Laura Lippman

Indicators of Child Well-Being: the Promise for Positive Youth Development

In the current U.S. indicators system, measures of child well-being focus primarily on negative outcomes and problems. We measure and track those behaviors that adults wish to prevent. For the most part, the indicators system does not monitor positive development and outcomes. Such a system of child well-being indicators lacks the breadth and balance required in a science-based measurement system. Moreover, it lacks measures of the kinds of constructs that resonate among adolescents themselves and adults. Measures are needed for multiple domains of development, including educational achievement and cognitive attainment, health and safety, social and emotional development, and self-sufficiency. Positive outcomes are often critiqued as soft, highlighting the importance of rigorous conceptualization and measurement, including conceptual clarity and face validity, age appropriate measures, and psychometric rigor. In addition, constructs and measures need to be presented in ways that are understandable to policy makers and the public and that work across varied subgroups and levels of governance. Ideally, comparable measures will be used for indicators, for program evaluation, and in basic research studies of child and adolescent development.

Promoting equal developmental opportunity and outcomes among America's children and youth: results from the National Promises Study.

Building on a developmental framework positing five types of assets or inputs needed for children’s development, referred to as promises, we investigated the extent to which American children and youth experience the five Promises articulated by the America’s Promise Alliance. These are: (1) Caring Adults, (2) Safe Places and Constructive Use of Time, (3) A Healthy Start, (4) Effective Education, and (5) Opportunities to Make a Difference. Data came from a nationally representative poll designed to assess these five resources and involved more than 4,000 teenagers and their parents. Results showed that only a minority of young people experienced rich developmental nourishment (having 4–5 of the Promises). Males, older adolescents, adolescents of color, and adolescents from families with less education and lower parental annual incomes were significantly less likely to experience sufficient developmental opportunities and were also less likely to experience desirable developmental outcomes. However, among those young people who reported experiencing 4–5 Promises, the great majority of demographic differences in developmental outcomes were either eliminated or significantly reduced. The results suggest that increasing children’s experience of these Promises would reduce developmental inequalities among America’s young people. Editors’ Strategic Implications: Longitudinal studies with representative samples will be necessary to further validate this approach and study causal contributions of assets, but this integration of Positive Youth Development frameworks holds great promise for theory, practice, and policy.

Improving Outcome Measures Other Than Achievement

Research indicates that educational, economic, and life success reflect children’s nonacademic as well as academic competencies. Therefore, longitudinal surveys that assess educational progress and success need to incorporate nonacademic measures to avoid omitted variable bias, inform development of new intervention strategies, and support mediating and moderating analyses. Based on a life course model and a whole child perspective, this article suggests constructs in the domains of child health, emotional/psychological development, educational achievement/attainment, social behavior, and social relationships. Four critical constructs are highlighted: self-regulation, agency/motivation, persistence/diligence, and executive functioning. Other constructs that are currently measured need to be retained, including social skills, positive relationships, activities, positive behaviors, academic self-efficacy, educational engagement, and internalizing/emotional well-being. Examples of measures that are substantively and psychometrically robust are provided.

A cross-national analysis of parental involvement and student literacy

Using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), we examine the association between parental involvement and student literacy in 21 countries. We consider how the nature of the association between parental involvement and student literacy varies in direction and magnitude across national borders and across multiple dimensions of parental involvement and measures of literacy. Across the 21 countries, we observe that, in general, increased social and cultural communication with parents is associated with higher levels of student literacy, although the association is most consistent in the area of reading literacy. Specifically, for students residing in eight countries (Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Norway and the United Kingdom), there are consistent reading literacy benefits when their parents engage in various forms of social and cultural communication. Consistently across all 21 countries, students have significantly lower literacy scores the more frequently parents assist with homework. This finding provides robust cross-national support for the reactive hypothesis.

Cultural capital: what does it offer students? A cross-national analysis

This study continues the refinement of the cultural capital concept, addressing gaps in existing scholarship by analyzing data from two major international datasets: the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS). Using these datasets, the relationship between student participation in culturally enriching activities and the possession of cultural resources and student academic outcomes across nine western industrialized countries is examined. This study focuses on European and North American countries that share a Western cultural history. Caution is warranted in generalizing the literature or results summarized below to countries that have not been shaped by a similar cultural history due to this sampling limitation. This study provides a basis on which to measure the extent to which the effect of cultural capital differs across national borders, even those that share common cultural histories. - See more at: http://www.childtrends.org/?publications=cultural-capital-what-does-it-offer-students-a-cross-national-analysis#sthash.6uH1fBwV.dpuf

Cognitive Interviews: Designing Survey Questions for Adolescents

The Flourishing Children Project responds to a call for rigorous indicators of positive development in adolescents by creating scales for 19 constructs of positive development in the categories of flourishing in school and work, personal flourishing, flourishing in relationships, relationship skills, helping others to flourish, and environmental stewardship. Each scale can be used alone or in combination to fill gaps in available measures of important constructs of adolescent flourishing. This chapter describes how items for the scales were developed, revised, and tested in cognitive interviews to ensure that items in the scales assessed each construct as it was conceptually defined and that items could be answered by respondents. To test the validity of items and identify problems with item wording, three rounds of cognitive interviews with adolescents ages 12–17 years and parents were conducted in 15 cities across the United States. A variety of techniques were used in the interviews, including concurrent and retrospective “think alouds,” follow-up probes, paraphrasing, and the use of semistructured, open-ended items. Sixty-eight cognitive interviews were conducted with adolescents and 23 parallel interviews were completed with parents. The adolescent sample was spread across racial/ethnic, age (12–13 years old and 14–17 years old), and income groups.

Making the Grade: Family Structure and Children’s Educational Participation in Colombia, Egypt, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Peru & Uruguay

Research in the U.S. and much of the developed world suggests that children in intact, twoparent households typically do better on educational outcomes than do children in singleparent and step-family households. While studies in the developed world generally indicate that family structure influences educational outcomes, less is known about whether children living with their two biological parents in the developing world have better educational outcomes, all things being equal, than children in step- or single-parent families, or children living in households without a biological parent. This is an important gap in the literature because step- and single-parent families are becoming more common in much of the developing world. Using data drawn from Demographic and Health Surveys in six countries (Colombia, Egypt, India, Kenya, Nigeria, & Peru) and from the Continuous Household Survey in Uruguay, we find that secondary-school-age children are more likely to participate in schooling if they live with at least one biological parent. Moreover, children in Colombia and Uruguay are also more likely to be enrolled in school if they live with two parents.

Studying Aspects of Flourishing Among Adolescents

The Flourishing Children Project responds to a call for rigorous indicators of positive development in adolescents by creating scales for 19 constructs of positive development in the categories of flourishing in school and work, personal flourishing, flourishing in relationships, relationship skills, helping others to flourish, and environmental stewardship. Each scale can be used alone or in combination to fill gaps in available measures of important constructs of adolescent flourishing. This chapter presents background and overview of the project. Our work is based on a framework for generating positive indicators that we developed previously. The current project began with a review of the research and extant measures for the constructs. With that information, we created definitions for each of the 19 constructs that represented a consensus from the literature. We then selected existing items that measure these constructs or adapted or created new items, which we tested through three rounds of cognitive interviews. To ensure that they were suited for national surveys, the scales were tested on a nationally representative sample of adolescents and parents. Finally, we conducted psychometric analyses to ensure the scales possessed desired psychometric properties.

Pilot Study and Psychometric Analyses

The Flourishing Children Project responds to a call for rigorous indicators of positive development in adolescents by creating scales for 19 constructs of positive development in the categories of flourishing in school and work, personal flourishing, flourishing in relationships, relationship skills, helping others to flourish, and environmental stewardship. Each scale can be used alone or in combination to fill gaps in available measures of important constructs of adolescent flourishing. In the final stage of the project, described in this chapter, the items chosen for each scale were tested in a pilot study based on a survey of a nationally representative sample to ensure that they were suited for administration in national surveys and possessed the desired psychometric properties. The web-based survey, conducted in conjunction with Knowledge Networks, yielded a sample of 1,951 adolescents and 2,240 parents, or 1,833 parent-adolescent dyads. To assess the psychometric properties of each scale, data from the pilot survey were analyzed for reliability (alpha), concurrent validity, skewness, differences among subgroups (e.g., age, gender, and income groups), and other characteristics.