Abstract
The intent of this study was to evaluate the program effectiveness of the Project P.A.T.H.S. (Positive Adolescent Training through Holistic Social Programmes) (Secondary 1 Curriculum) by analyzing 207 school-based program reports, in which program implementers were invited to write down five conclusions based on an integration of the subjective outcome evaluation data collected from the program participants and program implementers. Secondary data analyses were conducted and 1,855 meaningful units were extracted from 1,035 “aggregated” conclusions. Among them, about 27 and 18% were related to perceptions of the program and implementers, respectively, and most of them were positive in nature. About one-third was related to perceived effectiveness of the program, and most of them referred to enhancement of students' development in societal, familial, interpersonal, and personal aspects. However, difficulties encountered during program implementation (3.34%) and recommendations for improvement (18.11%) were also reported. The present study replicated the findings reported in previous studies and suggests that the Tier 1 Program of the Project P.A.T.H.S. is beneficial to the development of the program participants.
Highlights
To promote holistic development among early adolescents in Hong Kong, The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust launched a project entitled “P.A.T.H.S. to Adulthood: A Jockey Club Youth Enhancement Scheme”, with “P.A.T.H.S.” standing for Positive Adolescent Training through Holistic Social Programmes[1,2]
The effectiveness of the Tier 1 Program in promoting holistic and positive development among early adolescents has been evidenced by various evaluation findings generated from different methods and data sources, including longitudinal objective outcome evaluation[4,5], subjective outcome evaluation collected from the program participants and implementers[6,7,8,9,10], qualitative evaluation based on focus group interviews with students and instructors[11,12,13,14], analyses of students’ weekly diaries[15] and case studies[16,17], process evaluation based on systematic classroom observation[18,19], and interim evaluation collected from the views of program implementers[20,21]
Based on the previous study[10], these raw responses were further categorized into several categories, of which 26.79% related to views on the program (Table 1), 18.01% related to views on the program implementers (Table 2), 33.75% related to perceived general and specific effectiveness of the program (Table 3), 3.34% referred to difficulties encountered during program implementation (Table 4), and 18.11% were recommendations (Table 5)
Summary
To promote holistic development among early adolescents in Hong Kong, The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust launched a project entitled “P.A.T.H.S. to Adulthood: A Jockey Club Youth Enhancement Scheme”, with “P.A.T.H.S.” standing for Positive Adolescent Training through Holistic Social Programmes[1,2]. The effectiveness of the Tier 1 Program in promoting holistic and positive development among early adolescents has been evidenced by various evaluation findings generated from different methods and data sources, including longitudinal objective outcome evaluation[4,5], subjective outcome evaluation collected from the program participants and implementers[6,7,8,9,10], qualitative evaluation based on focus group interviews with students and instructors[11,12,13,14], analyses of students’ weekly diaries[15] and case studies[16,17], process evaluation based on systematic classroom observation[18,19], and interim evaluation collected from the views of program implementers[20,21]. All these findings consistently showed that both program participants and implementers had positive perceptions of the program and regarded the program as helpful to the students’ overall development, and the participants displayed positive changes after joining the program
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