Kristina L. Schmid

The role of adolescents’ hopeful futures in predicting positive and negative developmental trajectories: Findings from the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development

Hope for ones future and intentional self-regulation skills may be important in the development of positive and problematic outcomes across adolescence. Using data from 1273 participants from Grades 7 to 9 of the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development (PYD), we assessed the role of a hopeful future in predicting developmental outcomes, measured by trajectories of PYD, contribution (e.g., thinking about and acting on social justice behaviors), risk behaviors, and depressive symptoms. A measure of intentional self-regulation, which involves selecting goals (S), optimizing resources to achieve goals (O), and compensating when original goals are blocked (C), was also used to predict outcomes. Higher levels of both hopeful future and selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) significantly predicted membership in the most favorable trajectories, controlling for sex and socioeconomic status (SES). Hopeful future was a stronger predictor than SOC for each of the outcomes assessed. Implications for future research about individual-context relational processes involved in PYD are discussed.

Trajectories of Positive and Negative Behaviors from Early- to Middle-Adolescence

Although the positive youth development (PYD) model initially assumed inverse links between indicators of PYD and of risk/problem behaviors, empirical work in adolescence has suggested that more complex associations exist between trajectories of the two domains of functioning. To clarify the PYD model, this study assessed intraindividual change in positive and problematic indicators across Grades 5–10, and the links between these trajectories of development, among 2,516 participants from the 4-H Study of PYD (58.1% females; 64.9% European American, 7.0% African American, 12.3% Latino/a American, 2.6% Asian American or Pacific Islander, 1.8% Native American, 3.0% multiethnic-racial, and 8.4% with inconsistent race/ethnicity across waves). Results from person-centered analyses indicated that most youth clustered in the high trajectories of positive indicators and in the low trajectories of the negative ones. Consistent with past research, overlap between trajectories of positive and negative behaviors was found. These results suggest that theory and application need to accommodate to variation in the links between positive and problematic developmental trajectories.

Relationships With Important Nonparental Adults and Positive Youth Development: An Examination of Youth Self-Regulatory Strengths as Mediators

Youth relationships with important nonparental adults (INAs) influence adolescent development. However, prior studies have not simultaneously examined the quantity and quality of INA relationships in predicting youth outcomes, nor have prior studies considered mediators of these constructs. In a sample of tenth through twelfth graders, we modeled the relationships among quantity and quality of INA relationships, intentional self-regulation, hopeful future expectations, and the Five Cs of positive youth development. Hopeful future expectations mediated relations between quantity and youth confidence, character, and caring and between emotional closeness and youth confidence. Finally, youth intentional self-regulation predicted changes in character.

Resilience and Positive Youth Development: A Relational Developmental Systems Model

Adolescents are not resilient. Resilience is also not a functional feature of the ecology of adolescent development (e.g., as may be represented by the concept of “protective factors”). Rather, resilience is a concept denoting that the relationship between an adolescent and his or her ecology has adaptive significance. That is, the relationship involves a fit between characteristics of an individual youth and features of his or her ecology that reflects either adjustment (change) in the face of altered or new environmental threats, challenges, or “processes,” or constancy or maintenance of appropriate or healthy functioning in the face of environmental variations in the resources needed for appropriate or healthy functioning. As such, the individual–context relationship summarized by the term “resilience” reflects individual well-being at a given point in time, and thriving across the adolescent period, in the face of features within the ecological context that challenge adaptation. In turn, this relationship also implies that, for the ecology or context, there are actions that could maintain or further the quality of its structure (e.g., the family, schools, or community programs for youth development) or its function in the service of supporting healthy adolescent behavior and development (e.g., parenting that reflects warmth and appropriate monitoring; low student–teacher ratios involving engaged students and high quality institutions; and access to competent, caring, and committed mentors in out-of-school-time [OST] youth development programs, respectively).

Chapter 14 Resilience Across the Life Span

This chapter discusses the concept of resilience from a life span perspective informed by relational developmental systems theory. Resilience involves mutually beneficial (adaptive) relations between characteristics of individuals (e.g., their self-regulation behaviors) and features of the ecology (e.g., resources promoting healthy development); these links may be represented as individual ←→ context relations, and they involve adjustment in the context of challenges or maintenance of appropriate functioning in the face of variations in the resources needed to achieve health. Resilience, then, is an attribute of positive human development (PHD) achieved through adaptive individual ←→ context relations (termed adaptive “developmental regulations”). We review research across the life span that speaks to the use of this conception of resilience for understanding the contributions individuals make to their own positive development and to the maintenance or perpetuation of PHD-supportive assets of their ecologies. Directions for further research and for applications aimed at promoting PHD are discussed.

The History of the Study of Adolescence

This article provides an overview of the three phases in the history of the study of adolescence, periods spanning from the roots of this field in philosophy and psychological science to present-day emphases on the multiple scholarly disciplines involved in describing, explaining, and optimizing adolescent development. Particular focus is placed on relational, developmental systems models of adolescent development and their use in policy and program applications aimed at promoting healthy, positive youth development. The article examines also the future of the developmental science of adolescence, and projects that scientists and practitioners will collaborate to promote and advocate for the healthy development of diverse young people.