Page 22 - Ana Kozina and Nora Wiium, eds. ▪︎ Positive Youth Development in Contexts. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2021. Digital Library, Dissertationes (Scientific Monographs), 42.
P. 22
positive youth development in contexts
values, social competencies, and positive identity) were related to how par-
ticipants like to learn, take responsibility for what they do, develop friend-
ship with others, and feel that they have control over their life and future,
respectively. For the four categories of external assets (support, empow-
erment, boundaries & expectations, and constructive use of time), sample
items were related to participants having a family that shows them love and
support, being included in the family’s chores and decisions, attending a
school that enforces rules fairly and spending time every week in sports,
hobby clubs or an organisation at the school or in the community, respec-
tively. The 40 developmental assets were measured with 51 items since some
assets that addressed different contexts were assessed separately for these
contexts (e.g., support at home and support at school). Response catego-
ries for the developmental assets ranged on a Likert scale from (1) Never or
Rarely to (4) Almost always or Very often. Cronbach’s alpha, assessing the
internal consistency of the asset categories, ranged from .73 to .86, except for
one external asset category, constructive use of time, that had a Cronbach’s
alpha of .44. The Cronbach’s alphas of the current study are similar to those
reported in previous studies (e.g., Scales et al., 2000).
Thriving indicators (Search Institute, 2016). Eight indicators of thriv-
ing were measured – good physical health, leadership, delayed gratifica-
tion, overcoming adversity, valuing diversity, school success, helping others,
and resisting danger. In the literature, the focus has been on seven of the
eight indicators, where the indicator resisting danger was omitted because
it overlaps with the ‘resistance skills’ item in social competencies, one of the
internal asset categories (Scales et al., 2000). Thus, in our study we only
looked at seven thriving indicators. For good physical health, leadership, de-
layed gratification, and overcoming adversity, participants responded either
‘yes’ or ‘no’ to questions probing whether they had been a leader over the
last 12 months, their interest in a healthy diet and exercise, their ability to
save money, and their ability not to give up in difficult situations. Valuing
diversity indicated that participants thought it was fairly important or very
important for them to get to know other people with a different cultural/
ethnic background; School success implied that participants had mostly ob-
tained a 6 (the highest grade) at school; Helping others indicated that par-
ticipants spent at least 1 hour helping friends or neighbours during a typ-
ical week. Cronbach’s alpha of the seven indicators was only .35. However,
because we were interested in how the developmental assets were associ-
ated with the number of thriving indicators reported (as investigated in
22
values, social competencies, and positive identity) were related to how par-
ticipants like to learn, take responsibility for what they do, develop friend-
ship with others, and feel that they have control over their life and future,
respectively. For the four categories of external assets (support, empow-
erment, boundaries & expectations, and constructive use of time), sample
items were related to participants having a family that shows them love and
support, being included in the family’s chores and decisions, attending a
school that enforces rules fairly and spending time every week in sports,
hobby clubs or an organisation at the school or in the community, respec-
tively. The 40 developmental assets were measured with 51 items since some
assets that addressed different contexts were assessed separately for these
contexts (e.g., support at home and support at school). Response catego-
ries for the developmental assets ranged on a Likert scale from (1) Never or
Rarely to (4) Almost always or Very often. Cronbach’s alpha, assessing the
internal consistency of the asset categories, ranged from .73 to .86, except for
one external asset category, constructive use of time, that had a Cronbach’s
alpha of .44. The Cronbach’s alphas of the current study are similar to those
reported in previous studies (e.g., Scales et al., 2000).
Thriving indicators (Search Institute, 2016). Eight indicators of thriv-
ing were measured – good physical health, leadership, delayed gratifica-
tion, overcoming adversity, valuing diversity, school success, helping others,
and resisting danger. In the literature, the focus has been on seven of the
eight indicators, where the indicator resisting danger was omitted because
it overlaps with the ‘resistance skills’ item in social competencies, one of the
internal asset categories (Scales et al., 2000). Thus, in our study we only
looked at seven thriving indicators. For good physical health, leadership, de-
layed gratification, and overcoming adversity, participants responded either
‘yes’ or ‘no’ to questions probing whether they had been a leader over the
last 12 months, their interest in a healthy diet and exercise, their ability to
save money, and their ability not to give up in difficult situations. Valuing
diversity indicated that participants thought it was fairly important or very
important for them to get to know other people with a different cultural/
ethnic background; School success implied that participants had mostly ob-
tained a 6 (the highest grade) at school; Helping others indicated that par-
ticipants spent at least 1 hour helping friends or neighbours during a typ-
ical week. Cronbach’s alpha of the seven indicators was only .35. However,
because we were interested in how the developmental assets were associ-
ated with the number of thriving indicators reported (as investigated in
22
