Thursday, August 14, 2014

E-News: The Positive Indicators Issue


August 14, 2014  Subscribe

Flourishing Children Project
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.

Measures for Early Childhood

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.) 

Other Positive Indicators

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.
Copyright © 2014 by Child Trends
Forward this email




Child Trends | 7315 Wisconsin Avenue | Suite 1200W | Bethesda | MD | 20814

No comments:

Post a Comment