Peter C Scales
Biographic Data
| ID | 298473 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter C Scales |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter C |
| FAMILY NAME | Scales |
| SIGNATURE | SCALES P C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Search Institute |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3418-9852 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 208 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 50 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1977 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Seeds of Trust: How Developmental Relationships Strengthen Opportunity Youths’ Social Capital and Positive Youth Development
This study examines how community-based organizations providing wraparound services support opportunity youth—young people who are neither enrolled in school nor employed—by facilitating access to relationships and resources responsive to their needs. The study focused on six programs in Minnesota, including four urban and two rural sites, designed to strengthen education and career outcomes for opportunity youth. Using semi-structured focus grou…
Validation of a youth social capital scale Informed by positive youth development
Informed by a positive youth development perspective, the current study develops and validates a brief social capital scale for adolescents and emerging adults from racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds. We first detail the development of the scale and examine its factor structure using exploratory factor analysis. Second, using a new and independent sample, we use confirmatory factor analysis to replicate and confirm the factor structure o…
Developmental Relationships: An Interpretative and Validity Argument for Research and Practice in Child Well-Being
Effects of developmental relationships on the well‐being of youth in high‐stress families
Relational social capital and educational equity among middle-school students: A person-centered analysis
Students’ relationships with their teachers are a form of social capital (i.e., relational social capital; RSC). Latent transition analysis (LTA) was used to investigate longitudinal patterns of RSC in a sample of 786 grades 6 (35%), 7 (35%), and 8 (30%) students (48% female, 37% Hispanic, 22% white, 68% low income), and their links to academic motivation and GPA. Three classes of students were identified: Those with greater likelihood of reporti…
Developmental Assets framework revisited: Confirmatory analysis and invariance testing to create a new generation of assets measures for applied research
Over five million young people have taken surveys, based on the Developmental Assets framework, aimed at understanding the internal strengths and external supports they have in their lives. These data have been effectively used to mobilize schools and community coalitions around the world to integrate a positive youth development lens into their applied work. The purpose of this article is to subject these asset measures to rigorous confirmatory …
The role of social capital in promoting work readiness among opportunity youth
Effects of developmental relationships with teachers on middle‐school students’ motivation and performance
We examined how middle‐school students’ motivation, belonging, school climate, and grade point average (GPA) are affected by students experiencing developmental relationships—those that go beyond teachers being caring (e.g., showing warmth to students) and providing challenge (e.g., high expectations) to also include teachers providing support, sharing power, and expanding students’ sense of possibilities. We also examined variations in those ass…
Competing discourses of power in teachers’ stories of challenging relationships with students
Student–teacher relationships have been largely explored in literature from the perspective of successful relationships, i.e., what constitutes a successful relationship and how teachers build them. However, in moments of student defiance, resistance or pushback, how do teachers react? When teachers recount such moments, is the narrative one describing the teacher’s attempt to maintain authority and order, or do teachers provide a different narra…
Academic Year Changes in Student-Teacher Developmental Relationships and Their Linkage to Middle and High School Students’ Motivation: A Mixed Methods Study
Student-teacher relationships that improve over time may help slow or prevent declines in student motivation. In a diverse sample of 1,274 middle and high school students from three schools, this mixed-methods study found that those who improved in developmental relationships with teachers reported greater academic motivation, and more positive perceptions of school climate and instructional quality. Improvements in teacher-student relationships …
The Contribution of Nonfamily Adults to Adolescent Well-Being
This chapter presents an extensive literature review and data from a sample of more than 30,000 children and youth from 30 countries, showing that young people worldwide do not experience an adequate level of developmental relationships with nonfamily adults that feature (a) care, (b) challenge, (c) support, (d) sharing of power with adults, and (e) expansion of young people’s possibilities. Young people who experience high-quality developmental …
Finding the fluoride: Examining how and why developmental relationships are the active ingredient in interventions that work
They asserted that "developmental interventions produce desirable outcomes if and only if such interventions enhanced developmental relationships". To illustrate their hypothesis, Li and Julian compared the role of developmental relationships in effective interventions to the role that fluoride plays in toothpaste: it is the active ingredient that directly and most powerfully contributes to the intended outcome. Although inactive ingredients such…
The dimensions of successful young adult development: A conceptual and measurement framework
In this article, we draw on the theoretical and empirical literature to name what appear to be core dimensions of successful young adult development. We also describe some possible indicators and measures of those dimensions and sketch the kinds of developmental relationships and opportunities young people need in adolescence to effectively transition to a successful young adulthood, as well as the developmental relationships and opportunities yo…
Aligning Youth Development Theory, Measurement, and Practice Across Cultures and Contexts: Lessons from Use of the Developmental Assets Profile
The Interest-Driven Pursuits of 15 Year Olds: “Sparks” and Their Association With Caring Relationships and Developmental Outcomes
In this study, we examined the characteristics of adolescents' deep interests or "sparks," the role of relationships in supporting the development of sparks, and whether having a spark was associated with positive developmental outcomes. Participants included 1,860 15 years olds from across the United States who participated in the national Teen Voice survey (56% European American, N = 1,860). Profile-centered analyses suggested that sparks are c…
Intervening with Practitioners to Improve the Quality of Prevention: One-Year Findings from a Randomized Trial of Assets-Getting To Outcomes
Building Developmental Assets to Empower Adolescent Girls in Rural Bangladesh: Evaluation of Project Kishoree Kontha
Kishoree Kontha (“Adolescent Girls' Voices”) was implemented in Bangladeshi villages to build the developmental assets (e.g., support from others, social competencies) of rural girls through peer education in social skills, literacy, and school learning. The Developmental Assets Profile ( DAP ) measured the project's impact on ecological and individual assets. Analysis of two cohorts involving more than 600 intervention and 400 control adolescent…
Beyond the “Village” Rhetoric: Creating Healthy Communities for Children and Adolescents
The role of community in child and adolescent development is emerging as a significant area of theoretical inquiry, research, and application. This article describes the development and utilization of a comprehensive community change effort designed to increase the attention of all community members toward strengthening core developmental processes for children and adolescents. It describes the development of 2 theoretical constructs, that of dev…
All Kids Are Our Kids: Remembering Peter L. Benson
When Peter Benson died suddenly on October 2, 2011, the world's youth lost one of their great champions. Those of us who knew him well lost a member of our family. I worked with Peter for more than
Establishing and Evaluating the Key Functions of an Interactive Systems Framework Using an Assets‐Getting to Outcomes Intervention
Community practitioners can face difficulty in achieving outcomes demonstrated by prevention science. Building a community practitioner's prevention capacity—the knowledge and skills needed to conduct critical prevention practices—could improve the quality of prevention and its outcomes. The purpose of this article is to: (1) describe how an intervention called Assets‐Getting To Outcomes (AGTO) was used to establish the key functions of the ISF a…
Peter Lorimer Benson (1946–2011)
Spiritual Identity: Contextual Perspectives
The contribution of the developmental assets framework to positive youth development theory and practice
Youth Developmental Assets in Global Perspective: Results from International Adaptations of the Developmental Assets Profile
Adolescent Thriving: The Role of Sparks, Relationships, and Empowerment
Conceptualizing and Modeling Individual and Ecological Asset Components of Thriving in Early Adolescence
Using two randomly selected separate subsamples of 50,000 middle or high school students drawn from the 1999 to 2000 Search Institute Profiles of Student Life Attitudes and Behavior survey, firstand second-order factors of items assessing internal and external assets were identified. In both samples, first-order exploratory factor analyses produced 14 scales with conceptual integrity and adequate reliability, although differences were found betwe…
Thriving in Adolescence: The Voices of Youth-Serving Practitioners, Parents, and Early and Late Adolescents
This study assesses if correspondence existed between concepts scholars use to discuss positive youth development (PYD) and terms used by practitioners, parents, and youth to discuss exemplary PYD, or thriving. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of 173 interviews about the meaning of thriving found no significant commonality between the terms used in the scholarly literature and the specific words or phrases used by the adult and youth partici…
Extended Family Members and Unrelated Adults in the Lives of Young Adolescents: A Research Agenda
The presence of caring adults in the extended family and unrelated adults, such as neighbors, teachers, youth workers, and clergy, is thought to make a positive contribution to young adolescent development. Many reports mention the importance of those relationships, but there is a sparse empirical literature describing their nature and role in young adolescents' lives. The available literature is reviewed here with respect to (a) identifying the …
The contribution to adolescent well‐being made by nonfamily adults: An examination of developmental assets as contexts and processes
The contribution of nonfamily adults to young people's well‐being was explored using both a cross‐sectional national sample of 614 12‐ to 17‐yearolds and a longitudinal sample of 370 students followed from 6th–8th grades through 10th–12th grades. Both variable‐ and person‐centered analyses were employed. Young people's involvement in volunteering, youth programs, and religious organizations was hypothesized to increase the frequency as well as th…
The role of neighborhood and community in building developmental assets for children and youth: A national study of social norms among American adults
Unrelated adults play potentially important roles in the positive socialization of children and youth, but studies of adolescents suggest the majority of adults do not engage positively with young people on an intentional, frequent, and deep basis. As a result, only a minority of young people report experiencing key developmental assets that have been associated with reduced risk‐taking behaviors and increased thriving. Social norms theory sugges…
Adolescent Thriving: The Role of Sparks, Relationships, and Empowerment
The Effects of Service-Learning on Middle School Students’ Social Responsibility and Academic Success
The effects of service-learning on social responsibility and academic success were investigated among a large, racially and socioeconomically diverse sample of students in Grades 6 through 8 in three middle schools. Over the school year, service-learning students maintained their concern for others’ social welfare, whereas control students declined on those concerns. Service-learning students, especially girls, also declined significantly less th…
Academic Year Changes in Student-Teacher Developmental Relationships and Their Linkage to Middle and High School Students’ Motivation: A Mixed Methods Study
Student-teacher relationships that improve over time may help slow or prevent declines in student motivation. In a diverse sample of 1,274 middle and high school students from three schools, this mixed-methods study found that those who improved in developmental relationships with teachers reported greater academic motivation, and more positive perceptions of school climate and instructional quality. Improvements in teacher-student relationships …
Males and Morals: Teenage Contraceptive Behavior amid the Double Standard
A review of the literature on teenage contraceptive decision making and contraceptive behavior finds a sexual double standard is operating within many teenage relationships. It is expressed in differential beliefs about virginity the context of sexual behavior and motivation to use contraception. Institutional and social-cultural standards have tended to discourage male participation and devalue the male role in family planning decisions. Despite…
Youth Developmental Assets in Global Perspective: Results from International Adaptations of the Developmental Assets Profile
School-Business Partnerships, Developmental Assets, and Positive Outcomes among Urban High School Students: A Mixed-Methods Study
This article reports the connections among urban students’ school-business partnership experiences, developmental assets or strengths they report in their lives, and positive developmental outcomes. Surveys were completed by 429 9th-to 12th-grade Hispanic and African American students, mostly low income in an inner-city high school, and 76 students, parents, school staff, and business partners participated in observations, interviews, and focus g…
Developing Capable Young People: An Alternative Strategy for Prevention Programs
Policies of the past 20 years have failed to reduce the incidence of adolescent pregnancy, school dropout, or substance abuse among United States youths. It is argued that this failure has been due, in part, to a narrow conceptualization of prevention and an unduly negative view of the adolescent stage of development. A policy framework and an agenda are outlined that focus not on preventing seemingly separate social problems but on developing he…
The role of social capital in promoting work readiness among opportunity youth
Aligning Youth Development Theory, Measurement, and Practice Across Cultures and Contexts: Lessons from Use of the Developmental Assets Profile
Building Developmental Assets to Empower Adolescent Girls in Rural Bangladesh: Evaluation of Project Kishoree Kontha
Kishoree Kontha (“Adolescent Girls' Voices”) was implemented in Bangladeshi villages to build the developmental assets (e.g., support from others, social competencies) of rural girls through peer education in social skills, literacy, and school learning. The Developmental Assets Profile ( DAP ) measured the project's impact on ecological and individual assets. Analysis of two cohorts involving more than 600 intervention and 400 control adolescent…
Competing discourses of power in teachers’ stories of challenging relationships with students
Student–teacher relationships have been largely explored in literature from the perspective of successful relationships, i.e., what constitutes a successful relationship and how teachers build them. However, in moments of student defiance, resistance or pushback, how do teachers react? When teachers recount such moments, is the narrative one describing the teacher’s attempt to maintain authority and order, or do teachers provide a different narra…
The Role of Parental Status and Child Age in the Engagement of Children and Youth with Adults Outside their Families
The authors report on a telephone poll with a nationally representative sample of 1,425 U.S. adults in which they investigated how parental status and age of child might affect patterns of adult engagement with children and youth outside their own families. Compared to nonparents, parents considered 12 of 20 ways of being involved with young people to be significantly more important for all adults to do. This result suggests that fears of negativ…
Establishing and Evaluating the Key Functions of an Interactive Systems Framework Using an Assets‐Getting to Outcomes Intervention
Community practitioners can face difficulty in achieving outcomes demonstrated by prevention science. Building a community practitioner's prevention capacity—the knowledge and skills needed to conduct critical prevention practices—could improve the quality of prevention and its outcomes. The purpose of this article is to: (1) describe how an intervention called Assets‐Getting To Outcomes (AGTO) was used to establish the key functions of the ISF a…
The public image of adolescents
A Community Sex Education Program for Parents
This paper reports on the organization, delivery, and part of the evaluation of a three-year community project in sex education for parents. The proJect was based on the philosophy that parents are the main sex educators of their children, whether they do it well or badly. The aim of the project was to defuse common myths that hinder communication about sexuality in order to help parents become more effective sex educators of their own children. …
Males and Morals: Teenage Contraceptive Behavior amid the Double Standard
A review of the literature on teenage contraceptive decision making and contraceptive behavior finds a sexual double standard is operating within many teenage relationships. It is expressed in differential beliefs about virginity the context of sexual behavior and motivation to use contraception. Institutional and social-cultural standards have tended to discourage male participation and devalue the male role in family planning decisions. Despite…
A Community Sex Education Program for Parents
This paper reports on the organization, delivery, and part of the evaluation of a three-year community project in sex education for parents. The proJect was based on the philosophy that parents are the main sex educators of their children, whether they do it well or badly. The aim of the project was to defuse common myths that hinder communication about sexuality in order to help parents become more effective sex educators of their own children. …
The New Sex Education
Sex in Politics and Policy
No abstract available for this article
Perceived barriers to sex education: A survey of professionals
This study describes the perceived importance of 165 potential barriers to sex education. A total of 104 professionals actively working as administrators, teachers, or evaluators of sex education programs rated the importance of the barriers in restricting or adversely affecting their own sex education programs. This study provides the median and mean ratings of the individual barriers and a factor analysis of the most highly‐rated barriers. The …
Overcoming future barriers to sexuality education
1989). Overcoming future barriers to sexuality education. Theory Into Practice: Vol. 28, Sexuality Education, pp. 172-176
Developing Capable Young People: An Alternative Strategy for Prevention Programs
Policies of the past 20 years have failed to reduce the incidence of adolescent pregnancy, school dropout, or substance abuse among United States youths. It is argued that this failure has been due, in part, to a narrow conceptualization of prevention and an unduly negative view of the adolescent stage of development. A policy framework and an agenda are outlined that focus not on preventing seemingly separate social problems but on developing he…
How Teachers and Education Deans Rate the Quality of Teacher Preparation for the Middle Grades
Extended Family Members and Unrelated Adults in the Lives of Young Adolescents: A Research Agenda
The presence of caring adults in the extended family and unrelated adults, such as neighbors, teachers, youth workers, and clergy, is thought to make a positive contribution to young adolescent development. Many reports mention the importance of those relationships, but there is a sparse empirical literature describing their nature and role in young adolescents' lives. The available literature is reviewed here with respect to (a) identifying the …
Developmental Assets: Measurement and Prediction of Risk Behaviors Among Adolescents
(1998). Developmental Assets: Measurement and Prediction of Risk Behaviors Among Adolescents. Applied Developmental Science: Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 209-230
Beyond the 'Village' Rhetoric: Creating Healthy Communities for Children and Adolescents
The role of community in child and adolescent development is emerging as a significant area of theoretical inquiry, research, and application. This article describes the development and utilization of a comprehensive community change effort designed to increase the attention of all community members toward strengthening core developmental processes for children and adolescents. It describes the development of 2 theoretical constructs, that of dev…
Contribution of Developmental Assets to the Prediction of Thriving Among Adolescents
This article investigated the contribution of developmental assets to the prediction of thriving behaviors among adolescents. The study was based on a sample of 6,000 youth in Grades 6-12 evenly distributed across 6 ethnic groups. Investigated were the effects of gender, grade, and levels of youth assets on 7 thriving indicators: school success, leadership, valuing diversity, physical health, helping others, delay of gratification, and overcoming…
The Effects of Service-Learning on Middle School Students’ Social Responsibility and Academic Success
The effects of service-learning on social responsibility and academic success were investigated among a large, racially and socioeconomically diverse sample of students in Grades 6 through 8 in three middle schools. Over the school year, service-learning students maintained their concern for others’ social welfare, whereas control students declined on those concerns. Service-learning students, especially girls, also declined significantly less th…
The role of neighborhood and community in building developmental assets for children and youth: A national study of social norms among American adults
Unrelated adults play potentially important roles in the positive socialization of children and youth, but studies of adolescents suggest the majority of adults do not engage positively with young people on an intentional, frequent, and deep basis. As a result, only a minority of young people report experiencing key developmental assets that have been associated with reduced risk‐taking behaviors and increased thriving. Social norms theory sugges…
The public image of adolescents
Other People’s Kids: Social Expectations and American Adults? Involvement with Children and Adolescents
The Relation of Community Developmental Attentiveness to Adolescent Health
Adults must become more intentional about building the relationships, opportunities, values, and skills young people need for optimally healthy development
The Role of Parental Status and Child Age in the Engagement of Children and Youth with Adults Outside their Families
The authors report on a telephone poll with a nationally representative sample of 1,425 U.S. adults in which they investigated how parental status and age of child might affect patterns of adult engagement with children and youth outside their own families. Compared to nonparents, parents considered 12 of 20 ways of being involved with young people to be significantly more important for all adults to do. This result suggests that fears of negativ…
Conceptualizing and Modeling Individual and Ecological Asset Components of Thriving in Early Adolescence
Using two randomly selected separate subsamples of 50,000 middle or high school students drawn from the 1999 to 2000 Search Institute Profiles of Student Life Attitudes and Behavior survey, firstand second-order factors of items assessing internal and external assets were identified. In both samples, first-order exploratory factor analyses produced 14 scales with conceptual integrity and adequate reliability, although differences were found betwe…
Thriving in Adolescence: The Voices of Youth-Serving Practitioners, Parents, and Early and Late Adolescents
This study assesses if correspondence existed between concepts scholars use to discuss positive youth development (PYD) and terms used by practitioners, parents, and youth to discuss exemplary PYD, or thriving. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of 173 interviews about the meaning of thriving found no significant commonality between the terms used in the scholarly literature and the specific words or phrases used by the adult and youth partici…
School-Business Partnerships, Developmental Assets, and Positive Outcomes among Urban High School Students: A Mixed-Methods Study
This article reports the connections among urban students’ school-business partnership experiences, developmental assets or strengths they report in their lives, and positive developmental outcomes. Surveys were completed by 429 9th-to 12th-grade Hispanic and African American students, mostly low income in an inner-city high school, and 76 students, parents, school staff, and business partners participated in observations, interviews, and focus g…
The contribution to adolescent well‐being made by nonfamily adults: An examination of developmental assets as contexts and processes
The contribution of nonfamily adults to young people's well‐being was explored using both a cross‐sectional national sample of 614 12‐ to 17‐yearolds and a longitudinal sample of 370 students followed from 6th–8th grades through 10th–12th grades. Both variable‐ and person‐centered analyses were employed. Young people's involvement in volunteering, youth programs, and religious organizations was hypothesized to increase the frequency as well as th…
Promoting Equal Developmental Opportunity and Outcomes Among America’s Children and Youth: Results from the National Promises Study
The definition and preliminary measurement of thriving in adolescence
We describe ‘thriving’ as an under-utilized construct that can add value to theory, research, and application in adolescent development. We draw on developmental systems theories to suggest that thriving represents the dynamic and bi-directional interplay of a young person intrinsically animated and energized by discovering his/her specialness, and the developmental contexts (people, places) that know, affirm, celebrate, encourage, and guide its …
Positive Youth Development and the Prevention of Youth Aggression and Violence
Both individual and ecological influences are implicated as factors linked to youth violence. In this paper, we conduct analyses on several databases of 6th -12th grade students in the United States, to explore the linkage of positive relationships
Psychology (48 works) · Developmental psychology (35 works) · Youth Development and Social Support (30 works) · Early Childhood Education and Development (26 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Political science (17 works) · Social Psychology (17 works) · Positive Youth Development (14 works) · Medicine (11 works) · Social Psychology (10 works)