Process Evaluation and Continuous Improvement in Community Youth Programs

A method of using process evaluation to provide improvement plans in order to promote community youth programs is described. The core elements of this method include the following: (1) collection and analysis of baseline data, (2) feedback provided to programs describing their strengths and limitations, (3) programs provided with assistance in preparing improvement plans in regard to their baseline data, and (4) follow-up evaluation assessed program changes based on their improvement plans and baseline data. A case study of an inner-city neighborhood youth center is used to demonstrate this method

Process Evaluation and Continuous Improvement in Community Youth Programs

A method of using process evaluation to provide improvement plans in order to promote community youth programs is described. The core elements of this method include the following: (1) collection and analysis of baseline data, (2) feedback provided to programs describing their strengths and limitations, (3) programs provided with assistance in preparing improvement plans in regard to their baseline data, and (4) follow-up evaluation assessed program changes based on their improvement plans and baseline data. A case study of an inner-city neighborhood youth center is used to demonstrate this method

Vloga kulturnega kapitala pri dostopu do visokosolske izobrazbe in institucionalne izbire

This paper aims to explore social inequalities in school achievement and educational decision-making of the final-year students of secondary schools in the City of Zagreb and Zagreb County, Croatia (N = 534). The theoretical framework of the paper was Bourdieu\u27s theory of cultural and social reproduction (1977a). The main objectives were an analysis of the association between the students\u27 cultural capital and their school achievement and analyses of the predictive power of the cultural capital theory in the context of educational decisions in the transition to tertiary education. In the analysis of school achievement, sequential multiple regression analysis was used, while in the analyses of educational decisions logistic regression analyses were performed (binary and multinomial logistic regression). The results indicated that cultural capital had statistically significant correlation with school performance. Among the cultural capital indicators, statistically significant predictors of the probability of the intention to enroll. into vocational higher education were the material dimension of cultural capital and naturalness of higher education aspirations of students. For the prediction of the probability of intention to enroll in university, significant predictors were embodied cultural capital, the naturalness of higher education aspirations of students, and father\u27s educational level. The study results on a selected sample of graduates tend to support Bourdieu\u27s theory of cultural reproduction through education. (DIPF/Orig.

Constructing Youth Leadership

This two-part study contributes to research and practice by exploring the meaning of leadership, as it pertains to young people, in the English language scholarly literature produced in the global North West and in the conversations of young people from the United States (U.S.). In Part I, I examined shared assumptions and ruptures within scholarly discourses constitutive of youth leadership, using written statements (i.e., journal articles, book chapters, and evaluation reports) grounded in the youth development literature and in the gifted and talented education literature as material for analysis. I then conducted focus group interviews with young people of various social backgrounds to discuss leadership in general and leadership among youth in particular. In line with critical intellectual traditions, my analysis of focus group data centered on received messages and alternate knowledges evidenced in young people\u27s statements about leadership. The findings in Part I served as a basis for a tentative definition of youth leadership. In Part II, this definition informed a multidimensional construct of leading confidence among older youth. ^ The focus of Part II was initial development of a self-report instrument to assess leading confidence. I wrote questionnaire items representing different dimensions of leading confidence and then conducted focus groups and one-to-one interviews in order to establish content validity and choose the best-fitting items. Following the content validity study, I used exploratory factor analysis in the structural equation modeling context to evaluate construct validity of the Leading Confidence Questionnaire for Youth (LCQ-Y). The results provided support for multidimensional conceptualization of leading confidence. However, instead of six hypothesized factors, the patterns in data were best explained by five factors, four of which aligned with the corresponding theoretical dimensions, and one of which represented a combination of two theoretical dimensions. In addition to examining the underlying structure of the LCQ-Y, I conducted reliability analyses and used ESEM multiple indicators-multiple causes models to examine differential item functioning by gender and age. The document concludes with a discussion of implications for future research.