Original articleReliability and validity of the youth asset survey (YAS)
Section snippets
Project overview
In 1995, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funded 13 community-based projects as part of a national teen pregnancy prevention initiative, including the HEART of OKC project (Healthy, Empowered And Responsible Teens of Oklahoma City). The primary objective of the project was expanded beyond the goal of reducing teenage pregnancy to include the reduction of related youth risk behaviors such as violence and drug use, using positive youth development from an asset-building
Descriptive data
Youth (N = 1350) mean age was 15.4 (±1.7) years and 52% of the sample was female. The youth sample racial/ethnic characteristics were 47% white, 22% black, 19% Hispanic, and 10% NativeAmerican. Approximately 48% of the youth lived in two-parent households, 66% lived in households with reported income levels of less than $35,000, and 51% of the youths parents had an education level at, or below, a high school graduate level.
Factor analyses
Principal axis factoring on a correlation matrix with varimax rotation
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to develop psychometrically sound measures of specific youth developmental asset constructs. Increasingly, youth health and well-being programs are using a youth developmental approach to build adolescent assets and reduce youth risk behaviors 2, 3. This paper details the development of eight asset constructs and two one-item measures of assets that resulted from pilot and factor analyses testing of 60 items designed to measure several characteristics of youth
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Cooperative Agreement Number U88/CCU612534 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention awarded to the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy.
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