Youth Development Staff Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic: a Mixed Methods Study.

Background: Youth-serving organizations in the United States provide programs, activities, and opportunities for young people before school, during school, after school, in summer, and on weekends. At the core of youth-serving organizations are the adults; that is, youth development staff. Objective: In this explanatory sequential mixed methods study we explored youth development staff's stress and worries, their compassion satisfaction, and whether stress and compassion satisfaction varied by race/ethnicity and gender during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic - a collective trauma event. Methods: We surveyed 283 youth development staff and interviewed a subset of 25. Results: Results suggest that youth development staff experienced stress and compassion satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusion: We recommend organizational leaders provide youth development staff with support before a collective trauma event. They can work to change, add, or remove policies, practices, and routines to help decrease stress and increase compassion satisfaction. In addition, based on our results from this study our primary recommendation specific to collective trauma events, after taking care of their own personal wellness, is for youth development staff to focus on what is in their control and work to do those things for as many young people as they can.

Training Pre-Service Teachers to Better Serve LGBTQ High School Students.

Pre-service teachers rarely receive training on how best to serve lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) high school students. We tested whether participating in LGBTQ-focused service-based learning or LGBTQ-focused didactic training improved pre-service teachers' knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, and skills for serving LGBTQ high school students more than a control group. A non-randomised pre-test-post-test design with eighty-eight participants tested these differences. At post-test, the service-based learning group had significantly higher active-empathic listening and self-efficacy for working with LGBTQ high school students than the control group. There were no differences for didactic versus control groups. Overall, service-based learning may better prepare pre-service teachers to serve LGBTQ high school students.

Learning in the library: A national study of youth services public library workers.

AIMS: This study aims to interrogate the occupational identity of youth services public library workers across the United States and to understand specifically how this study is related to the learning ecosystem. Public library workers, especially those who work specifically with youth, are underrepresented in academic literature. METHOD: We adapted an interview method that allows participants to explain how they think different stakeholders perceive their work and used it in a digital survey with 306 youth services public library workers. RESULTS: Overall, the participants described their work as deeply connected to learning, specifically connecting people to resources, facilitating learning activities, and providing a space for learning. This reflects the evolving nature of public library services. CONCLUSION: Unfortunately, many library workers feel significant friction between their own understanding of their job and the views of outside stakeholders. We address this friction and its implications in our recommendations for future research and practice.

"You Never Know Who's Looking at Your Page!": African American Male Adolescents' Perceptions of Emotional Display Rules Online.

Social network sites (SNSs) are a powerful new context for adolescent development. We qualitatively investigate African American adolescent boys' (N = 50, mean age = 15.8) perceptions of emotional display rules on SNSs. We present and discuss a taxonomy of display rules for anger, sadness, embarrassment, and excitement. Perceived display rules around anger and sadness were most notable. Participants' understandings of display rules around anger were complex and varied, with many describing threats of violence as marking the line between acceptable and unacceptable expressions. Although youth stated that expressing sadness via SNS could garner emotional support, this was understood somewhat consistently as unacceptable. Overall, our findings suggest that perceptions of emotional display rules on SNSs are varied, complicated, and can be difficult to navigate.

Household Support for Physical Activity in Adolescent Girls Living in Primarily Low Socioeconomic Status Neighborhoods.

The purpose of this study was to examine the association between perception of household support and physical activity levels of adolescent girls living in primarily low socioeconomic status (SES) neighborhoods. The sample consisted of thirty-six adolescent girls (N=36; 60% non-Hispanic Black; mean age of 14.6 ± 1.3 [mean ± sd]; median body mass index (BMI) percentile of 90.5 [58.5, 97.0]) living in primarily low socioeconomic status (SES) neighborhoods. Trained researchers measured participants' height and weight, and administered questionnaires to assess perception of household support for physical activity and minutes per day participating in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) (3-Day Physical Activity Recall). Pearson's correlation, controlling for race, age, and BMI, was used to evaluate the association between perception of household support and adolescents' MVPA levels. There were no significant associations between measures of the perception of household support for physical activity and adolescents' MVPA levels. There were significant negative associations between total adult household support for physical activity (r=-0.51; p<.01) with BMI and the support provided by the closest adult in the household (r=-0.55; p<.01) with BMI. These data suggest that support for physical activity in the household for adolescents with higher BMI's may be warranted.

Involving youth in program decision-making: how common and what might it do for youth?

The strategy of sharing program decision-making with youth in youth programs, a specific form of youth-adult partnership, is widely recommended in practitioner literature; however, empirical study is relatively limited. We investigated the prevalence and correlates of youth program decision-making practices (e.g., asking youth to help decide what activities are offered), using single-level and multilevel methods with a cross-sectional dataset of 979 youth attending 63 multipurpose after-school programs (average age of youth = 11.4, 53 % female). The prevalence of such practices was relatively high, particularly for forms that involved low power sharing such as involving youth in selecting the activities a program offers. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed positive associations between youth program decision-making practices and youth motivation to attend programs. We also found positive correlations between decision-making practices and youth problem-solving efficacy, expression efficacy, and empathy. Significant interactions with age suggest that correlations with problem solving and empathy are more pronounced for older youth. Overall, the findings suggest that involving youth in program decision-making is a promising strategy for promoting youth motivation and skill building, and in some cases this is particularly the case for older (high school-age) youth.