| The absence of youth voice in the planning, design, delivery, and assessment stages of youth intervention and development programs is beginning to be recognized as a major flaw in determining the effectiveness of youth development programs. Early philosophers were erroneously guided by perspectives that viewed adolescence as a time of storm and stress for young adults. During the early stages of research in youth development, positive youth development (PYD) was viewed as the absence of negative or undesirable activities in adolescents. Modern proponents of youth development have yet to develop a widely accepted strategy or vocabulary for the evaluation of effective youth development programs, but they have advanced research ideas associated with the PYD theory. The PYD perspective is a tool for assessing the effectiveness of youth development programs. This exploratory case study explored the effectiveness of youth intervention and development programs through the perspectives of 15 graduates who were subject matter experts on their former youth development program. The graduates were interviewed using a modified semistructured interview guide to ensure responses were obtained related to the central research question and four subquestions. The data collected were then member checked, analyzed for themes, and coded to allow common themes for each research question to surface. The analyzed data supported the need to incorporate youth voice in the planning, design, delivery, and assessment of youth intervention and development programs and resulted in the creation of the Developmental Interventions Model for the Assessment of Neighborhood Systems (DIMANS). |
