Positive Youth Development Toolbox

The Colorado Youth Development Team aims to enhance, unify and promote positive youth development across Colorado. As a part of the team’s action plan, members developed the resources below so that others may incorporate positive youth development strategies into their work. Please use any and all of the resources. And, as always, please provide the team with feedback with how it can better support your positive youth development efforts.

Reports and Checklists

Positive Youth Development: Supporting Colorado Youth to Reach Their Full Potential
This report provides results and recommendations from a statewide assessment of positive youth development across Colorado.

• Full Report
• Executive Summary
• Checklist for Youth-Serving Professionals
• Checklist for Policy and Decision Makers
• Checklist for Public and Private Funders
• PowerPoint Presentation
• Introductory Video on PYD and CYDT Created by Youth
• List of Colorado Youth Advisory Boards organized by county with contact information. Click here to add your youth advisory board to the list.
• Connect with positive youth development advocates across the state through the Ning social networking site.

Research and Evaluation

Positive Youth Development Process Evaluation
This evaluation can support you in evaluating your organization or program’s positive youth development approach and identify areas for improvement.

Thriving At 25 Outcomes Evaluation Tool
This tool will help you assess your program or community in terms of its strengths and the behaviors and attributes we want young people to have.

Training and Technical Assistance
Getting Youth to the Table PowerPoint Presentation
Getting Youth to the Table Tip Sheet

Learn how to engage youth based on the literature AND from youth leaders across Colorado.

Youth-Adult Partnership Tool Catalog
This is a criteria-based list of over 20 tools (mainly free!) that support organizations in partnering authentically with youth and young adults.

The Positive Youth Development Process Evaluation Tool is designed to help organizations or programs evaluate their positive youth development approach.  Each of the seven principles that Colorado has identified as being critical to positive youth development is examined, which include:

• Strengths-Based Approach
• Youth Engagement
• Youth-Adult Partnerships
• Cultural Responsiveness
• Inclusive of ALL Youth
• Collaboration
• Sustainability

The survey is intended for program and organizational staff and is based off of the Colorado Youth Development Team’s survey research in 2008.  Reliability testing and factor analysis was conducted to refine the measures for greater ease and accuracy.

Please click here to request a unique survey link for your program or organization.  The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Epidemiology, Planning and Evaluation Unit will provide you with the results.

The Thriving At 25 Outcomes Evaluation Tool is based on the Prevention Leadership Council’s framework for children and youth and provides strengths-based measures for holistic development.  The tool compliments needs assessments or risk behavior surveys to add the other half of what positive youth development aims for – the healthy development and full potential of all young people.  The Thriving At 25 Framework is based on the Forum for Youth Investment’s Ready by 21 Dashboard and contains five domains for healthy development.  Colorado Youth Development Team’s Research and Evaluation Committee – a team of academics, evaluators and youth-serving professionals – researched reliable, valid and positive measures that examine what we DO want to see young people think, feel and do.  Click on each domain to preview the sub-domains that Colorado Youth Development Team’s evaluation tool measures:

Learning:  Developing positive, basic and applied academic attitudes, skills and behaviors

• Belonging – connecting with school, peers and teachers
• Productivity – Knowing how to be successful in the classroom
• Aspirations – having goals and plans for the future

Working:  Developing positive vocational attitudes, skills and behaviors

• Cooperation and communication
• See also:  Learning – Productivity and Aspirations; Connecting (Social Self-Efficacy); and Contributing/Leading

Thriving:  Developing physical, mental and emotional health attitudes, skills and behaviors

• Physical Activity
• Diet
• Ethnic Identity
• Self-esteem
• Problem Solving
• Perceived Norms about Sexual Intercourse
• Attitudes about Condom Use
• Knowledge of Condom Use

Connecting:  Developing positive social and relationship attitudes, skills and behaviors

• Perceived Support (Family)
• Perceived Support (Peers)
• Perceived Support (Significant other)
• Social Self-Efficacy (Peer)
• Communication with Parents or Other Adults about Puberty and Sex
• Communication with Partner: Condoms/Contraception
• Sense of Community

Contributing/Leading:  Developing positive civic attitudes, skills and behavior

• Constructive Use of Time
• Competence for Civic Action
• Critical Consumer of Information
• Civic Accountability
• Political Efficacy
• Awareness of Root Causes for Social Inequity and Health Disparity
• Personally Responsible Citizen

Click here to request a unique survey link for your program or community.

Colorado Youth Development Team’s Research and Evaluation Committee recommends to utilize all measures within the tool, as one of the goals is to capture the holistic development of our youth.  However, the committee understands time constraints and will customize the tool to address the sub-domains you are most interested in examining.  Click here to customize the Thriving At 25 Outcomes Evaluation Tool.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Epidemiology, Planning and Evaluation Unit will provide the results.

If you are interested in reviewing the empirical history for each of the measures and their overlap with the Youth Risk Behavior Survey and the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, please click here.

Much thanks to the Colorado Youth Development Team Research and Evaluation Committee:

Mario Rivera, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
Dr. Elaine Belanksy, University of Colorado – Denver
Kippi Clausen, Mile High United Way
Dr. Amy Engelman, Center for Systems Integration
Dr. Cynthia Hazel, University of Denver
Ellen Toomey Hale, Youth Intermedia Educational Empowerment Foundation
Stefanie Winfield, Colorado Youth Matter