An Evaluation of the Measurement Properties of the Five Cs Model of Positive Youth Development.

Ronan J Conway,Caroline Heary,Michael J Hogan

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01941

Ronan J Conway, Caroline Heary + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01941

Copy DOI

Abstract

There is growing recognition of the need to develop acceptable measures of adolescent's positive attributes in diverse contexts. The current study evaluated the measurement properties of the Five Cs model of Positive Youth Development (PYD) scale (Lerner et al., 2005) using a sample of 672 Irish adolescents. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that a five-factor model provided a good fit to the data. The internal reliability and construct validity of the Five Cs model were supported, with character the strongest predictor of contribution, while connection was the strongest predictor of risky-behaviors. Notably, confidence was significantly negatively related to contribution, and positively related to risky-behaviors. Multi-group hierarchical nested models supported measurement invariance across early- (11–14 years) and late- (15–19 years) adolescent age groups, with partial invariance found across gender. Younger adolescents evinced higher PYD, while PYD was associated with higher contribution and lower depression and risk-behaviors across all groups. The application of the PYD framework as a measure of positive functioning across adolescence is discussed.

Highlights

The pervasive influence of the “deficit perspective” of youth is acknowledged to have shaped the twentieth century discourse of adolescent research, policy, and practice (e.g., Bowers et al, 2010)
The present study addressed these gaps by examining the psychometric properties of the Five Cs Model of Positive Youth Development (PYD)
All the lower-order and higher-order factor loadings were significant and above the minimum threshold of 0.30 (Bowers et al, 2010). This suggests that the structure of the Five Cs model was appropriate

Summary

Introduction

The pervasive influence of the “deficit perspective” of youth is acknowledged to have shaped the twentieth century discourse of adolescent research, policy, and practice (e.g., Bowers et al, 2010). A more recent approach to adolescent development has emerged that advocates for the strengths of youth, and espouses the positive qualities and desirable outcomes that parents, teachers, practitioners, and society wish to develop. This approach is referred to as the Positive Youth Development (PYD) perspective.

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion