You Can Quit Me But I’m Not Going to Quit You:” A Focus Group Study of Leaders’ Perceptions of Their Positive Influences on Youth in Boy Scouts of America

Abstract

As part of a longitudinal, mixed-method study with Boy Scouts of America, we conducted five focus groups with a diverse group of 46 program leaders in order to better understand their perceptions of how they influence youth. Drawing from grounded theory analysis methods, we found that leaders believed they promoted positive youth outcomes, including character and selfconfidence, through caring youth-leader relationships and facilitating opportunities for youth to participate in and lead skill-building activities and apply skills in different contexts. Leaders differed in the particular outcomes that they emphasized. Implications of these findings for future research and practice are discussed.

Towards the Promotion of Positive Development among Boys in Challenging Contexts: A Mixed-Methods Study of Engagement in the Scoutreach Initiative

“…Triangulation of data across sources and participant groups may be useful for assessing the validity of measures and for examining potential convergence and divergence in views (Guion, 2002;Hershberg et al, 2015). Accordingly, we collected quantitative and qualitative data from Scoutreach leaders, parents/guardians, and youth to examine similarities and differences in program-related experiences across data sources and participant groups.…”

“…Our study was inspired by a longitudinal, mixed-methods investigation, the Character and Merit Project (CAMP; Hilliard et al, 2014). During focus groups in the CAMP study, Scoutreach leaders discussed challenges in trying to implement the standard Scouting program in a way that was functional, feasible, and engaging to Scouts who were primarily from urban, lower-resource communities (Hershberg et al, 2015). Those findings informed our focus on exploring facilitators of youth engagement in Scoutreach in greater depth.…”

Character Development among Youth of Color from Low-SES Backgrounds: An Examination of Boy Scouts of America’s ScoutReach Program

“…Such conversations may also be one example of how ScoutReach programs are successfully adapting traditional Scouting curricula to positively impact youth and leaders' cultural competence (e.g., Hershberg et al, 2015).…”

“…Examination of ScoutReach youth program experiences from this perspective may provide a better understanding of how individual attributes (e.g., hopeful future expectations) among an understudied population of youth, may interact with characteristics of the OST program environment (e.g., adult mentors, activities in nature; Hershberg et al, 2015) to impact the development of character attributes. Given pervasive racial inequalities in the U.S., and the negative depictions of youth of color in the media (Adams-Bass et al, 2014), research detailing the strengths and positive experiences of young boys of color in urban communities, and the ecological resources in their lives (e.g., OST programs), is timely.…”

Character development among youth

“…Although I have presented these Big Three features as a list, in actual programs, these features need to be simultaneously and integratively present for character and the other Cs to be promoted effectively. For instance, in the programs of the Boy Scouts of America, the adult leaders of these programs articulate the components of the Big Three as a holistic set of procedures they use integratively to positively influence the lives of youth (Hershberg et al, 2015). Similarly, post-secondary students in a vocational training college had a similar, holistic understanding of the positive use of the Big Three by their instructors (DeSouza, 2016) My colleagues and I also used the 4-H Study data to examine possible relations between youth intentional self-regulation (selfcontrol) skills and participation in youth development programs possessing the Big Three.…”