Measuring Youth Perceptions of Being Known and Loved and Positive Youth Development: Cross-National Findings from Rwanda and El Salvador.

Background: Dynamic, relational developmental systems-based models of development emphasize that developmentally-nurturant youth-adult relationships elicit in youth perceptions of being known and loved. Although such perceptions are foundations of positive youth development (PYD), such measures do not exist.

Objective: We sought to create a theoretically-predicated measure of youth perceptions of being known and loved by capitalizing on data sets in two countries (Rwanda and El Salvador) wherein a multi-national study of PYD was being conducted by Compassion International (CI).

Individual and ecological assets and positive developmental trajectories among gang and community-based organization youth.

The Search Institute framework for conceptualizing developmental assets was used in a longitudinal study of African American male youth involved in gangs or in community-based organizations (CBOs) serving youth. Analyses of intraindividual change indicated that individual and ecological assets are linked to positive developmental trajectories among these youth.

Stability of attributes of positive functioning and of developmental assets among African American adolescent male gang and community-based organization members.

An analysis is presented of the longitudinal stability over the course of a year of characteristics of positive functioning and of individual and ecological developmental assets, among African American male youth involved in gangs or in community-based organizations (CBOs) serving youth. Evidence is provided for the potential of positive youth development among both groups of adolescents.

Positive youth development: thriving as the basis of personhood and civil society.

Positive youth development is conceptualized within a developmental systems theoretical model. The role of thriving processes and civic engagement in positive youth development is discussed.