Friday, 14 January 2005 - 10:00 AM

This presentation is part of: Intervening with At-Risk Adolescents

The National Arts and Youth Demonstration Project: Methodology, Utilization Rates and Initial Findings

Purpose: The National Arts and Youth Demonstration Project (NAYDP) was a three-year study initiated in 2001 and implemented in five sites across Canada. The project had three objectives. The first was to evaluate the extent to which community-based organizations can successfully recruit, engage and maintain children and youth, 10-15 years of age from low-income communities, in artistic endeavors. The second was to determine whether involvement in art programs demonstrate positive outcomes with respect to child and youth psychosocial functioning. The third was to determine if there were any spillover effects in the home, school and the community.

Methods: The NAYDP is an exploratory descriptive multi-method study. The design is a growth curve analysis of six waves of data collected at fixed intervals and a six-month follow-up. This study was implemented in five low-income, multicultural sites across Canada. A total of 183 children, 10 to 15 years of age, participated in an art program, based on a structured and cumulative curriculum, offered twice a week for a nine-month period. The methodology underscored that the program was to be delivered within a supportive ecology. The selected observational outcomes reported are: joyful participation, pro-social skills, task completion and art skills development. Given the correlated nature of repeated measurements, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was the most appropriate analytic strategy. HLM provided the trajectory of individual growth through the seven time related assessments for the observational measures.

Results: The results suggest that the target population was reached through active recruitment strategies; the children and youth have attended and sustained participation through relevant quality programming. The high participation rates over a nine-month intervention support the hypothesis that children can be sustained in a long-term activity program once the barriers to participation have been removed.

The effects of cumulative art instruction on the four observational outcomes (participation, prosocial skills, task completion and art skills development) are findings of importance. First females overall start higher on all the four outcomes at baseline. Second, except for social skills development, there were no significant differences at baseline for children of different ages. Third and the most important finding is that, notwithstanding the difference at baseline for the four outcomes, the rate of change from baseline to the final assessment was similar for all the children.

Implications for research, policy and practice: The intention of the project was to use the findings of the study to inform policy makers, program planners and researchers on the usefulness and the cost-effectiveness of art activities as a prevention strategy aimed at populations of children. In addition, it would be important to offer art programs to children on a: (1) universal basis, (2) establish standards with respect to planning, implementing and evaluating art programs in community-based organizations, and (3) to address the issue of program sustainability and barriers to access, participation and equitable outcomes for children in low-income multicultural communities.

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