NCJ Number
216234
Journal
Journal of Adolescence Volume: 29 Issue: 5 Dated: October 2006 Pages: 691-708
Date Published
October 2006
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This longitudinal study investigated the relation of “developmental assets”--positive relationships, opportunities, skills, values, and self-perceptions to academic achievement over time.
Abstract
Findings from this study indicate a positive relationship between developmental assets and grade point average (GPA). The higher students’ asset levels, the higher their current GPA and their GPA several years later. Also, increases in assets are related to increases in GPA. The modal developmental path for students moving from middle school through high school was a decline in assets. In a practical sense then, if school-based positive youth development strategies can simply help maintain students’ earlier asset levels, much less increase them, subsequent GPA may be favorably affected. These results offer promising evidence of how a broad focus on building the developmental nutrients in young people’s lives may contribute to promoting their academic achievement. One of the strategies communities can use to positively affect achievement and merits consideration is the building of developmental assets. An extensive number of studies have been conducted, model reform approaches tried, and heated political dialogue carried on in order to identify successful ways of reforming schools to promote achievement and lessen achievement inequities among students. A sample of 370 students in the 7th through 9th grades in 1998 were followed for 3 years in order to investigate the relation of “developmental assets,”--positive relationships, opportunities, skills, values, and self-perceptions to academic achievement over time, using actual GPA as the key outcome variable. Tables, figures, and references