Mary H. Buckingham

Character in childhood and early adolescence: models and measurement

In recent years, the construct of character has received substantial attention among developmental scientists, but no consensus exists about the content and structure of character, especially among children and early adolescents. In a study of positive development among racially diverse Cub Scouts in the greater Philadelphia area, we assessed the construct and concurrent validity of a new measure of character, the Assessment of Character in Children and Early Adolescents (ACCEA), among 906 Scouts (mean age = 8.84 years, SD = 1.39 years) and 775 non-Scout boys and girls (mean age = 8.92, SD = 1.64). We identified an eight-correlated-factor model as providing the best fit with our data. We further established measurement invariance and explored latent mean differences for ACCEA scores across two Scout groups (with or without a higher-level program leader), non-Scout boys and non-Scout girls. Girls were generally superior than boys on all character attributes. We further examined concurrent validity of ACCEA by correlating the character attributes with youth sense of school competence, intentional self-regulation and parental perception of youth school performance. We discuss implications for future character research and point to the value of the ACCEA measure being used by practitioners in character development programs.

Positive Youth Development Among Minority Youth: A Relational Developmental Systems Model

We present an overview of the positive youth development (PYD) perspective and the relational developmental systems (RDS) metatheory that frames this perspective. We describe the Lerner and Lerner model of PYD, and some of the findings from the 4-H Study of PYD regarding how thriving can be promoted among America’s diverse youth. We also address limitations of this research, including the lack of a representative sample of minority youth participants in this study. We discuss how further RDS-based PYD research may be designed with the explicit goal of addressing some of the limitations of past work. We present implications for applying what we have learned from PYD research to programs that aim to promote thriving among minority youth in the U.S. and internationally.

Adolescents’ Character Role Models: Exploring Who Young People Look Up to as Examples of How to Be a Good Person

Research has explored young people’s role models in general, but little is known about role models whom youth look up to in relation to their character. The authors asked 220 adolescents (M age = 13.4, 45% White, 15% Hispanic, 11% Black) from Massachusetts and Connecticut to nominate a character role model, someone they knew personally and looked up to as an example of how to be a good person; 142 (64.5%) listed a character role model, with family members nominated most frequently, followed by friends and other adults (e.g., teachers). Youth cited how their character role model treated them as well as other people as reasons for selecting their character role models. Participants also rated the quality of the relationship, role-modeling behaviors, and socialization practices. There were similar positive characteristics associated with the three character role model types, but there were also differences (e.g., family character role models were rated most positively on relationship quality as well as role-modeling behaviors, whereas friend character role models rarely provided character socialization). Findings suggested that youth understand the relational nature of character and also point to the potentially powerful role of character role models in promoting character development.

Building Hope for Positive Youth Development: Research, Practice, and Policy

Within the field of positive youth development (PYD), a key goal is to identify strengths of youth that will help explain why some adolescents are able to develop into successful young adults by working toward productive goals and selecting positive behaviors, whereas others follow developmental paths marked by problematic behaviors. In this chapter, we describe the importance of hope in positive development. We define hope as having three key ingredients: intentional self-regulation, positive future expectations, and connectedness. We provide evidence from the 4-H Study of PYD to show how these three ingredients work together to promote the Five Cs of PYD and youth contribution. We make recommendations for practitioners to incorporate or enhance each of these hope ingredients in their youth development programs as well as how to recognize hopelessness among youth and how to intervene. We conclude the chapter with priorities for youth policy, such as allocating funding for programs and program evaluations that take a comprehensive and integrative approach to youth development programming. We believe that hope should be a cornerstone of youth programming and that practitioners, researchers, and policy-makers can be intentional in promoting hope to ensure all young people have opportunities to thrive.

Perspective taking and decision-making in educational game play: A mixed-methods study

ABSTRACT Video games have the potential to be contexts for moral learning. We investigated whether Quandary, a video game designed to promote ethical thinking and moral considerations for decision-making, would help promote positive skills such as perspective taking and empathy in adolescents. We examined the effect of playing Quandary on 131 middle school students on self-reported measures of moral thinking via mixed-method randomized control trials. In addition, we conducted qualitative analyses of one-on-one participant interviews and short-answer responses to capture experiences and reflections from playing Quandary, as well as the depth in which students across conditions responded to the interview questions. We found that short-term quantitative indicators did not show change across conditions; however, qualitative analyses revealed thematic responses that are consistent with the core components of the Quandary game, and that students in the Quandary condition showed a greater depth of response to interview questions. This work is a first step in exploring the potential for virtual game play on children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development.

Childhood and Adolescence: Developmental Assets

This article is a revision of the previous edition article by P.L. Benson, volume 3, pp. 1690–1697,