Prevention and Promotion in the Study of Positive Youth Development: A Relational Developmental Systems Approach

Contemporary, cutting-edge theory in developmental science – termed relational developmental systems (RDS) theories – emphasizes that the key unit of analysis in the study of the life span involves mutually influential relations between the developing individual and his or her multi-level, changing context, represented as individual ó context relations. The contextual levels of analysis included in the ecology of human development range from the biological through the cultural and historical. In that all individual ó context relations are embedded in history, or temporality, these relations have a potential for change; such changes may be stochastic or systematic and, when they are systematic, then relatively permanent changes can be promoted in individuals. The potential for instantiating such changes means that developmental scientists using RDS-based ideas can do more than just describe and explain development as occurring as a consequence of specific combinations of individuals and contexts. As well, developmental scientists can be optimistic that that changes across the life span can be optimized as a consequence of identifying individual ó context relations that might occur, or that might be created, in regard to discovering or to intervening to produce, respectively, positive or healthy development. In short, the RDS approach to developmental science can be associated with applied work that either alters existing individual ó context relations, prevents problematic occurrences of such relations, or that promotes positive instances of such relations. The RDS-based approach to the application of developmental science has been used across the life span, in work spanning the first through the tenth decade of life. However, the use of this approach in the study of adolescent development has burgeoned over the past two/three decades. This paper will both discuss data from the study of interventions using out-of-school-time, youth development programs as means to both change the course of individual ó context relations in the service of preventing risk/problem behaviors and, as well, of promoting youth thriving and the contributions young people make to their families, schools, communities, and civil society. Challenges to the use of an RDS-based prevention and promotion model, and opportunities to improve this approach, will be discussed.