Evaluación del programa de intervención para adolescentes

Abstract

Abstract. The community is an important context in the lives of our adolescents and can be of great value for those that are living under psychosocial risk conditions. The main objective of this doctoral thesis is to evaluate the community group-based ‘Building My Future’ program, which aims to increase personal, social, and community competencies in at-risk and non-at-risk adolescents following the Positive Youth Development framework. The program supports the realization of leisure and free time activities aimed at improving certain community aspects, activities that are selected by the group of participants themselves and are supervised by young professionals belonging to NGO collaborating entities of Municipal Social Services. The program is composed of five modules: 1) ‘Creating our group’, 2) ‘Getting to know our surroundings’, 3) ‘Making our surroundings better’, 4) ‘Clarifying my future’, and, 5) ‘Boosting our relationships’; and is currently being implemented in the Autonomous Community of Castile and Leon, Spain. Following a compendium of four scientific publications, the first paper explores the participants’ lifestyle patterns and their association with personal, social, and community competencies before taking part in the program; the second paper systematically reviews the characteristics and evaluation quality of community groupbased programs similar in nature to the “Building My Future” program; the third paper evaluates the types of activities performed during the program and their association with adolescent competence change profiles after the program; and the fourth paper evaluates implementation conditions and how they affect attendance and competence outcomes. The results of these four studies lead to recommendations for the community intervention field and for those that are implementing the “Building My Future” program, concluding that the program is evidence-based and has great potential to promote the positive development of adolescents.

The community is an important context in the lives of our adolescents and can be of great value for those that are living under psychosocial risk conditions. The main objective of this doctoral thesis is to evaluate the community group-based ‘Building My Future’ program, which aims to increase personal, social, and community competencies in at-risk and non-at-risk adolescents following the Positive Youth Development framework. The program supports the realization of leisure and free time activities aimed at improving certain community aspects, activities that are selected by the group of participants themselves and are supervised by young professionals belonging to NGO collaborating entities of Municipal Social Services. The program is composed of five modules: 1) ‘Creating our group’, 2) ‘Getting to know our surroundings’, 3) ‘Making our surroundings better’, 4) ‘Clarifying my future’, and, 5) ‘Boosting our relationships’; and is currently being implemented in the Autonomous Community of Castile and Leon, Spain. Following a compendium of four scientific publications, the first paper explores the participants’ lifestyle patterns and their association with personal, social, and community competencies before taking part in the program; the second paper systematically reviews the characteristics and evaluation quality of community group-based programs similar in nature to the “Building My Future” program; the third paper evaluates the types of activities performed during the program and their association with adolescent competence change profiles after the program; and the fourth paper evaluates implementation conditions and how they affect attendance and competence outcomes. The results of these four studies lead to recommendations for the community intervention field and for those that are implementing the “Building My Future” program, concluding that the program is evidence-based and has great potential to promote the positive development of adolescents.