Building Program Quality in Youth Development Staff Training: Critical Components as Perceived by Currently Employed Youth Development Professionals in the United States

Program quality is the program characteristics, indicators, and implementation practices that stakeholders mutually agreed upon. These program quality components are interlinked. Therefore, it is critical to help youth practitioners think through the logical connection among the components of program quality. This can be partly achieved through professional development, which equips practitioners with competencies necessary to perform their tasks. As a result, a staff training model was designed to corroborate the work that has been done in the positive youth development field with the aim of achieving program quality using a systematic review method. This staff training model comprises four components: child/youth development, social ecological theory, program management, and program theory. This factorial structure of this model was assessed using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory analysis using the responses from the Positive Youth Development Program Quality Competency Questionnaire (PYDPQCQ). The analyses yielded a valid, reliable 42- item, 6 factor solution. Additionally, the existence of a social support system for the youth development professionals was described using frequency, percentage and social network analysis. The members of the social support system was mainly the participants’ colleagues. The members of the social support system including the participants formed four main social communities. The social communities together appeared to form a sphere with the members of the social support system on the surface

Examining the Impact of the Pandemic on Students’ Academic Performance and Emotional Health at a Research University in the Southern Region of the United States

The coronavirus pandemic is a worldwide public health crisis that has affected the world population including college and university students psychologically, financially, socially, and academically. Additionally, this pandemic has cost many lives and yet this seems to be far from over. Making and distribution of more vaccines maybe key to halt this. The students in this study reported that they were not able to focus and learn as they wanted and their emotional health worsened during the pandemic. Colleges and universities should prepare students on ways to cope with the new learning environments and create infrastructures that support students’ success

Leadership and Gender Roles in Academia

The glass ceiling effect is unfortunately still a reality in academia. Only 30% U.S University has female presidents. Given the multiple benefits of gender diversity in senior management, understanding gender gap in top leadership should be a priority. The purpose of this study was to investigate gender roles and leadership effectiveness in higher education. The results show that female leaders were seen less effective than men when committing relationship mistakes. Additionally, both male and female leaders were seen less effective when committing relationship mistakes than task mistakes. These findings signal the need to examine gender bias across other academic settings

A Comparison between Domestic and International Graduate Students on their Work Readiness at a Research University

One critical issue in educational programs involves the extent to which graduates are ready to begin employment at program completion. Additionally, most research universities make deliberate efforts to enroll students from other countries. An important question regarding the effectiveness of the programs in these universities is whether the international students have comparable preparation and “Work-Readiness” as the domestic students. This study revealed that on several of the measures associated with “Work-Readiness“ international students had lower levels of “Readiness” than domestic students. Also, other differences were found in the groups on issues such as internship experiences and involvement in scholarly activitie

Examining Student Retention in a College of Business at a U.S. Research University (RU/VH)

Prior research has documented the impact of the residential hall experience of college students on academic achievements. Integrating and engaging in college residential hall experience increases their chances to persist and complete their degree. In this paper, we examined the retention of college of business students who resided and did not reside in a College of Business Content-Based Residential College (CBRC) at a Research University in the Southern Region of the United States. The findings showed a statistically significant relationship between race, the number of hours during each of their first four semesters of enrollment, and retention into the fifth semester

Examination of the factorial structure of the positive youth development Program Quality Competency Questionnaire using responses from youth development professionals across the U.S.

© 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This study established a research instrument, Program Quality Competency Questionnaire (PQCQ), to measure the perceptions of youth development professionals about program theory, program management, child/youth development, and social ecological theory. The structural validity and reliability of the developing instrument was determined using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factory analysis. The results showed that the exploratory factor analysis yielded a 42-item, 6 factor solution, which was validated by the confirmatory factor analysis conducted. The model had a very good fit to the data, its factor structure was good, and its coefficients of reliability ranged from fair (\u3e.8) to exemplary (\u3e.90). In addition, no excessive multicollinearity was present in the data. There was evidence to claim that the internal structure of the developing instrument was valid and highly reliable

The Influence of Selected Characteristics on the Perceived Effectiveness of an Entrepreneurship Training Program among Female Participants

Small businesses are the backbone of the United States economy (Kauffman Foundation (World Bank, 2009) making up 66% of the new net employment in the country (U.S. Small Business Administration, 2018). Entrepreneurship is becoming increasingly more important as the United States moves quickly out of the old economic model of production and manufacturing (Hsu, Roberts, & Eesley, 2007). Technological innovation has changed the post WWII economic period, which was characterized by large capital intensive firms and labor intensive markets. In today’s economy, entrepreneurship brings about a competitive advantage for any state that is forward-thinking; one that encourages innovation and creativity among its stakeholders (Sinclaire, 2008). Entrepreneurship is the key to economic success in the 21st century