters, 46 in the intervention and 46 in the comparison condition. Quantitative results indicated that the intervention condition showed positive and significant gains from pre-to posttest on multiple indices, with a tendencytoward the “leveling off” of intervention gains at follow-up. A qualitative assessment of the impact of the intervention illustrated positive effects of the intervention as well as the possible obstacles to intervention efficacy.

Promoting Positive Youth Development New Directions in Developmental Theory, Methods, and Research

The articles in this special issue report the efforts of the Miami Youth Development Project (YDP), a community-supported positive youth development program of outreach research that draws on a developmental intervention science (DIS) perspective (i.e., a fusion of the developmental and intervention science literatures). These reports illustrate how the application of DIS outreach research contributes to knowledge of human development at all levels (practical as well as methodological, theoretical, and metatheoretical). Consistent with a DIS outreach research approach, YDP is committed to the use of descriptive and explanatory knowledge about changes within human systems that occur across the life span in the development of evidence-based individual and institutional longitudinal change intervention strategies in promoting long-term developmental change. The evolution of the Miami YDP illustrates the value of DIS outreach research “in action.”

Promoting Positive Youth Development The Miami Youth Development Project (YDP)

The Miami Youth Development Project (YDP) had its beginnings in the early 1990s as a grassroots response to the needs of troubled (multiproblem) young people in the community (Arnett, Kurtines, & Montgomery, 2008, this issue). YDP is an important outcome of efforts to create positive youth development interventions that draw on the strengths of developmental intervention science outreach research in the development of community-supported positive development programs (i.e., an approach that focuses on meeting community needs as well as youth needs by generating innovative knowledge of evidence-based change intervention strategies that are feasible, affordable, and sustainable in “real world” settings, (Kurtines, Ferrer-Wreder, Cass Lorente, Silverman, Montgomery, 2008, this issue). Now completing its second decade, YDP represents an effort to bring together a more empowering model of knowledge development for research involvement in the community, a nuanced and contextualized notion of youth and their development, and methodologies that richly reflect rather than reduce the experiences of the young people whose development the authors seek to promote.

Promoting Positive Identity Development in Troubled Youth: A Developmental Intervention Science Outreach Research Approach

This article illustrates how developmental intervention science outreach research contributes to knowledge development on the promotion of positive identity development by describing results from the Miami Youth Development Project. The project is committed to the use of descriptive and explanatory knowledge about evidence-based individual and institutional intervention strategies for promoting developmental change in self and identity. Our efforts, described here, include a method for measuring theoretically and personally meaningful identity change, a procedure for integrating key aspects of qualitative and quantitative data through relational data analysis, and an evidence-based positive youth development intervention that fosters measurable and meaningful identity change.

A Developmental Intervention Science (DIS) Outreach Research Approach to Promoting Youth Development Theoretical, Methodological, and Meta-Theoretical Challenges

This paper describes work directed toward creating community-supported positive youth development interventions that draw on a developmental intervention science outreach research approach. With respect to developmental interventions, this approach focuses on creating evidence-based longitudinal change intervention strategies for promoting long-term developmental change. The paper describes three broad challenges (theoretical, methodological, and meta-theoretical) that the authors faced in their efforts to develop and implement community-supported intervention programs built on this approach. The authors describe first the theoretical challenges they addressed in developing the conceptual framework for their community-supported intervention; second, the challenge of developing and refining a methodological framework for evaluating positive youth development interventions in “real-world” settings; and third, the meta-theoretical challenges that arose in the context of implementing community-supported positive development programs.

Identity Promotion, Adolescence

As noted elsewhere in this volume, prevention programs are designed to affect a person’s life course, with the goal of moving its trajectory in a more adaptive direction. In this context, the present entry addresses the role of identity in preven-tive/promotive work at both the theoretical and empirical level. At the empirical level, an overview of the current literature on well-evaluated evidence-based youth interventions indicates that such initiatives tend to use a diversity of intervention strategies to address a narrow band of identity-related concepts within programs and a very diverse array of identity-related concepts across programs. Together, this combination has produced an empirical literature that is mixed but promising. At the theoretical level, in contrast, emerging trends in the youth intervention literature suggest a growing recognition of the utility of identity as a broadband “umbrella” concept that provides a conceptual framework for organizing and integrating current prevention work. The identity framework also suggests foci and directions for future efforts to develop interventions for working with adolescents in order to assist them in creating positive developmental trajectories for their lives.

Promoting Positive Youth Development Implications for Future Directions in Developmental Theory, Methods, and Research

The efforts of the Miami Youth Development Project reported in this special issue illustrate how Developmental Intervention Science (DIS; a fusion of the developmental and intervention science) extended to include outreach research contributes to the development of community-supported positive youth development programs. In the process, the articles further illustrate the general utility of Developmental Intervention Science outreach research in facilitating the use of descriptive and explanatory knowledge about changes within human systems that occur across the lifespan in the development of evidence-based individual and institutional change intervention strategies for promoting long-term developmental change. Additionally, the articles illustrate the considerable implications that the application of DIS outreach research has for future directions in knowledge of human development at all levels (practical as well as methodological, theoretical, and metatheoretical).

Individual Focused School Intervention

When one examines what is taking place within the school in terms of prevention programming, it becomes clear that intervention efforts within this setting are anything but simple, even in programs focusing primarily on individual-level change. School-based programs commonly include individual-level targets for change such as knowledge, skills, competencies, and behaviors (Greenberg, Domitrovich, & Bumbarger, 2001; SAMHSA, 1999; Weissberg & Greenberg, 1998). School-based initiatives are often designed to produce change at the individual level or, alternatively, in conjunction with efforts to change broader aspects of the school environment. Further, the type of intervention action taken, as well as the developmental level of program participants and the levels of risk they experience each introduce an additional layer of complexity.

Early Family Intervention

Relationships within the family continue to be the subject of extensive research and theoretical contemplation. Attachment theory (Ainsworth, et al., 1978; Bowlby, 1982)1 provides a rich account of the inner workings of relationships and relational contexts. Attachment relationships are thought to be evolutionarily important and have resonance across development (Bowlby, 1969; Ainsworth, 1989). “An attachment can be described as an enduring affectional bond that unites two or more people across time and context...” (Thompson, Easterbrooks, Padilla-Walker, 2003, p. 100). Attachment theory particularly explores the issues of emotion and independence within important relationships. Contemporary attachment theory has a widened scope of inquiry, by investigating how multiple attachment relationships, as well as the growing infant’s psychobiology and temperamental characteristics influence the nature of attachment (Thompson, et al., 2003).

Prevention and Promotion across Borders

Long held notions about human development maybe set to change in the near future. “Culture and context are becoming increasingly significant constructs.... The changes in conceptualization that are being demanded are not minor. They may well require a shaking of the foundations...” (Mistry & Saraswathi, 2003, p. 267). Authors such as Mistry and Saraswathi (2003) posited that this shift in thinking comes from within the sciences and in reaction to external influences.