Keywords

The importance of youththriving is certainly nothing new (see, for instance, Plato’s Apology), but philosophical approaches to youth development have varied across multipledimensions of context. In WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) contexts (especially the United States), for instance, longstanding approaches emphasized the problems young people presented and the various impediments that could derail their positive development. These deficit-oriented approaches only began to fall out of favor in the 1990s and early 2000s and have since been replaced by the concept of Positive Youth Development (PYD), which emphasizes youth and contextualstrengths (see Benson, Leffert, Scales, & Blyth, 1998; Catalano, Berglund, Ryan, Lonczak, & Hawkins, 2004; Eccles & Gootman, 2002; Hamilton, Hamilton, & Pittman, 2004; Lerner et al., 2005; Roth & Brooks-Gunn, 2003 and many others). In WEIRD contexts, then, the sun has set on deficit-oriented approaches and instead shines brightly on an era of strengths-based practices.

Formal research and thinking about young people’s strengths and potential have resonated across global audiences, and the present Handbook provides a snapshot of how that thinking has manifested among worldwide stakeholders to date. The chapters in this Handbook range, in the extremes, from research applications and findings in Part A to comprehensive discussions of pervasive field-relevant issues in Part B. Most chapters occupy a space somewhere between, and all provide valuable insights for future research, policy, and practice.

As with any collection of people, cultures, and ideas, the outward diversity represented in this Handbook belies key unifying features and strands of commonality. In this chapter, we discuss several such commonalities that, collectively, elucidate this Handbook’s implications for the field. We divide this discussion by addressing two overarching questions: How does one define positive youth development? and What does this definition mean for a global communityofresearchers,practitioners, andpolicy makers? This discussion then closes with the conclusion that PYD is more than just the future. The sun has already risen on the era of PYD in global contexts.

Defining Positive Youth Development

The most important thing to know when defining positive youth development is that there is no absolute definition of positive youth development and no single operationalization that applies equally across all contexts. Positive youth development is an integration of understanding, attitudes, and actions. Hamilton and colleagues (e.g., Hamilton et al., 2004; see also Lerner, Lerner, Bowers, & Geldhof, 2015) underscored this point by describing three levels at which we might think about youth development. At the most basic level, we can see PYD as a natural process. PYD is an acknowledgement that the capacities of young people grow and that this growth better enables young people to understand and interact with their environments in ways that promote well-being among themselves and their societies. At a second level, PYD exists as a set of principles that emphasize support for young people’s positive development. Such supports incorporate the inclusion of all youth and a positive orientation predicated on building the strengths of young people. At the third level, PYD represents concrete actions through which the other two levels are applied to the real world. This third level represents PYD-oriented programs, practices, and interventions designed with the explicit goal of helping young peoplethrive. These programs empower youth to capitalize on and grow their individual strengths while also helping them overcome person-context misfit and structural barriers to their well-being.

The chapters from this Handbook reflect all three levels described above and particularly emphasize that any instantiation of PYD depends on some form of systems-oriented approach to development and intervention. Some chapters even include explicit discussions of relational developmental systems perspectives, and we see the importance of systems-level thinking for PYD as the Handbook’s most consistent theme.

Theme 1: PYD Implies a Systems-Level Perspective

Understanding PYD from a relational developmental systems perspective (e.g., Lerner et al., 2015) requires an acknowledgement that a person cannot be separated from their context. This is not simply because a person must always reside in some sort of context (which is true), but instead reflects a deeper reality that person and context exist only as arbitrarily defined parts of the same system. This person-context system is a unified whole, not a co-action among separate entities. Interventions, programs, and policies similarly exist as elements of the larger person-context system and accordingly exert influence as a part of that system.

Despite the widespread acknowledgment that persons and contexts are completely fused, pragmatism and parsimony nevertheless point to the utility of thinking about youth as being nested in (i.e., theoretically separate from) their contexts. Overton (2010) describes this phenomenon as the opposites of identity. Through heuristic separation, we can describe person-context systems as developing through continuous interactions between young people and their contexts (i.e., person ⇔ context relations). These interactions are only adaptive and can therefore only represent PYD, when they benefit both the individual and their context (see Lerner, Dowling, & Anderson, 2003 for a larger discussion of these issues). Attempting to operationalize PYD in a context-neutral way is therefore nonsensical.

Defining PYD as a function of mutually beneficial youth ⇔ context relations implies that PYD is a process involving malleable characteristics. As Fagan et al. (this volume) noted, PYD programs would be a futile mismanagement of resources if thriving were predicated on stable personality traits. Instead, the process of PYD assumes that youth will actively navigate their contexts and make use of the resources afforded to them (see Ross & Tolan, this volume). These person ⇔ context relations often benefit a young person, but they can also lead youth toward undesirable outcomes (e.g., substance dependency). Thus, although it is tempting to interpret strengths promotion as the mechanism for reducing deficits, nothing can be farther from the truth. Strengths promotion and deficit reduction can exist as synergistic yet separate goals.

Theme 2: PYD Includes Both Strength Promotion and Deficit Reduction

Several authors in this Handbookunderscore the importance of increasing youth strengths while simultaneously (i.e., not just as a means of) reducing risk factors and undesirable developmental outcomes. Although many chapters noted the tendency for strengths to correlate negatively with undesirable outcomes (e.g., Upadyaya & Salmela-Aro, this volume), Ferrer-Wreder et al. (this volume) noted that reducing deficits should not be the only goal of an intervention or program. Smith, Yunes, and Fradkin (this volume) similarly drew from Pittman (1991) when arguing that the absence of negative outcomes does not ensure a young person is thriving. PYD must also create invested members of civil society who act according to both their own needs and those of other people. Smith et al. (this volume) similarly emphasized that having certain advantages in life does not guarantee positive development (e.g., substance use, suicide, and criminal behavior are all examples of problems that can occur across social classes). Programs that integrate prevention and promotiongoals (e.g., The Icelandic Model as described by Ásgeirsdóttir & Sigfúsdóttir, this volume) may therefore be especially impactful (see also Schwartz et al., 2010). This is especially true when applying theoretical models and operational definitions that are flexible enough to allow for context-specific nuance.

Although a joint emphasis on promoting strengths while also working to reduce deficits may seem obvious, repeated reliance on the phrase “strengths-based” increases the possibility that PYD will erroneously become perceived as only concerned with building skills. Indeed, such a misperception aligns with older definitions of strengths-based models which emphasized exclusive attention to the gains people make, no matter how trivial (Weick, Rapp, Sullivan, & Kisthardt, 1989). In this respect, Edwards and Pratt (2016) described PYD as a mechanism for promoting youth development rather than eliminating deficits.

The misperceptions that PYD advocates a strengths-only approach to youth development may weaken the case for expanded PYD-based programming in global contexts. For instance, Small and Memmo (2004) criticized the PYD perspective for its tendency to overlook risks that many youth face as well as the threat those risks pose for healthy development. While there may be no single best approach to PYD in the literature, discussions of the pros and cons of applying a specific model or practice to a specific context must remain aware of how that specific application will affect youth holistically, including both their strengths and their deficits (see also Benson, Mannes, Pittman, & Ferber, 2004).

Theme 3: There Is No “Best” Model of PYD

Many, but by no means all, chapters in this Handbook built upon foundations laid by two major PYD theories: The five Cs discussed by Lerner et al. (2005) and the Search Institute’s 40 developmentalassets (e.g., Benson et al., 1998). More than a decade of research supports the utility of both models, and both align with systems-level thinking while remaining intuitive to practitioners and policy makers alike. The five Cs model emphasizes five key constructs (competence, confidence, character, caring, and connection) whose presence collectively suggests a young person is on a positive developmental trajectory and is likely to be making meaningful contributions to society. As Geldhof et al. (2014) explain, each C may appear to be a characteristic of a young person, but each of the Cs is better explained as representing a person-context relation. Although operationalized in a very different way, the 40 developmentalassets similarly describe characteristics of young people (internal assets representing educational commitment, values, social competencies, and positive identity) and their contexts (external assets representing support, empowerment, boundaries and expectations, and constructive use of time) that, together, imply a young person is well-equipped to follow a positive developmental trajectory.

Although the five Cs and 40 developmental assets models are accessible and have been widely influential, it is critical to note that they are indicators of thriving rather than comprehensive and authoritative definitions of what it means to thrive. Referring to the five Cs model, for instance, Larsen and Holsen (this volume) noted that the five Csenable PYD. As such, the expansion of PYD models across diverse global contexts can and should include the expansion of existing operationalizations, the integration of PYD models, and drawing explicit linkages between PYD models and other theoretical models in the literature.

In terms of expanding operationalizations, Fernandes, Fetvadjev, Wiium, and Dimitrova (this volume) built on the literature supporting hopeful future expectations as a predictor of the five Cs (see also Schmid, Phelps, & Lerner, 2011) while discussing life satisfaction as a key outcome in the PYD literature (which can be integrated into, but is not redundant with, the C of confidence). Gomez-Baya, de Matos, and Wiium (this volume) similarly discussed elements of character (i.e., gratitude, optimism) and confidence (subjective happiness) that have not been adequately captured in existing measures of the five Cs. Ross and Tolan (this volume) encouraged PYD researchers and practitioners to reach beyond traditional spaces for delivering youth development content and to begin seeing the digital world as a key for the development of PYD processes.

At the level of theory integration, chapters in this Handbook illustrated the ways that models of PYD can be integrated with each other and with other theories from related fields. Li, He, and Chen (this volume) demonstrated how constructs from the PATHS model of PYD can be conceptualized in a way that aligns with the five Cs model. In terms of better integrating models from across the field, Kozina (this volume) noted the strong overlap between theories of PYD and theories centered on social and emotional learning. Dost-Gözkan & Wiium (this volume) connected PYD and self-determination theory, while Ferrer-Wreder et al. (this volume) encouraged stakeholders interested in PYD to acquaint themselves with the lessons learned in intervention science. Miconi and Rousseau (this volume) noted the implications that models of PYD could have for the study of violent extremism. Of course (and consistent with the systems-based approaches to PYD described above) any extension and integration of theories will remain highly contextualized. Thus, it is critical that the application of any PYD model accommodate specificity.

Theme 4: Defining PYD Requires Specificity

Formally codifying the complexity implied by systems-level thinking, Bornstein (2017) introduced the specificity principle as the assertion that the conditions of specific individuals who occupy specific times and places moderate specific facets of development in specific ways. An application of the specificity principle to the present Handbook implies that models of, and research on, PYD do not generalize to every context in the world. Unique contexts demand unique operationalizations. Methods for accommodating the specificity principle can affect all levels of research and practice and may be as straightforward as couching a particular report in a particular context. For example, Bradley, Ferguson, and Zimmer-Gembeck (this volume) noted that their research was completed in an Australian context and clarified that adolescents in that context experienced a great deal of autonomy. Furthermore, youth who participated in their study had ample opportunities to interact with peers, both in-person and online. Specificity might impact the population one chooses to study or work with, such as Hull, Ferguson, Fagan, and Brown’ (this volume) decision to focus on emphasis on NEET youth (Not active in Education, Employment, or Training opportunities), or it may even impact the outcomes one wishes to examine and promote. For example, Kabir and Wiium (this volume) noted that environmentalism is a particularly relevant outcome in the context of Ghana. Specificity might manifest in the phrasing used in research and intervention materials, as is illustrated by Ferrer-Wreder et al.’s (this volume) example of needing to replace the word “compliments” with something more akin to “showing appreciation.” As Eichas, Montgomery, Meca, Garcia, and Garcia (this volume) noted, successfully engaging marginalized youth in PYD requires that we understand their unique experiences and the PYD processes most important to target for that group.

What Have We Learned About PYD in a Global Context?

The above discussion emphasizes that there is no one best PYD perspective because any PYD-based model or program will need context-specific tailoring in order to maximize its impact. Acknowledging the high degree of specificity required when applying PYD-predicated research, policy, and practice to new contexts can therefore be disheartening and lead one to question the practicality of applying PYD perspectives across the globe. As we clarify in the following sections, though, we see strong evidence that this work is already being undertaken. The work presented in this Handbook leaves us optimistic about the state of PYD across the globe, both as it manifests today and as it will manifest tomorrow.

Theme 5: PYD Is Holistic

As discussed above, systems-oriented approaches to PYD assume that a young person is fully embedded in their context and that context-ignorant approaches have limited practical utility except when providing general frameworks or a starting place for discussion. Given the centrality of context in the person-context system, PYD-inspired practices can and must acknowledge contexts as both moderating youth development and as a conduit through which youth development can be optimized. When we say that PYD is holistic, we are therefore emphasizing that PYD-based practices can target elements of the person-context system that extend past what we would traditionally designate as the “person.”

Although young people occupy any number of different contexts, the chapters in this Handbook draw specific attention to families and schools. Dutra-Thomé and Ponciano (this volume) discuss the role parents can play in supporting youth during the transition to adulthood, which aligns well with Negru-Subtirica and Badescu’s (this volume) discussion of the intergenerational transmission of work-related values and goals. McKee et al. (this volume) note that programs designed to strengthen parenting skills, both universal and culture specific, can have cascading effects on young people’s development. At the same time, Ginner Hau, Ferrer-Wreder, and Westling (this volume) emphasize the potential that classroom contexts have for enabling and promoting positive development across the globe. Bradley et al. (this volume) discuss how support from parents and peers, as well as overall feelings of school connectedness, can promote positive academic outcomes.

The family and school contexts also provide milieu for accommodating the specificity principle. Just as opportunities, barriers, and norms may vary between cultures, school and family contexts are not homogenous. This is even true within small geographical areas, for instance between schools in the same city or even between classrooms in the same school. Although many chapters in this Handbook applied the specificity principle in ways that explored differences and similarities between national contexts, we should not forget that it applies equally to the varying contexts that exist within a given unit of organization (e.g., within a country).

Theme 6: Specificity Applies to All Contexts

The specificity principle implies that variation exists between many levels of a young person’s context. When examining PYD in the global context, we must therefore not allow our consideration of context to stop at the level of political boundaries (e.g., divisions between countries). In fact, Lansford et al. (this volume) noted that more variance may exist within cultures than exists between cultures. As an example of this, Smith et al. (this volume) noted that the intersection of race, ethnicity, and culture may be especially germane to understanding PYD among racial-ethnic minority youth. In a similar vein, Kosic, Wiium, and Dimitrova (this volume) compared Slovene minority youth living in Italy to members of the Italianmajority. James, Noltemeyer, Roberts, and Bush (this volume) tied the issue of intra-national specificity to a much broader literature by describing how one indicator of PYD (competence) may work differently among African American youth as compared to American youth from other ethno-racial backgrounds. Uka et al. (this volume) similarly illustrated how culture and context interact by comparing youth from a single cultural background but who live in different countries.

Other contributions to this Handbook highlighted intra-national variance in ways that extend beyond ethno-racial differences. Dutra-Thomé and Ponciano (this volume) described how the transition to adulthood may be more abrupt among youth from low-SES backgrounds as compared to their wealthier peers. Wiium and Kozina (this volume) explored the interaction between national context and gender as a means to understand PYD among girls who live in contexts that provide women and girls with markedly different opportunities. Other chapters emphasized intra-national variation in more subtle ways. Negru-Subtirica and Badescu (this volume) couched their chapter in the context of current economic trends and attitudes toward democracy. Kaniušonytė and Truskauskaitė-Kunevičienė (this volume) took a data-driven approach to intra-national variance by relying on latent profile analyses. Although their chapter specifically examined mean differences and growth trajectories, future work could push further by questioning whether PYD manifests in dissimilar ways among inductively defined groups. Such studies could open the exploration of these data-driven groups to direct follow-up research. As these chapters highlight, then, successfully applying PYD concepts and practices requires a synergistic consideration of both deductive and inductive thinking.

Theme 7: We Need to Integrate Etic and Emic Approaches

Lansford et al. (this volume) discussed emic and etic approaches to the contextualization of PYD, and we believe the integration of these methods lies at the heart of effectively translating PYD between diverse contexts and groups. As Lansford et al. (this volume) described, etic approaches take the perspective of a cultural outsider and apply theories derived elsewhere to a novel context. Many chapters in this Handbook translated measures of the five Cs or 40 developmentalassets for use in a new context, for instance. Such approaches allow for the application of similar instantiations of PYD across contexts, as one might want when exploring cross-context means or criterion validity.

Emic approaches are more bottom-up and instead take the perspective of a cultural insider. Emic approaches allow for greater levels of specificity at the cost of some generalizability. Leaning more toward the emic side of the spectrum, Ferrer-Wreder et al. (this volume) discussed the Planned Intervention Adaptation (PIA) protocol as a potentially helpful guiding framework for applying a program in a new context. They describe PIA as a two-part process, in which the first phase includes program selection, intervention development, and formative research. The second phase then entails an intervention trial of the adapted program. Although specific to the case of program adaptation, elements of PIA could easily be modified to facilitate the cross-cultural adaptation of other PYD concepts.

Most other chapters in this Handbook gravitated toward etic approaches, although none did so blindly. Instead, several chapters alluded to the fact that broader concepts might translate across cultures even when the nuance of a specific operationalization does not. For example, Wang, Chase, and Burkhard (this volume), discussed the “big three” features common among many youth-serving organizations. In line with the definition provided by Lerner (2004), Wang and colleagues described the big three as (1) providing youth with opportunities to make sustained connections with supportive and caring adults; (2) engaging youth in activities that promote the development of important life skills; and (3) providing opportunities for young people to lead and contribute to their families and communities. The big three are predicated on Western ideals but are general enough to be easily adapted to many contexts. McKee et al. (this volume) similarly discussed potentially universal elements of good parenting (e.g., sensitivity), and Ginner Hau et al. (this volume) referenced the literature on universal human values. Other chapters with an etic orientation relied on statistical procedures to assess the reasonableness of comparing their measures across groups.

Among the chapters with the strongest etic orientation were those that tested measurement invariance between two or more groups. Measurement invariance (e.g., Geldhof & Stawski, 2015; Little, 1997; Meredith, 1993) consists of sequentially more-restrictive tests that establish the between-group equality of a measure’s psychometric properties as preparation for making more meaningful comparisons (e.g., comparing mean scores across groups). A lack of measurement invariance indicates that between-group comparisons might not be easily interpretable. More specifically, weak/metric invariance indicates the reasonableness of comparing latent covariances between groups. Strong/scalar invariance suggests that factor means can be compared reasonably between groups.

Rather than testing for absoluteequality of a scale’s measurement properties between groups, tests of measurement invariance are imprecise by design. Rather than using a likelihood ratio test to evaluate invariance statistically, researchers typically compare the Comparative Fit Index (CFI) of each model and test whether the more restricted model (i.e., that imposes a given level of invariance) exhibits non-negligibly worse model fit. Guidelines provided by Cheung and Rensvold (1999) suggest that a particular level of invariance is reasonable and imposing the relevant model restrictions, causes the CFI to decrease by no more than.01 after imposing invariance on a set of parameter estimates. Meade, Johnson, and Braddy (2008) suggested changing this threshold to a decrease of no more than.002.

Even when applying less restrictive tests (e.g., CFI decreases of.01 or smaller), invariance may be less common than researchers would seemingly prefer. More than one chapter in this Handbook failed to establish strong invariance, for instance. Rather than treat invariance as something to push for, we encourage authors to celebrate the diversity uncovered when measurement invariance fails and to use such findings as an opportunity to gain additional insights regarding specificity. Discussions of why researchers and program evaluators cannot meaningfully compare itemresponses across groups may actually be more interesting and propel future work farther than research that focuses only on simple mean-level differences between constructs.

Where to Now? Implications for the New Day

Multiple authors noted recent calls for theories and measures designed to catalyze international scholarship on PYD (e.g., Abdul Kadir, Mohd, & Dimitrova, this volume; Dominguez, Wiium, Jackman, & Ferrer-Wreder, this volume; Manrique-Millones, Pineda Marin, Millones-Rivalles, & Dimitrova, this volume), especially in low- and middle-income countries (e.g., Bremner & Schwartz, this volume; Dimitrova, Buzea et al., this volume; Dimitrova, Fernandes et al., this volume; Dimitrova & Wiium, this volume). The contributions to this Handbook show that the field has responded to those calls in a robust and productive way. PYD has already debuted on the global stage.

Core elements of PYD already exist in many ecologies (e.g., as discussed by Abdul Kadir et al., this volume and by Li et al., this volume), and today’s work will entail formalizing our understanding of those manifestations, learning how to assess their impacts, and pushing for a more thorough acceptance of PYD at all levels of society. Consistent with the themes presented above, today’s PYD must evolve beyond its roots in WEIRD contexts and embrace the diversity evident across the world. PYD-inclined researchers, practitioners, and policy makers should certainly learn from work already completed (e.g., restorative practices in U.S. schools, as discussed by Acosta, Chinman, & Phillips, this volume), but they must also work to make those models their own. They should use common sense (asking themselves if a particular concept or practice aligns with local norms, for instance) and engage key stakeholders in ongoing discussions. A good start is to encourage qualitative and ethnographic research, as Lansford et al. (this volume) suggested. Others (e.g., Larsen & Holsen, this volume; Smith et al., this volume) called for participatory methods that elevate and validate the voices of diverse stakeholders—young people included. By walking this middle path between the old and the new, between the global and the specific, global instantiations of PYD will continue to take flight, will proliferate, and will see the increased thriving of young people worldwide. PYD in a global context is not the direction for tomorrow’s work—it is clear that tomorrow is already here. The sun is up, it is shining brightly, and, as far as we can tell, today is going to be a beautiful day.