A Multi Method Assessment of Positive Youth Development in a Community Based Teen Center

Background & Purpose

The Bowdoin-Geneva area of Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood is an economically disadvantaged, predominantly immigrant neighborhood. Many of the youth in Bowdoin-Geneva belong to the area’s large Cape Verdean population. Although Bowdoin-Geneva youth are disproportionately exposed to violence, poverty, and trauma, Bowdoin-Geneva also has many assets, including rich cultural diversity and institutional assets. To better understand the experiences of Bowdoin-Geneva’s youth, we began a community-based research partnership with a teen center serving immigrant youth. We aimed to assess 1) what contextual factors affect participation and retention, and 2) how participation in teen center programming affected participants’ behavioral health. In partnership with teen center staff, we embarked on a collaborative multi-method research process.

Methods

Our study integrated quantitative and qualitative methods to collect and analyze data at multiple ecological levels to understand the context of the community, the teen center, and household and family factors to determine how these contextual factors affect program delivery. At the individual and household levels, we compiled and analyzed teen center data records kept from 2012-2015 and created a comprehensive database of participants’ (n=96) demographic characteristics, program activities of interest (e.g., basketball, dance), and survey responses capturing self-reported behavioral outcomes. Behavioral outcomes measured were sense of self, life skills, life choices, cultural competency, and community involvement. At the community level, we analyzed US Census and local administrative data such as crime locations and transit accessibility. We used ArcGIS 10.3 to map community-level data and integrated individual and household level data into these maps to visualize the activity spaces occupied by teen center participants. Finally, we gathered qualitative data through participant observation and focus groups to gain more in-depth insight into participants’ perceptions of the program and how their socio-cultural context affected their behavioral outcomes.

Results

We will describe process-related outcomes including detail on community partnership development and the process used to engage staff and participants in the research. We will then present findings from each phase of the research. We found that teens in the program are highly engaged as evidenced by very high retention rates (70% of participants were active for four straight years). Our spatial analyses revealed that neighborhoods in which teen participants live are marginalized in many ways; but that the strong cultural heritage in both the neighborhood and teen center context may reinforce positive behaviors among teen participants. We will highlight how results at multiple systems levels interact and describe how each system affects youth participation and behavioral outcomes.

Conclusions & Implications

The teen center serves the unique Bowdoin-Geneva population with attention to the cultural needs of the youth in the neighborhood. Programming is tailored to the youths’ household and neighborhood ecological contexts and may, in part, relate to the program’s high rate of retention and youths’ self-reports of positive behavioral outcomes. This research has important implications for the Grand Challenge of achieving equal opportunity and justice and highlights the importance of culturally relevant programming that is attentive to both household and neighborhood factors for youth success.