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A multi-method evaluation was conducted to assess the TextToday pilot program, the nation's first crisis line with the capacity to accept text messages. Objectives of the evaluation included how successful the system was in meeting the needs of underserved youth and how effectively the social marketing campaign reached the target population with information about the texting crisis service. The service was found to increase youth help-seeking behaviors among our pilot study population. Implications for replication, integrating texting into community crisis services, and future research are discussed. C 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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Growing interest in understanding the role of students' social-emotional competence for school success necessitates valid measures for large-scale use. We provide validity evidence for the 40-item Washoe County School District Social-Emotional Competency Assessment (WCSD-SECA), a student self-report measure that came from a researcher-practitioner partnership. The WCSD's social and emotional learning standards, which detail when and at what grade students are expected to express different competencies, contributed to hypotheses about the social-emotional competency levels targeted by the WCSD-SECA items. Across two survey years, Rasch analyses showed that the empirical item ordering aligned with the expected ordering to varying degrees, that items better targeted students at low to middle competency levels, and that some items showed differential item functioning across grades and gender/ race-ethnicity. Future research can use similar methods to theorize and test how items array along latent competency dimensions in general and for particular subgroups. Especially when accomplished within a researcher-practitioner partnership, such efforts can mutually inform district social and emotional learning standards, helping document student progress in a locally and practically relevant way. By making the WCSD-SECA items freely available, we make it easy for researchers and practitioners to complete future refinements and adaptations. Impact and ImplicationsWe provide three types of validity evidence for the 40-item Social-Emotional Competency Assessment (SECA), a measure developed through a researcher-practitioner partnership with a large Western school district. The items better targeted students at low to middle competency levels, often (not always) were consistent with district standards, and sometimes functioned differently by students' grade levels and gender/race-ethnicity.

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Frontline youth workers' ability to form strong, positive relationships with program youth is a key element in maximizing the benefits of program participation. A recent National Collaboration of Youth (2006) report identified six elements associated with youth workers' competency to complete their professional roles: compensation, training opportunities, supportive work environment, clear work roles, sense that work is valued, and networking opportunities. The current study investigated whether having these elements predicted 459 youth workers' self-reported job competency in forming positive relationships with youth. Regression analyses revealed that job efficacy, clarity of work roles, and benefits significantly predicted competency in forming strong relationships with program youth. Findings are discussed in relation to practice implications for the youth work field.

This paper examines issues in using self‐reports of involvement in violent acts to measure a latent construct (propensity toward violence). Three issues are addressed. First, the meaning of latent variables and the factor‐analytic approach to modeling latent constructs are discussed. Second, the comparability of self‐report violence measures across race and sex groups is assessed. Third, the consequences are discussed of estimating factor analytic models on pooled samples of data where the measurement component of the model does not apply equally for different subsets of the sample.