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 What
helps children flourish? Indicators of positive development are
essential for a balanced, scientifically-sound study of children and
youth, and are increasingly called for in schools, after-school
programs, and governments. With grants from the John Templeton Foundation and others, Child Trends'
Flourishing Children Project has tested the applicability of measures
of positive youth well-being to racially-and economically-diverse
populations, and spoken with youth to find out what they think is
important to measure. We have also developed short, sound multi-item
measures of positive development that work among diverse youth. Measures
are available for use, as is a data set based on a nationwide poll, here. |
| Flourishing Children: Defining and Testing Indicators of Positive Development |
Measures
of many aspects of adolescent flourishing are either not available, not
developmentally-appropriate, not appropriate for diverse populations,
or not short or rigorous enough to be used for national surveys and
program evaluations. Child Trends' Flourishing Children Project
developed multi-item measures, or scales, to measure 19 aspects of
flourishing in six areas: flourishing in school and work, personal
flourishing, relationship skills, relationship quality, helping others
to flourish, and environmental stewardship. We learned a lot about
developing scales for youth through cognitive interviews, and we pass on
what we've learned in this book.
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| Measuring social and emotional development |
 High-quality
measures of social and emotional development in early childhood are
needed for federal and state data collections, as well as early
childhood programs. Child Trends is vetting existing measures of social
and emotional development in early childhood for the Federal Interagency
Forum on Child and Family Statistics, and is preparing an inventory of
measures, with a paper (to be released this fall) reviewing the measures
according to multiple criteria. The areas of social-emotional
development being reviewed include emotional competence, social
competence, self-regulation, behavior problems, and executive
function. (In another report released last week, Child Trends suggested ways to incorporate social and emotional skills measurement into regular classroom data collection.)
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Child
Trends' work on positive indicators includes a collection of these in
our DataBank. The DataBank examines and monitors indicators, summarizing
research, tracking trends, and highlighting strategies likely to
improve child and youth well-being.
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Copyright © 2014 by Child Trends
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