Positive Youth Development in out-of-School Time Programming for Underprivileged Youth in the Southern U.S.: A Qualitative Evaluation

Background and Purpose: The positive youth development (“PYD”) model has been acknowledged as a successful tenant of youth programming to prevent negative developmental trajectories for youth while also promoting skill development for optimal functioning in adulthood (Catalano et al., 2019; Geldhof et al., 2019). Through structured after-school programs, PYD has promoted healthy outcomes for youth in adulthood (Lin, Chan, Kwong, & Au, 2018). This program evaluation explored youth and caregiver perceptions, experiences, and perceived benefits attributed to program involvement of youth who participated in one of three out-of-school time empowerment programs. The mission of the programming agency is centered on breaking the cycle of poverty. This agency serves students in a southern school district with roughly 80% minority students.

Methods: A total of 51 youth and 41 caregivers attended 30-60 minute focus groups conducted using a semi-structured interview guide. Youth participants were ages 7-13 and were enrolled in the programming between 2017-2019. Recruitment was done using a stratified sampling technique. The focus groups were recorded, and the audio was transcribed verbatim. Codebook development was theory-driven and based on the tenets of PYD. Data analysis pertained to the interrelated key components of youth programming that promote PYD, specifically the Five C’s (Lerner et al., 2005) and the Big Three (Lerner, 2004). Dedoose was used for coding and each transcript was coded independently by two researchers. Initial inter-rater reliability was K = .72 for youth data and K = .73 for caregivers suggesting substantial agreement (Cohen, J., 1960). Researchers met weekly to review coding and reached full agreement on all code applications.

Results: Thematic analysis revealed that the Five C’s and the Big Three were constantly present in empowerment programming. In both the youth and caregiver focus groups, competence and life skill development emerged as the two dominant themes. Competence was broken into social, emotional, behavioral, moral, and cognitive. Social competence was the highest regarded competence (43% of competence codes for youth; 71% for caregivers). One youth stated the following which is an example of social competence and life skill development:

“I think I am very different because before [name of program] - I’ve always been outspoken, but I didn’t always know how to channel that into a way that was positive in my community or really just you know, start a conversation with somebody that I didn’t know.”

Conclusions and Implications: In the South, we see the highest rates of students eligible for free and reduced lunch along with low rates of college matriculation (Robson, O’Neal Schiess & Trinidad, 2019). Therefore, it is critical to empower disadvantaged youth in this region by developing their life skills and deepening their social competence. One way to reach these youths is through out-of-school time programming. Black students in the 6-12 age group are two times more likely to attend after school programming than White students (Hynes & Sanders, 2011). Social workers should empower marginalized and disadvantaged youth through out-of-school time programming using the PYD framework to positively change the likelihood of negative educational outcomes.