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Measuring Youth Development Using a Developmental Assets Approach in Youth Programming

Over the past decade numerous government and non-government actors have used the well-worn refrain that “young people represent a country’s future” to rally both political and financial support for investments in programs benefitting older children, adolescents and youth. Such advocacy efforts have generally focused on two broad lines of reasoning. On the one hand, the case is made for how not investing in young people poses a “threat” to a nation’s future stability because of the well documented links between disconnected young people and the phenomena of extremism, delinquency and youth-related public health threats such as drug use and HIV-AIDS. On the other hand, the case is made that youth all too often represent an “untapped asset” who could contribute much more than they currently do to national growth and prosperity if their capacity for positive risk taking and innovation were more fully engaged. Both lines of reasoning rely on equally broad conceptual frameworks – including variations of the “youth bulge” theory for proponents of the threat disconnected youth represent to social and political stability; and derivatives of the “positive youth development” and “community youth development” frameworks for those who speak about the untapped potential of youth to be agents of positive change in their communities.