Supplement articlePrevention science and positive youth development: competitive or cooperative frameworks?
Section snippets
Re-emergence of positive youth development
In the 1990s, several organizations identified and articulated the benefits of a positive youth development approach, including the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development [35], U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [36], Annie E. Casey Foundation [37], Robert Wood Johnson Foundation [38], Consortium on the School-Based Promotion of Social Competence [39], and Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention [40]. Some have viewed this as a paradigm shift (after Kuhn:) [41]
Risk and protective factors across multiple domains
One concern is that the results of etiological research have not been adequately incorporated into the design of preventive interventions 14, 15. Over the past 30 years, researchers have identified longitudinal predictors that increase (often called risk factors) or decrease (often called protective factors) the likelihood of problem behaviors 14, 16, 27, 54 in neighborhoods, families, schools, and peer groups, as well as within the individual 13, 61, 62, 63. Empirically supported community
Prevention science critique of early prevention programs
Despite this broad knowledge base on risk and protective factors, most prevention programs have limited their focus to individual-level risk or protective factors and have generally addressed only one or two risk factors. Tolan and Guerra [89], in their review of violence prevention programs, found that “… most interventions tend to focus on changing one promising risk factor, and most emphasize changing only individual (and not social or environmental) characteristics.” In reviewing pregnancy
Cooperation or competition: do we need a paradigm shift?
Recently, some authors have advocated a paradigm shift in the youth development and prevention field to focus exclusively on building assets, the protective factors associated with resiliency, rather than on trying to reduce risk 108, 109. These scholars assert that targeting risk factors emphasizes the deficits of young people. They suggest that focusing on building children’s strengths will produce more positive outcomes than interventions focusing on reducing risk factors. In contrast,
Acknowledgements
Work on this article was supported by grant # RO1 DA08093 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and grant #UO1-HD30097-05S1 from the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development and the Office of Minority Programs.
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