Nancy Leffert

Beyond the “Village” Rhetoric: Creating Healthy Communities for Children and Adolescents

The role of community in child and adolescent development is emerging as a significant area of theoretical inquiry, research, and application. This article describes the development and utilization of a comprehensive community change effort designed to increase the attention of all community members toward strengthening core developmental processes for children and adolescents. It describes the development of 2 theoretical constructs, that of developmental assets and of asset-building communities. It presents a conceptual overview of both constructs, a descriptive account of the developmental assets within a large aggregate sample of approximately 99,000 sixth to twelfth graders, and a summary of change strategies shaping asset-building movements in over 200 communities.

Developmental Issues Influencing Guidelines for Adolescent Health Research: A Review

Adolescent development brings many opportunities to adolescents as research participants. They may be enthusiastic participants, especially if the focus of the research is of interest to the adolescents. Their increasing sense of self and development of autonomy may yield open, thoughtful responses less likely with older research participants. At the same time, the researcher must be aware of particular vulnerabilities of adolescents. Cognitive and reasoning capacity emerges gradually over the adolescent decade, making younger adolescents less capable than older adolescents of effective reasoning. The researcher can adjust materials to be understandable to the younger adolescent but should also recognize that inexperience could increase anxiety or emotionality about an issue not problematic to an older adolescent or adult. Making clear the right of the adolescent to refuse to discuss particular issues usually permits more honest responses, and increases the likelihood of consent to research or parts of research. Especially stressful circumstances may cause degradation of reasoning capacity suggesting that the researcher needs to assess whether the adolescent is able to make a wise decision about participation, as well as about particular responses. The researcher can usually identify ways to alleviate stress in the study situation and should take all steps necessary to obtain both informed consent and valid responses. Existing research provides clear evidence that most adolescents, at least past age 14 or 15 years, are able to function as well as adults research participants under most circumstances. With younger adolescents and under stressful situations, the researcher can find ways to minimize risk from research and increase the likelihood of valid responses.

Religious Involvement and Developmental Resources in Youth

Religious involvement is associated with a variety of positive developmental outcomes including restraint from risk, increased coping, and prasocial values and behavior. This study examines a model that explains religious influence on these positive outcomes through the mediating effects of developmental resources important in adolescence. Tests of the model, on questionnaire responses derived from a sample of 20,020 youthin grades 6-12 suggest that religious factors are associated with increased developmental assets that in turn predict positive behaviors and values among youth. Findings support the hypothesis that religious influences upon positive outcomes are mediated primarily through their effect on developmental assets. While differences in outcomes were noted across gender and grade cohorts, little variation in the proposed model was noted in cohort comparisons. Results of the study question the unique influence of religion on adolescent risk and prosocial behavior. Instead religious influence may be better understood as giving youth increased access to a variety of social and personal resources.

Communities as Contexts for Adolescent Development An Empirical Analysis

Research on the relation between context and adolescent development has been driven by an awareness of increases in problem behaviors during adokscence and an interest in the role of contextualfactors that may affect adolescent outcomes. The present study focused on cross-sectional views of changes in youths over time and compared 12 different conmnunities as experienced by 9th through 12th graders, using the community as the main unit of analysis. The analyses demonstrated that very different percentages of youths in different types of community experience community strengths. In addition, similar types of youths (i.e., vulnerable, average, and high-asset youths) are affected differentially by the overall health of the community. In particular, vulnerable youths, those with few personal assets, benefit from living in healthier communities and these effects are visible across all types of communities. Analyses also revealed grade differences among different types of youths.

Childhood and adolescence: Developmental assets

Developmental assets represent a theoretical construct that weaves together a set of developmental experiences, resources, and opportunities that enhance health outcomes for children and adolescents. The intent of the framework is to encourage the mobilization of asset-building efforts within many settings of a childs life and to increase those efforts for all children and adolescents within a community. This article examines the social and conceptual context of this framework, including its connection to other areas of scientific inquiry, the development of the framework, and the measurement, descriptive data, and summary of the predictive power of the 40 developmental assets in relation to reductions in high-risk behaviors and increases in thriving indicators. It concludes by examining the application of the framework as a tool for community mobilization and its spread across the United States in the 1990s.

Healthy Adolescent Development

Adolescence is a time that is filled with opportunity, challenge, and risk. It is a time of opportunity because the child enters the period generally still possessing the “little girl” or “little boy” body and mind and leaves the second decade of life with a new body, many new skills, and the thinking and reasoning ability to use those new skills in sophisticated ways (Petersen & Leffert, 1995a). Along the way, the adolescent is confronted with many challenges, some of which are risky because they involve making decisions about behaviors that could endanger a healthy lifestyle in the future (Crockett & Petersen, 1993). In this chapter we will examine adolescence as a time of special health risk and opportunity. We will review the concept of adolescence as a developmental transition, critical aspects of development that may contribute to health risks, the domains of adolescent health risk, and opportunities for health promotion during adolescence.

Cambios sociales en la juventud: La experiencia de los Estados Unidos

Resume El tremendo aumento de la investigacion sobre adolescencia en los ultimos veinte anos y especialmente en la ultima decada, ha producido gran cantidad de conocimiento sobre el desarrollo y problemas del adolescente. Este nuevo conocimiento debe llevar a intervenciones mas efectivas, mas investigacion en los procesos basicos del desarrollo, influencias del contexto, y sobre todo intervenciones efectivas. La proxima decada puede traer nuevas ensenanzas que mejoraran dramaticamente la vida de los jovenes en los EEUU. Esto se necesita con desesperacion ya que la condicion actual de la juventud debe cambiar.