After-School Toolkit: Tips, Techniques and Templates for Improving Program Quality

This toolkit offers program managers a practical, hands-on guide for implementing quality programming in the after-school hours. The kit includes the tools and techniques that increased the quality of literacy programming and helped improve student reading gains in the Communities Organizing Resources to Advance Learning (CORAL) initiative of The James Irvine Foundation. CORAL is an eight-year, $58 million after-school initiative aimed at improving education achievement in low-performing schools in five California cities. In addition to strategies, process and instructions, this toolkit offers a series of tools program staff can use to build the quality of their after-school program

Understanding motivations to attend various sized churches: A study using family communication patterns, expectancy violations, and anxiety to predict church attendance

Two separate studies were conducted to examine whether communication variables impact religious views and church attendance. For the first study, 228 students from a large Southeastern university completed a web survey. The second study was a web survey of 204 adults that was conducted via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTURK). Both surveys were sent out to determine one’s motivations to attend a small, medium, or large church using family communication, anxiety, expectations, and religion variables as predictors. Family communication, anxiety, and expectancy variables were positively correlated to many aspects of religious views. Hierarchical regression models utilizing demographics, family communication, anxiety, expectancy violations, and religious variables to predict types of church attendance were significant. This indicates that understanding one’s family communication patterns, expectancies, and religious views surrounding church and religion influence people’s desire to attend a specific sized church environment

Making Every Day Count: Boys & Girls Clubs' Role in Promoting Positive Outcomes for Teens Executive Summary

This executive summary highlights the main findings from P/PV's three-year study of the role Boys & Girls Clubs play in the lives of the youth they serve. Drawing on several sources of data -- surveys of a low-income, ethnically diverse sample of approximately 320 youth (starting when they were seventh and eighth graders and following them into the ninth and tenth grades), Club attendance records over a 30-month period, and in-depth interviews with a sample of ninth graders -- we investigated the relationship between participation and three outcome areas identified by Boys & Girls Clubs of America as central to its mission: good character and citizenship, academic success and healthy lifestyles

Utilization of Infographics in the EKU Classroom

An infographic is a means of data visualization. Specifically they are meant to present data in a visual way to tell a story or support a position. The purpose of this presentation is to discuss utilization of infographics in the classroom as it relates to the Visual Literacy Standards for Higher Education (ACRL, 2013). Students may be required to appraise or create infographics. Faculty may use infographics to present a course overview or as a substitution for a reading assignment. There is significant potential for engagement using this medium

Promoting Emotional and Behavioral Health in Preteens: Benchmarks of Success and Challenges Among Programs in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties

P/PV conducted a two-year study for The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health to assess the effectiveness of the foundation's youth development grantmaking program and to offer lessons for future grantmaking endeavors. The resulting report describes benchmarks of quality programs for youth and strategies for addressing common program challenges

Utilization of Infographics in the EKU Classroom

An infographic is a means of data visualization. Specifically they are meant to present data in a visual way to tell a story or support a position. The purpose of this presentation is to discuss utilization of infographics in the classroom as it relates to the Visual Literacy Standards for Higher Education (ACRL, 2013). Students may be required to appraise or create infographics. Faculty may use infographics to present a course overview or as a substitution for a reading assignment. There is significant potential for engagement using this medium.https://encompass.eku.edu/swps_facultygallery/1038/thumbnail.jp

Making Every Day Count: Boys & Girls Clubs' Role in Promoting Positive Outcomes for Teens

The third in a series of reports from P/PV's three-year study of the role Boys & Girls Clubs play in the lives of the youth they serve, Making Every Day Count examines how Club participation is related to youth's positive and healthy development in three outcome areas identified by Boys & Girls Clubs of America as central to its mission: good character and citizenship, academic success and healthy lifestyles.The report draws on several sources of data -- surveys of a low-income, ethnically diverse sample of approximately 320 youth (starting when they were seventh and eighth graders and following them into the ninth and tenth grades), Club attendance records over a 30-month period, and in-depth interviews with a sample of ninth graders -- to investigate the relationship between participation and outcomes. The findings show that teens who had higher levels of participation in the Clubs experienced greater positive change on 15 of 31 outcomes examined, including increases in integrity (knowing right from wrong) and academic confidence, decreases in incidents of skipping school, and a lower likelihood of starting to carry a weapon or use marijuana or alcohol.Qualitative data bolster these findings, providing insights from youth and staff about the practices and strategies that support the influence of the Club, as a whole, on youth's lives. The data suggest that there is a confluence of things the Clubs are doing right to serve teens and sustain their connection to the Club as they transition from middle school to high school. Interviewed staff and the teens spoke about the overall Club environment, the safe place it provides and the role of interactions with supportive adults and peers as crucial -- and, in their view, more important than specific programming -- in helping promote teens' positive development.The findings from the evaluation offer a promising picture of the role Clubs can play in the lives of teens; they also point to valuable lessons for the larger out-of-school-time field, where there is increasing interest in the question of how to effectively engage teens -- a population that has been critically underserved in many low-income communities

More Time For Teens: Understanding Teen Participation -- Frequency, Intensity and Duration -- In Boys & Girls Clubs

Written midway through a three-year longitudinal evaluation of the role Boys & Girls Clubs play in the lives of the youth they serve, this report explores a topic of continuing interest to program operators and funders: What does it take to involve teens in positive out-of-school-time activities? Drawing on survey data from a low-income, ethnically diverse sample of approximately 400 seventh and eighth graders, Clubs attendance data tracked over a period of 17 months, and in-depth interviews with a sample of ninth graders, More Time for Teens identifies a set of factors that appear to contribute to three specific aspects of Club participation: frequency, duration and retention. The report highlights links found between accessible, safe places that provide a variety of informal and formal activities of interest to teens and higher levels of participation. It also distills lessons for programs interested in boosting teen participation. These include establishing relationships when children are younger (these relationships often endure through the teen years), taking into account the importance teens place on friendships and working with teens to establish flexibility in attendance policies as they enter their high school years

Advancing Achievement: Findings from an Independent Evaluation of a Major After-School Initiative

This report presents outcomes from Public/Private Ventures research on CORAL, an eight-year, $58 million after-school initiative of The James Irvine Foundation. Findings described in the report demonstrate the relationship between high-quality literacy programming and academic gains and underscore the potential role that quality programs may play in the ongoing drive to improve academic achievement. The report includes a 12-page executive summary