Progress 10/01/16 to 09/30/19
Outputs
Target Audience: 4-H youth in NYS - More than 200 youth across the state took part in our survey study, which asked them to reflect on their experiences in 4-H as well as their sense of purpose in life. The act of reflecting on these questions may help them assign meaning to their 4-H programming experiences. Youth will continue to benefit from the development of the educational aid, a mobile app which educators can use prior to future 4-H program efforts. Reflecting on purpose in life prior to participating in programs may help youth engage more deeply with the learning experiences 4-H offers. 4-H educators and volunteers & other youth development workers - We reached this group of youth development professionals through the series of professional development workshops and focus groups led by our project staff. In addition, we delivered a webinar as part of the CCE System Conference and a presentation/poster at the NYSACCE4-HE Conference. Our project report in the form of a "4-H Newsletter" can be accessed in perpetuity through our website, and the mobile App-based educational aid will be available to support educators work with youth moving forward. Broome County, Capital Region, North Country Region, Schuyler County, Tompkins County - In particular, these counties or regions in New York participated in the workshop/focus group component of this project. 4-H programming in these areas is delivered to youth from various populations, including, but not limited to: rural and urban, military, and low socioeconomic status. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This project provided a number of professional development opportunities directly for 4-H educators and volunteers. The initial focus group study was accompanied by a brief professional development workshop for all participating educators which offered definitions of youth purpose and insight into the research literature on the benefits of a sense of purpose in life. In addition, similar research-based insights have been featured in our practitioner outreach efforts both in person and online. This project has also provided key training experiences for postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, and undergraduate students here at Cornell University. These training experiences have included experience in project management, data collection, qualitative and quantitative data analysis (include the cutting edge LDA technique described above), creation of presentations, and publication preparation. For our graduate student workers in the department of Human Development in particular, the experience of working on a translational research project that directly involved youth practitioners offered a unique research placement. Undergraduate students took part in key aspects of the research process as well, and two students were hired to support the creation of our mobile application. These students gained a unique web development experience working on a product that will benefit youth in 4-H across the state. Finally, a key goal of this Hatch project was linked to a concurrent Smith-Lever project, which focused on understanding and addressing barriers to research-practice partnerships to study youth development in the 4-H setting. This Hatch project offered a test case of a specific research-practice partnership focused on youth purpose, which allowed us to learn about more and less successful collaborative approaches to research in the 4-H setting. Lessons learned (e.g., incentive structures that allow 4-H county programs to allocate some staff time to research support, advantages of having researchers presenting findings at 4-H practitioner conferences) offered key professional development for PRYDE staff that continues to inform our approaches to supporting effective research-practice collaborations. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Throughout the course of this project, our team has worked closely with the community of 4-H educators that constitute our main community of interest. We have learned from them about the activities that they view as linked to youth purpose, and even included them in providing feedback regarding our interpretation of the focus group responses. In order to ensure that they remained informed about our results, we prioritized presentations at 4-H practitioner conferences. These conferences are ideal settings for dissemination because they are already annual draws for 4-H educators. In addition, our research team has benefited from close working relationships with 4-H leadership team members here at Cornell along with an advisory board of seven New York State 4-H educators. Providing updates on this project's progress and findings has been a key feature of our annual advisory board meetings. In Year 3, much of our focus has been on writing up the results of this project for both practitioner and researcher audiences. A practitioner-focused report on our focus group results was released as a "PRYDE 4-H Newsletter" in August 2019 through both our website and our Twitter account. This report provides a detailed description of our findings in non-technical language for a broad audience. These same results are the subject of a scholarly manuscript currently under review, which will extend the reach of these findings to an academic audience of developmental researchers interested in positive youth development and out-of-school programs. A selection of key outreach activities are listed below: Ratner, K., Porcelli, S., Burrow, A. L., & Sumner, R. (2019). How do 4-H leaders think the program contributes to youth purpose?: Insights from machine learning. PRYDE 4-H Newsletter. Retrieved from https://pryde.bctr.cornell.edu/news/2019/8/14/how-do-4-h-leaders-think-the-program-contributes-to-youth-purpose Sumner, R., Burrow, A. L., & Agans, J. P. (2018, April). Cultivating purpose in a youth development program context. Presentation delivered at the biannual meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence, Minneapolis, MN. Sumner, R., Burrow, A. L., & Agans, J. P. (2017, October). 4-H program practices believed to promote purpose in life. Poster and presentation delivered at annual meeting of the New York State Association of Cornell Cooperative Extension 4-H Educators, Ellicottville, New York. Sumner, R. (2017, May). Promoting the development of purpose in life. Presentation delivered at the annual conference of Families Together in New York State, Albany, New York. Sumner, R., & Rainone, N. A. (2017, April). 4-H programs as contexts for promoting the development of youth's purpose in life. Online presentation delivered at the annual Cornell Cooperative Extension System Conference, Ithaca, New York. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Over the course of the project, we have conducted two research studies to understand the characteristics of 4-H Youth Development Programs that foster a sense of purpose among participating youth. The first study aimed to identify features of 4-H programs that 4-H educators and volunteers believed promote purpose development among youth people. We conducted a series of eight focus groups with 63 4-H educators and volunteers across five different regions of New York State. After an initial workshop to define and explain the concept "youth purpose," educators answered questions about how 4-H might support youth purpose development. Their responses were analyzed and used to design the second study. In the second study, over 200 youth in 4-H completed a web-based survey that assessed the types of 4-H program activities they had experienced and their sense of purpose. Taken together, these two studies offer a window into youth purpose development in 4-H from the perspectives of both 4-H educators and youth participants. In Year 3 in particular, we focused on objectives 2 and 3. Related to objective 2, we completed our quantitative and qualitative data analysis to understand the associations between 4-H program characteristics and youth purpose. In Year 2, qualitative analysis of the focus group study revealed a set of 4-H activities that educators believed were related to youth purpose. To supplement these results, in Year 3 we applied a machine learning text analysis approach called Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to this dataset. This advanced technique deepened our understanding of how 4-H educators think about youth purpose and their own purpose in the context of their work with 4-H. Overall, leaders think 4-H promotes purpose development in youth through exposure to new and diverse experiences made available through the variety of resources within 4-H. In addition, data analysis of the survey study with 4-H youth was completed in Year 3 as well, extending our understanding of specific program attributes that are associated with youth purpose. Related to objective 3, we focused on disseminating our findings to both practitioner and research audiences. These dissemination efforts are described more fully below, but include practitioner-friendly reports as well as scholarly journal article preparation. Notably, we also developed an educational tool intended to foster deeper engagement with 4-H programming by encouraging youth to think about their purpose in life, one of the techniques that educators viewed as linked to purpose development in 4-H. This mobile application is designed to be used in a variety of 4-H program settings due to its brief and user-friendly design. This mobile app gives 4-H educators access to a purpose-related activity to use with their youth participants long after the conclusion of the Hatch funding and may inspire future research-practice collaborations between our team and 4-H practitioners in New York State.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Burrow, A. L., Ratner, K., Porcelli, S., & Sumner, R. (2020). Does purpose grow here?: Exploring 4-H as a context for cultivating youth purpose. Manuscript under initial review.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Ratner, K., Porcelli, S., & Burrow, A. L. (2020). Purpose in life, dispositional urgency, and the propensity to engage in risky and self-destructive behaviors. Manuscript in preparation.
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Progress 10/01/17 to 09/30/18
Outputs
Target Audience: 4-H educators and volunteers - These individuals were reached by our efforts through the professional development workshops and focus groups, in addition to the online presentation we delivered for the CCE System Conference and the presentation/poster presented at the NYSACCE4-HE Conference. Other youth development workers - Some attendees of the 2018Families Together in New York State conference participated in a workshop about adolescent purpose development delivered by a member of our research team. Many of these individuals work with programs serving children who have been involved in systems including those related to mental health, substance abuse, special education, juvenile justice, and foster care. Broome County, Capital Region, North Country Region, Schuyler County, Tompkins County - These counties or regions in New York participated in the workshop/focus group component of this project. 4-H programming in these areas is delivered to youth from various populations, including, but not limited to: rural and urban, military, and low socioeconomic status. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Professional development workshops were embedded in the focus group portion of this project, which offered training to participating 4-H educators and volunteers about purpose in life, its meaning and its benefits for youth. In addition to opportunities for participating 4-H educators and volunteers to reflect on their programming goals, this project has also offered important training opportunities for undergraduate research assistants on our project team. Together, two research assistants, Aditi Joshi & Brittany Tabora, presented findings at the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research's annual Student Showcase (May 2018). In addition, Brittany Tabora also presented findings from this project in the year end poster session at the Cornell Undergraduate Research Board's annual Spring Forum (May 2018). Firsthand experiences coding, analyzing, and presenting qualitative data are learning experiences that students are unlikely to encounter in the classroom. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Results from the focus groups with 4-H educators and volunteers have been shared in person with three of the five counties/regions that participated and through presentations at the annual New York State Association of Cornell Cooperative Extension 4-H Educators conference. The project was also presented to the Cornell campus community by student research assistants at the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research Student Presentation Day in May, 2018, attended by more than 30 Cornell researchers and students. In the past year, we have also presented findings to the broader academic community. Findings were presented in April at a national conference for youth development researchers in a presentation delivered by PRYDE postdoctoral scholar, Rachel Sumner: Sumner, R., Burrow, A. L., & Agans, J. P. (2018, April). Cultivating purpose in a youth development program context. Presentation delivered at the biannual meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence, Minneapolis, MN. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Within the next reporting period, we will complete the analysis of the data we've completed collecting from youth in 4-H during the current reporting period. These analyses will allow us to complete Goal 2, as we will be able to empirically determine the extent to which the prevalence of specific program characteristics is linked with youth purpose in our sample. We will share findings through reports to participating counties and other platforms utilized by 4-H educators/volunteers that our practitioner collaborators recommend. By identifying specific program characteristics and experiences that matter for youth purpose in life, 4-H educators will be better informed to design experiences that meet their goals for youth participants. In addition, we will prepare reports of findings for peer-reviewed outlets so that a broad audience of researchers and practitioners interested in purpose in life can learn from our results.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Year 2 of the project focused primarily on accomplishing the second goal. The first goal was accomplished during Year 1, in which we conducted focus groups with 4-H educators and volunteers around NYS to determine which characteristics of 4-H Youth Development Programs they believe foster the development of purpose among youth participants. These responses allowed us, in Year 2, to complete the creation of an assessment tool for use with 4-H youth participants, in order to measure the prevalence of these program characteristics among youth's experiences in 4-H. Not only has this tool been created, we have already collected data from 167 youth in 4-H with a survey that will allow us to determine whether these program characteristics are linked to self-reported youth purpose (Goal 2). Related to the third goal, we have also shared findings from the initial focus group study with 4-H educators and research communities, which we describe further below (in response to the question about how results have been disseminated to communities of interest).
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Awaiting Publication
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Burrow, A. L., Agans, J. P., & Rainone, N. (in press). Exploring purpose as a resource for promoting youth program engagement. Journal of Youth Development.
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Progress 10/01/16 to 09/30/17
Outputs
Target Audience: 4-H educators and volunteers - These individuals were reached by our efforts through the professional development workshops and focus groups, in addition to the online presentation we delivered for the CCE System Conference and the presentation/poster presented at the NYSACCE4-HE Conference. Other youth development workers - Some attendees of the 2017 Families Together in New York State conference participated in a workshop about adolescent purpose development delivered by a member of our research team. Many of these individuals work with programs serving children who have been involved in systems including those related to mental health, substance abuse, special education, juvenile justice, and foster care. Broome County, Capital Region, North Country Region, Schuyler County, Tompkins County - These counties or regions in New York participated in the workshop/focus group component of this project. 4-H programming in these areas is delivered to youth from various populations, including, but not limited to: rural and urban, military, and low socioeconomic status. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Before each of our eight focus groups, a brief (~25 minute) professional development workshop was delivered by a member of the research team. This workshop covered topics including: definitions of "purpose in life;" existing research on adolescents' development of purpose in life; and the potential role of youth programs like 4-H in contributing to adolescent purpose development. All of the 4-H educators and volunteers who participated in our focus groups (N = 62) first attended this brief professional development workshop. An extended (~45 minute) version of this workshop was shared with 4-H educators and staff members through the Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) System Conference (April, 2017), and a similar extended version was shared with youth development workers at the Families Together in New York State Conference (May 2017). How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Preliminary results based on the focus group data have been shared in person with three of the five counties/regions that participated; these conversations with a member of the research team entailed looking at a report of the overall and county-specific results, soliciting educator/volunteer feedback on the initial coding scheme and pattern of themes that emerged, and providing an opportunity for researchers to clarify any of their outstanding questions or assumptions with participants. Preliminary results were also disseminated at the annual New York State Association of Cornell Cooperative Extension 4-H Educators (NYSACCE4-HE) conference (October 2017), where a member of the research team delivered a presentation and poster for 4-H educators and administrators in attendance. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In order to empirically assess the extent to which the prevalence of specific program characteristics is linked with youth purpose, we will administer our survey (currently being finalized based largely on the focus group responses collected during this reporting period) to adolescents participating in 4-H programming across New York State. These data will be analyzed to investigate whether adolescents' self-reported engagement with a purpose in life is linked to specific program characteristics or experiences, and findings will be shared through reports generated for participating counties, peer-reviewed outlets, and other platforms utilized by 4-H educators/volunteers that our practitioner collaborators recommend.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
During Year 1, we focused on accomplishing the first goal. In order to identify which characteristics of 4-H Youth Development Programs that educators and volunteers believe foster the development of purpose among participating youth, we conducted eight focus groups with 4-H educators and volunteers in five counties/regions across New York State. Overall, 47 educators and 15 volunteers participated. The qualitative data collected during these focus groups are being analyzed using an iterative approach that has involved feedback on the initial coding scheme provided in subsequent meetings with a subset of focus group participants. We are in the process of creating the assessment tool that will be used to measure how the prevalence of various program characteristics is linked with youth purpose (Goal # 2), and the qualitative data collected from our focus group participants have informed which experiences or program practices are included in our measure. In the coming months, we will administer this assessment to youth participating in 4-H Youth Development Programs, collecting the data necessary to achieve Goal #2. Our accomplishments related to Goal #3 are described below (in response to the question about how results have been disseminated to communities of interest).
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Sumner, R., Burrow, A. L., & Agans, J. P. (2017, October). 4-H program practices believed to promote purpose in life. Poster and presentation delivered at annual meeting of the
New York State Association of Cornell Cooperative Extension 4-H Educators,
Ellicottville, NY.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Sumner, R. (2017, May). Promoting the development of purpose in life. Presentation delivered
at the annual conference of Families Together in New York State, Albany, NY.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Sumner, R., & Rainone, N. A. (2017, April). 4-H programs as contexts for promoting the
development of youths purpose in life. Online presentation delivered at the annual
Cornell Cooperative Extension System Conference, Ithaca, New York.
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