Positive Youth Development Across Cultures: Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

Background: Promoting well-being of young people within the positive youth development (PYD) framework has been found to be promising. The basic models of PYD—the 5C’s (competence, confidence, character, connection, and caring) and developmental assets (significant relationships, skills, opportunities and values that promote thriving exemplified by external assets or environmental resources and internal assets or interpersonal strengths), have been largely shown to promote positive aspects of development among diverse samples of young people. However, PYD research has mainly been conducted within the US context. Objectives: Explore the generalizability of the PYD framework to understand and promote positive aspects of development in young people beyond the US context. Method: Six papers using cross-sectional methods reported data on adolescents and/or emerging adults (N = 6820) with diverse cultural backgrounds from ten countries (Brazil, China, El Salvador, Ghana, Italy, Kenya, Norway, Slovenia, South-Africa, Turkey) in four continents (Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America). Widely applied PYD scales developed within the US and adequately adapted in each cultural context were used for data collection. Results: The generalizability of the PYD framework (the presence and positive relations between the 5Cs and developmental assets in promoting optimal development) was largely confirmed among culturally diverse samples of young people investigated in the papers. Conclusion: While the findings of the current special issue extend the generalizability of the PYD framework beyond the US context, more research is needed to ascertain appropriate developmental assets to facilitate PYD, as defined by the specific context where young people are embedded.