ABSTRACT
In the past several decades, the youth-development perspective has been advanced and refined by practitioners and researchers concerned with the challenges youth face in their transition to adulthood. The perspective has tended to focus on risky adolescent behaviors and their prevention (see Dryfoos, 1990, for an example of this approach), however, there has recently arisen a movement within the field criticizing this problem-orientation. The new perspective is that “Problem-free is not fully prepared.”1 Rather than defining and addressing youth only in terms of their delinquent behaviors, many youth advocates now maintain that the basic needs of youth should be specified and attended to as they progress through stages of development to adulthood (Public/Private Ventures, n.d.). Thus, in general, the youth-development field now focuses on “supporting or promoting, during the second decade of life, the positive developmental processes that are known or assumed to advance health and well-being” (Benson & Saito, n.d.). A multitude of lists of such processes and desired youth outcomes have been put forth, based on psychological theory and accumulated knowledge from practitioners (see Public/Private Ventures, n.d.).
