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issue editors
summer2013
Matthew Calvert Mary Emery
Sharon Kinsey
FROM THE EDITORS
View this journal online at wileyonlinelibrary.com
Gil G. NoamEditor-in-Chief
NEW DIRECTIONS FORYOUTH DEVELOPMENT
TheoryPracticeResearch
Youth Programs as Builders of Social Capital
Youth programs that intentionally develop social capital for youth tap into interpersonal and organizational networks, supporting positive youth development and facilitating collective action to benefit the community. Youth programs can also be a location for the strengthening of social capital for an entire community. By focusing on social capital, the articles in this volume build understanding of practices in youth and community development that create or build social capital assets at the individual, group, and community levels. The authors explore whether the 4-H Youth Development Program and other similar youth development programs contribute to the development of social capital at the individual and community scales, thereby fostering and enhancing positive youth development as well as community development.
The volume includes articles on defining and measuring social capital through instruments designed to document impact and also to engage program participants. The authors then discuss program practices that build social capital in a wide range of youth development settings, from community-based service-learning to 4-H community clubs. Finally, they focus on building social capital in particular contexts, including work in rural communities with the most vulnerable youth.
The volume is designed to help practitioners refine their dual focus on youth and community development, clarifying constructs that help translate the public value of positive youth development to community stakeholders and providing examples of practices that link youth and youth programs more intentionally to the social relationships that knit communities together.
NEW
DIRECTIONS FOR YOU
TH DEVELOPM
ENT
Youth Programs as B
uilders of Social Capital
138
NEW DIRECTIONS FORYOUTH DEVELOPMENT
TheoryPracticeResearch
issue editors
Matthew Calvert Mary Emery
Sharon Kinsey
Youth Programs as Builders of Social Capital
summer 2013
Gil G. NoamEditor-in-Chief
Youth Programs as Builders of Social CapitalMatthew Calvert, Mary Emery, Sharon Kinsey (editors)New Directions for Youth Development, No. 138, Summer 2013Gil G. Noam, Editor-in-ChiefThis is a peer-reviewed journal.
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New Directions for Youth Development (ISSN 1533-8916, electronic ISSN 1537-5781) is part of the Jossey-Bass Psychology Series and is published quarterly by Wiley Subscrip-tion Services, Inc., A Wiley Company, at Jossey-Bass, One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to New Directions for Youth Development, Jossey-Bass, One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594.
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Cover photograph by © franckreporter/istockphoto
www.josseybass.com
Richard Lerner Tufts UniversityMedford, Mass.
Milbrey W. McLaughlin Stanford University
Stanford, Calif.
Pedro Noguera New York University
New York, N.Y.
Fritz Oser University of FribourgFribourg, Switzerland
Karen Pittman The Forum for Youth Investment
Washington, D.C.
Jane Quinn The Children’s Aid Society
New York, N.Y.
Jean Rhodes University of Massachusetts, Boston
Boston, Mass.
Rainer Silbereisen University of Jena
Jena, Germany
Elizabeth Stage University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, Calif.
Hans Steiner Stanford Medical School
Stanford, Calif.
Carola Suárez-Orozco New York University
New York, N.Y.
Marcelo Suárez-Orozco New York University
New York, N.Y.
K. Anthony Appiah Princeton UniversityPrinceton, N.J.
Dale A. Blyth University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minn.
Dante Cicchetti University of MinnesotaMinneapolis, Minn.
William Damon Stanford UniversityPalo Alto, Calif.
Goéry DelacoteAt-Bristol Science Museum Bristol, England
Felton Earls Harvard Medical School Boston, Mass.
Jacquelynne S. Eccles University of MichiganAnn Arbor, Mich.
Wolfgang Edelstein Max Planck Institute for Human DevelopmentBerlin, Germany
Kurt Fischer Harvard Graduate School of EducationCambridge, Mass.
Carol Gilligan New York University Law SchoolNew York, N.Y.
Robert Granger W. T. Grant Foundation New York, N.Y.
Ira HarkavyUniversity of PhiladelphiaPhiladelphia, Penn.
Reed Larson University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignUrbana-Champaign, Ill.
Gil G. Noam, Editor-in-ChiefHarvard University and McLean Hospital
Editorial Board
Erin Cooney, Editorial ManagerProgram in Education, Afterschool and Resiliency (PEAR)
Contents
Issue Editors’ Notes 1Matthew Calvert, Mary Emery, Sharon Kinsey
Executive Summary 9
1. Social capital: Its constructs and survey development 15Richard P. Enfield, Keith C. NathanielDeveloping a strategy for measuring social capital among youth clarifies the construct and practice.
2. Measuring social capital change using ripple mapping 31Barbara Baker, Elaine M. JohannesRipple mapping can help youth envision the impact of developing social capital.
3. Social capital and youth development: Toward a typology of program practices 49Mary EmeryThis article presents a typology of youth programming related to opportunities to develop social capital.
4. Using multiple youth programming delivery modes to drive the development of social capital in 4-H participants 61Sharon Kinsey4-H activities exemplify methods to build social capital.
5. A community development approach to service-learning: Building social capital between rural youth and adults 75Steven A. Henness, Anna L. Ball, MaryJo MoncheskiCommunity service-learning supports the building of social capital between youth and adults.
6. Social capital and vulnerability from the family, neighborhood, school, and community perspectives 97Bonita Williams, Suzanne M. Le MenestrelThis article provides examples of how the development of social capital can benefit vulnerable youth.
7. Engaging underrepresented youth populations in community youth development: Tapping social capital as a critical resource 109Nancy ErbsteinAn intentional focus on social capital in community initiatives facilitates the engagement of underrepresented youth.
8. Engaging young people as a community development strategy in the Wisconsin Northwoods 125William Andresen, Margaret Dallapiazza, Matthew CalvertThis article describes strategies to make communities more hospitable to young people in order to reverse the brain drain and increase community vibrancy.
Index 141
NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, NO. 138, SUMMER 2013 © WILEY PERIODICALS, INC.Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/yd.20053 1
Issue Editors’ Notes
we focus on social capital as a unifying theme for this volume as a way to enhance youth involvement strategies in both the youth and community development contexts. Social capital has been defined as the glue that makes communities work. It is composed of both vertical and horizontal networks, norms of reciprocity and trust, strong ties (bonding) that lead to people helping each other, and enforcing norms of social control and weak ties (bridging) that link people and organizations to resources, information, and influence.1 We focus on social capital for two key reasons. First, research demonstrates that programs that build social capital produce stronger outcomes for youth in terms of reaching educational and employment goals and in becoming contributing citizens. Evidence also exists that programs with a focus on social capital have greater youth attendance and participation. Second, a growing body of research indicates a strong correlation between a prosperous community and strong stocks of social capital. Both community and youth development efforts have tended to occur independent of one another, yet the pattern is changing as successful community change indicators demonstrate the power of youth involvement. At the same time, vibrant youth development efforts emerge from projects where youth choose to make a difference in the community.
This volume addresses the nexus of this convergence. By focusing on social capital, we can better understand what practices in youth and community development create or build social capital assets at the individual, group, and community levels. We explore how examples of the 4H Youth Development Program and other similar programs contribute to the development of social capital at the individual and community levels, thereby fostering and
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enhancing positive youth development as well as community development.
Social capital: Enhancing youth programming and youth outcomesReaders familiar with the concept of positive youth development will recognize the value of relationships, connections, and interlinkages mentioned in the definitions of social capital to the positive development, support, and wellbeing of all children and youth. Through ties and connections at the family, neighborhood, school, and community levels, young people gain access to a multitude of opportunities, experiences, and forms of support, including those in the areas of education, jobs and careers, emotional growth, and life skill development. Youth who have access to these connections are more likely to experience a successful transition to adulthood.2
Ferguson provides a critical synthesis of the international literature on social capital in relation to young people’s wellbeing. For Ferguson, the social capital literature “indicates that this social resource [social capital] can facilitate positive outcomes with respect to children’s and youth’s wellbeing, including reducing adolescent pregnancy, delinquency, academic failure, and child maltreatment.” Based on her work, Ferguson concludes that it can be beneficial to utilize a “social capital theoretical lens . . . to further explore various outcomes related to children and young people’s wellbeing.”3 This conclusion is based on two findings from her review: that social capital contributes to the welfare of children and youth and that social capital is second only to poverty in having the highest influence on children’s development and future success.
An often cited small qualitative study of three youthserving organizations offers additional support for the important role of social capital. Jarrett, Sullivan, and Watkins found that structured youth programs can and do facilitate the development of social
ISSUE EDITORS’ NOTES 3
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capital.4 Although some benefits of participation in youth programs are well documented for youth, little is known about the specific impact of participation on individual social capital development as well as on community social capital. We know that programs adhering to positive youth development principles foster youthadult partnerships and relationships that encourage active participation in communityoriented activities, often over many years in such programs as 4H.
Linking community and youth developmentSocial capital is about more than onetoone relationships: it adds value to the whole community as others can tap into the networks and accumulated trust. In fact, Chazdon, Allen, Horntvedt, and Scheffert presented their definition of social capital “as the web of cooperative relationships between members of the community that allows them to act collectively and solve problems together.”5
We find in examining communitybased youth programs that where these programs are strong, they result in an upward spiral of social capital across the community. Trust and productive relationships between youth and adults lead to expanded opportunities for youth development while building overall community capacity for civic engagement and community betterment. As the articles that follow indicate, youth programs can intentionally develop social capital for youth as they tap into interpersonal and organizational networks, and youth programs can also be a location for the strengthening of social capital for an entire community.
Defining and measuring social capitalSocial capital, according to the nationallevel Committee on CommunityLevel Programs for Youth, is a practical construct for examining the linkages and connections, and hence the developmental resources, that young people experience in a particular
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4 YOUTH PROGRAMS AS BUILDERS OF SOCIAL CAPITAL
setting.6 The first two articles focus on measuring this practical construct for the benefit of practitioners and researchers by using tools developed and tested by a multistate group of 4H and extension youth development practitioners. The tools enable practitioners to document impact and engage youth and adult stakeholders in focusing on community involvement, social networks, and the development of community capital.
In the opening article, Richard P. Enfield and Keith C. Nathaniel document their effort to develop survey and interview tools to measure youth social capital and the contribution of 4H program experiences to the constructs that make up social capital. Next, Barbara Baker and Elaine M. Johannes describe an assetmapping strategy that engages youth and adult partners in reflecting on the ripple effect of their activities on the community.
As Enfield and Nathaniel note, some researchers have questioned the precision of social capital as an explanatory construct, but it nevertheless retains value for practitioners and a range of community stakeholders. Team members have found that assessing and drawing attention to social capital has helped emphasize the value of new relationships, increased the trust of youth in communities, strengthened young people’s sense of community, and created opportunities to strengthen social capital further. Measuring social capital assists practitioners in making a case for the public value of youth work that intentionally creates social capital for participants and the broader community. Stakeholders will appreciate that communities are better off when youth organizations are engaged in building bridges to the community and fostering interpersonal relationships among diverse people.
Program practices that build social capitalThis volume also addresses the question of what program practices and structures contribute to networking and the development of social capital at both the individual and community levels. These results will inform both practitioners and researchers in the fields
ISSUE EDITORS’ NOTES 5
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of youth development and community development. Program practices also have implications for the mitigation of disparities, the production of inclusivity, and the creation of relationships among members of diverse communities.
This volume explores the role of communityfocused programming in developing social capital not only for participants but also for the community at large. We hypothesize that where these programs are strong, they result in a spiraling up of social capital across the community, leading to expanded opportunities for youth development while building overall community capacity for civic engagement and community betterment.7
In his book Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life, Mario Luis Small makes a strong case that the practices and the structures of programs and organizations in which people participate routinely shape their social interactions more than their deliberate networking.8
In the third article, Mary Emery reviews findings from our research teams’ efforts to map the impact of communityengaged youth programs across the nation and proposes a typology of youth program focused on bridging and bonding to foster social capital at the individual and community levels. The typology suggests that different methods of organizing youth development activities can have an impact on the development of social capital. Using the typology, youth and adults can intentionally change the organization of youth development programs to build in more opportunities to build social capital.
Next, Sharon Kinsey provides examples of different 4H modes, from 4H clubs and camps to schoolbased programs, to illustrate ways in which the practices of the nation’s largest youth program foster social capital development.
Contextual considerations in developing social capitalAccess to social capital, like other forms of capital, is not equally available to all members of society or a given community. Social
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6 YOUTH PROGRAMS AS BUILDERS OF SOCIAL CAPITAL
capital is identified with communitarian forms of social organization, including those with positive and negative social outcomes. Successful youth programming counteracts the dark side of social capital. This form of social capital can exclude people, resulting in less diverse settings, as well as include individuals in reactionary movements and gangs.9 However, the bright side of social capital is also generated among marginalized populations and can provide important supports to getting by and getting ahead.10
Bonita Williams and Suzanne M. Le Menestrel take a national look at the needs of vulnerable youth and how cooperative extension and other youth programs are addressing those needs. Then Nancy Erbstein provides a grounded example of communitybased programs that developed successful strategies for engaging vulnerable youth in building social capital for youth and adult community leaders.
Rural communities, with their more personalized networks and overlapping ties, provide the context for the final two articles. Steven A. Henness, Anna L. Ball, and MaryJo Moncheski focus on communitybased servicelearning and provide specific examples of how program practices develop social capital for rural youth and communities. Finally, William Andresen, Margaret Dallapiazza, and Matthew Calvert show how rural communities struggling for economic viability have turned to youth development as a key strategy for community development.
ConclusionThe articles in this volume make the case that youth programming that builds social capital provides benefits for the youth and adults involved, as well as for the community as a whole. Strategies for intentionally increasing the level of social capital can easily be integrated into existing programs, thus increasing the public good associated with supporting youth development. These articles also demonstrate that community development efforts can benefit from youth involvement. Youth engagement that fosters the develop
ISSUE EDITORS’ NOTES 7
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ment of both bridging and bonding social capital across generations can lead to the spiralingup effect, leading to stronger youth outcomes at the same time it supports the possibility of overall community prosperity.
Matthew Calvert Mary Emery Sharon Kinsey Issue Editors
Notes 1. Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital.
American Journal of Sociology, 94(Suppl.), S95–121. 2. Scales, P. C., Benson, P. L., Leffert, N., & Blyth, D. A. (2000). Contribu
tion of developmental assets to the prediction of thriving among adolescents. Applied Developmental Science, 4(1), 27–46; Benson, P. L. (1997). All kids are our kids: What communities must do to raise caring and responsible children and ado-lescents. San Francisco, CA: JosseyBass; National Research Council Institute of Medicine. (2002). Community programs to promote youth development. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
3. Ferguson, K. M. (2006). Social capital and children’s wellbeing: A critical synthesis of the international social capital literature. International Journal of Social Welfare, 15(1), 2–18. P. 9.
4. Jarrett, R. L., Sullivan, P. J., & Watkins, N. D. (2005). Developing social capital through participation in organized youth programs: Qualitative insights from three programs. Journal of Community Psychology, 33(1), 41–55.
5. Chazdon, S., Allen, R. P., Horntvedt, J., & Scheffert, D. R. (n.d.). Reflec-ting (on) social capital: Development and validation of a community-based social capi-tal assessment. Unpublished manuscript, University of Minnesota Extension.
6. National Research Council Institute of Medicine. (2002). Community programs to promote youth development. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
7. Flora, C. B., & Flora, J. L. (2008). Rural communities: Legacy and change (3rd ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
8. Small, M. L. (2009). Unanticipated gains: Origins of network inequality in everyday life. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
9. Portes, A., & Vickstrom, E. (2011). Diversity, social capital, and cohesion. Annual Review of Sociology, 37, 461–479.
10. Agnitsch, K., Flora, J., & Ryan, V. (2006). Bonding and bridging social capital: The interactive effects on community action. Community Development, 37(1), 36–51; Briggs, X. (1998). Brown kids in white suburbs: Housing mobility and the multiple faces of social capital. Housing Policy Debate, 9(1), 177–221; Floray, C., Floray, J., & Feymy, S. (2004). Rural communities: Legacy and change.
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Boulder, CO: Westview Press; Gittell, R., & Vidal, A. (1998). Community orga-nizing: Building social capital as a development strategy. London: Sage; Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360–1380.
matthew calvert is a 4-H youth development specialist and associate professor of youth development with the University of Wisconsin–Extension Cooperative Extension.
mary emery is the head of the Department of Sociology and Rural Studies at South Dakota State University.
sharon kinsey is the Camden County 4-H agent for Rutgers Cooperative Extension, Rutgers University.
