title: Doing for others: Youth's contributing behaviors and psychological engagement in youth-adult partnerships.
abstract: Youth contributions to others (e.g., volunteering) have been connected to indicators of successful development, including self-esteem, optimism, social support, and identity development. Youth-adult partnerships, which involve youth and adults working together towards a shared goal in activity settings, such as youth-serving agencies or recreation organizations, provide a unique opportunity for examining youth contributions. We examined associations between measures of youth's participation in youth-adult partnerships (psychological engagement and degree of partnering) in activity settings and youth contributing behaviors, in two Canadian samples: (a) community-involved youth (N = 153, mean age = 17.1 years, 65% female) and (b) undergraduates (N = 128, mean age = 20.1 years, 92.2% female). We found that degree of partnering and psychological engagement were related to each other yet independently predicted contributing behaviors. Our findings suggest that youth-adult partnerships might be one potentially rich context for the promotion of youth's contributions to others.
authors.affiliation: School of Social and Community Services, Humber Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning, Canada; Department of Child & Youth Studies, Brock University, Canada. Electronic address: heather.ramey@humber.ca.
authors.forename: Heather L
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Ramey
authors.affiliation: Department of Child & Youth Studies, Brock University, Canada; Department of Psychology, Bishop's University, Canada.
authors.forename: Heather L
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Lawford
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Brock University, Canada.
authors.forename: Linda
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rose-Krasnor
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D041923:Adolescent Development; D000328:Adult; D002170:Canada; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012649:Self Concept; D012941:Social Responsibility; D012944:Social Support; D013334:Students; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014838:Volunteers / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Contributing behaviors; Psychological engagement; Youth contributions; Youth engagement; Youth-adult partnerships