Measuring Essential Youth Experiences Among Pre-Adolescent and Adolescent Foster Youth

Background and Purpose:  Recent child welfare system reforms have sought to expand youth “voice” via family group conferencing, peer-based mentorship, and other initiatives predicated on enhancing frontline knowledge of the experiences and preferences of foster youth (Dworsky & Perez; 2010; Nybell, 2013).  Youth assessments, however, often gather data from child welfare professionals, caregivers, and other critical adults in youths’ lives rather than youth themselves.  Nor has research attended to the measurement of the quality of youth relationships with these critical adults.  This paper tests the concurrent and predictive validity of the Essential Youth Experiences (EYE) instrument (McBeath, Bank, Kothari, et al., 2010) with a sample of pre-adolescent and adolescent foster youth. 

Methods: Quantitative survey data were gathered over 2010-2012 from a Portland, Oregon sample of 318 foster youth aged 7-16.  Data were collected from youth and their caregivers at baseline and again six months later.  All youth completed the EYE.  This instrument was developed specifically to assess youth perceptions in the following domains: (a) experiences with foster parents and degree of integration within the foster home; (b) contact and relationships with biological parents; and (c) experiences with key adults in other formal roles (e.g., caseworkers, teachers, attorneys).  Youth completed a battery of other standardized instruments, including the Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI), the Child Report of Post-traumatic Symptoms (CROPS), the Quality of Life (QOL) and the Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (SEQ).  Caregivers completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), and the Parent Report of Post-traumatic Symptoms (PROPS).  Concerning multivariate analytical strategy, multi-level models (MLM: Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002) were used to account for the nesting of youth within sibling groups and within families and to examine concurrent and predictive validity of two EYE subscales: (a) positive home integration (an 11-item subscale capturing the quality of the youth’s experiences in the foster home and relationship with the primary foster caregiver; alpha=0.88) and (b) relationship quality with caseworker (a 4-item subscale focused on how well the caseworker listens to and responds to youth needs; alpha=0.84).  In multivariate models, the EYE subscale, gender, and living situation (together/apart) were included predicting outcomes at baseline and 6 months later. 

Results: Descriptively, youth rated the quality of their relationships highly (M=8.5 for biological mothers, M=7.9 for biological fathers; M=7.3 for caseworkers).  Regarding MLM findings, the (a) positive home integration subscale was significantly associated with the CDI, CROPS, QOL and the CBCL at baseline (p<.01) and 6 months later (p<.01).  The (b) relationship quality with caseworker subscale was also significantly associated with SEQ and QOL at baseline (p<.01) and 6 months later (p<.05).

Conclusions and Implications: Multivariate findings suggest that the two EYE subscales demonstrated high reliability as well as concurrent and predictive validity in relation to a wide range of psychosocial outcomes.  These early results suggest the EYE holds promise for capturing variation in critical foster youth experiences.  While additional validation testing is needed, these findings hold promise for child welfare policy and practice dedicated to expanding what is known of the perspectives and preferences of youth in care.