How Adolescents Come to See Themselves as More Responsible

8/2/2019 How Adolescents Come to See Themselves as More Responsible

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Child Development, January/February 2009, Volume 80, Number 1, Pages 295 309

How Adolescents Come to See Themselves as More Responsible

Through Participation in Youth Programs

Dustin Wood

Wake Forest University

Reed W. Larson and Jane R. Brown

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This qualitative study was aimed at developing theory about the process underlying the development ofresponsibility grounded in accounts of youth who reported experiencing this change. A total of 108 high-school-aged (M 5 16.5) youth from 11 programs were interviewed about their experiences within the program, and 24reported becoming more responsible through their participation. The youths accounts suggested that this processwas driven largely by successfully fulfilling program expectations. This process was driven by youths adherenceto their commitments and their consideration of the consequences of their actions on others. Youth mentionedchanges in responsibility most frequently in three programs, which appeared to differ from the remainingprograms in having more structure and placing greater ownership and accountability on youth.

Many youth programs have the objective of promot-ing the development of responsibility in their mem-bers. The mission statement of the Girl Scouts of theUSA (2007), for example, includes the goal of havinggirls learn the importance of personal responsibility,the value of goal-setting, the spirit of teamwork, andthe thrill of accomplishment. The missionstatementsof the National FFA Organization (2007) and the BoyScouts of America (2007) identify similar develop-mental goals as major, overarching goals of theirprograms. In a study of 48 effective youth programs,81% included the development of characteristics such

as responsibility in their list of major goals (Roth &Brooks-Gunn, 2003). An important task for research isto understand the process that underlies the devel-opment of responsibility, as well as the features ofenvironments that support this process.

Responsibility is typically defined as the quality ofbeing someone who can be counted on to fulfillobligations (Winter, 1992), and self-report measuresof responsibility and related dispositions have beenfound to be associated with success at work (Barrick &Mount, 1991; Judge, Heller, & Mount, 2002), academicperformance (Noftle & Robins, 2007), mental health

(Saulsman & Page, 2004; Yalom, 1980), quality of close

relationships (Roberts & Bogg, 2004), and healthbehaviors associated with longevity (Bogg & Roberts,2004). Seeing oneself as responsible also appears tobecome increasingly important with age. Young peo-ple report that responsibility is a central characteristicneeded to consider oneself an adult (Arnett, 2000),and there is evidence that irresponsibility becomesincreasingly associated with social exclusion andother negative social evaluations as individuals prog-ress from adolescence to adulthood (Wood, Gosling, &Potter, 2007; Wood & Roberts, 2006). Given thesefindings, it is not surprising that national panels

include the development of responsibility as an essen-tialgoal in preparing youth for adulthood (Partnershipfor 21st Century Skills, 2003; Secretarys Commissionon Achieving Necessary Skills [SCANS], 1991).

Our objective in the current research is to under-stand how experiences in youth programs may facil-itate the development of responsibility. Studies haveshown that participation in youth programs is asso-ciated with positive long-term school, career, andhealth outcomes (Eccles, Barber, Stone, & Hunt,2003; National Research Council Institute of Medicine[NRC], 2002). Research is needed, however, to under-

stand the developmental processes that lead to theseoutcomes (Mahoney, Larson, Eccles, & Lord, 2005).Our focus on the process of responsibility develop-ment emerged from preliminary analyses of datafrom a larger study concerned with positive develop-ment in youth programs (Larson et al., 2004). Theseanalyses indicated that gaining responsibility was

This research was supportedby a grant from theWilliam T. GrantFoundation. We thank the adult leaders and youth of the programswe studied for sharing their experiences with us. All names ofprograms, youth, and adult leaders in this article are pseudonyms.Small inconsequential changes were made in the descriptions ofsome youths activities to preserve their anonymity. We also thankDonald Tyler for contributions to the analyses for the article.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed toDustin Wood, Department of Psychology, Wake Forest University,438 Greene Hall, Winston-Salem, NC 27109. Electronic mail maybesent to [email protected].

# 2009, Copyright the Author(s)

Journal Compilation# 2009, Society forResearchin Child Development, Inc.

All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2009/8001-0022


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a salient theme in a number of youths ongoingaccounts of how they had changed through theirparticipation. To investigate this change, we em-ployed an ecological framework that conceptualizesdevelopment as occurring through proximal pro-cesses experienced by individuals, which are in-fluenced by dynamic features of their largerenvironments (Bronfenbrenner, 1999; Spencer, 2006).We used qualitative methods of discovery researchbecause our aim was to formulate preliminary empir-ically based theory on these processes and dynamicfeatures in context (National Institutes of MentalHealth Consortium of Editors on Development andPsychopathology, 1999).

Understanding the Development of Responsibility

Recent research in other contexts indicates that

experiences within social roles and relationships caninfluence the development of responsibility. Respon-sibility and related facets of conscientiousness havebeen found to increase among individuals involved inmarital relationships (Roberts & Bogg, 2004) and dueto work experiences, such as being promoted toa higher status job (Roberts, 1997; Roberts, Caspi, &Moffitt, 2003). Research with children suggests thata parents responsiveness and disciplinary style maybe associated with the development of a childs levelof conscience and effortful control (Kochanska, 1997;Kochanska, Murray, & Harlan, 2000). In adolescence,

it has been suggested that higher levels of personalresponsibility could result from the demands youthface in completing homework (Warton, 2001).

The common elements linking these social experi-ences to the development of responsibility may beencountering and then successfully enacting newbehavioral demands and expectations (Roberts,Wood, & Smith, 2005; Wood et al., 2007). This wouldbe consistent with Aristotles (trans. 1962) suggestionthat we become just by the practice of just actions,self-controlled by exercising self-control, and coura-geous by performing acts of courage. Restated forthe issue at hand, we may become responsible by

successfully and repeatedly carrying out our respon-sibilities. The modern elaboration of this idea sug-gests that the continued enactment of particularbehavioral patterns (e.g., acting responsibly inresponse to demands) leads to the development ofmore general propensities to perform them in similarsituations in the future (Wilson, 2002; Wood, 2007). Inthe current study, we examine whether and howdemands and expectations are part of the changeprocess in youths accounts of becoming moreresponsible.

If carrying out demands is part of the mechanismunderlying the developmentof responsibility, it raisesanother important concern. What motivates youth tocomply when they encounter new and more chal-lenging demands? Sampson and Laub (1992) pro-posed that this adherence may come principally fromexternal social controls: Individuals may come to actmore responsibly to avoid the negative consequences(particularly disapproval and rejection) that accom-pany failure to measure up to others expectations.Roberts and colleagues (Roberts & Wood, 2006;Roberts et al., 2005) have suggested that social invest-ments are also an important aspect of the process,where individuals come to act more responsiblybecause they willingly commit themselves to socialroles and their associated expectations. We thusexamine the reasons or motives that youth providein describing why they stick with difficult or aversive

program demands.

The Current Investigation

The overarching goal of the current study was tounderstand how youth come to see themselves asmore responsible through participation in youth pro-grams. Based on ideas discussed above, we examinedyouths accounts of becoming more responsible witha focus on three questions. First, what role diddemands and expectations play in this process, andwhat forms did these demands take? Second, if

demands were central to the development of respon-sibility, why did youth accept and execute the de-mands they encountered? These first two questionsaddress the process underlying the development ofresponsibility. The third question is, what features ofprogram environments might have facilitated thisprocess? Bronfenbrenner (1999) suggests that anenvironment can influence development either bysetting proximal processes in motion and sustainingtheir operation at a high level or by reducing oppor-tunities for their initiation and exposing them tosources of environmental interference (p. 12). Wedecided to investigate how program environments

might set the process of developing responsibility inmotion (or interfere with it) after discovering that theprograms we studied differed significantly in thenumber of youth who reported becoming moreresponsible through participation. Comparison ofprograms with high and low rates of youth reportingthis change thus afforded the opportunity to examinehow the process of responsibility development mightbe promoted by the programs leaders or culture.

Our general strategy was to identify clear caseswhere youth experienced becoming more responsible

296 Wood, Larson, and Brown


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and focus our analyses on understanding the ac-counts of this process given by these youth (Creswell,1998; Moustakas, 1994). Although our research ques-tions emerged from the literature, our objective was toaddress these questions with a discovery-orientedresearch strategy. To derive theory about youthsprocess of responsibility development (Questions 1and 2), we focused on youth reports because wesought to understand their experience of the changeprocess (Auerbach & Silverstein, 2003; Lincoln &Guba, 1985). Research shows that adolescents are ableto provide coherent accounts of how their experiencesare related to self-change (Habermas & Bluck, 2000)and that self-reported assessments of personalitydevelopment are correlated to actual personalitychange over time as measured by personality inven-tories (Robins, Noftle, Trzesniewski, & Roberts, 2005).To evaluate differences between programs (Question

3), we utilized information from interviews withadult leaders of the programs, as well as from siteobservations. This information allowed us to investi-gate how features of the program external to youth(e.g., leaders philosophies and ways of acting) mightfacilitate or interfere with youths engagement in theprocess of responsibility development.

Method

Programs and Youth Studied

The research was conducted with high-school-aged youth in 11 urban and rural youth developmentprograms (Larson, Pearce, Sullivan, & Jarrett, 2007).Because the objective was to observe the developmenttaking place, the study focused on programs that hadreputations as high quality. These programs wereidentified following procedures for selecting high-quality programs developed by McLaughlin, Irby,and Langman (1994). We first asked local youthdevelopment professionals about good programs intheir areas. When a program was named by more thanone person, we visited it and talked with program

staff and youth to verify that the program waseffective in engaging participants and had otherfeatures associated with high-quality programs(McLaughlin, 2000; NRC, 2002). The 11 programsincluded arts, media arts, leadership, and serviceprograms (Table 1). In three of the programs(Art-First, Media Masters, and Harambee), youthwere paid an approximately minimum wage forparticipation.

Youth in all 11 programs were involved in joint orindividual projects. The programs were studied over

a natural period of the youths work, typically 3 4months (range 2 9 months). The sample for theresearch included 8 12 youth in each program, fora total of 108 youth interviewed across programs.These youth were selected, with input from theleaders, to be representative of program participantsin ethnicity, gender, and length of prior participationin the program. The sample included 59 girls and 49boys, with a mean age of 16.5 (SD5 1.7, range5 13 21), and approximately equal numbers of EuropeanAmerican (N5 36), African American (N5 32), andLatino (N5 32) youth, as well as 6 biracial and 2 Asianyouth.

Procedures

Youth in the study were interviewed approxi-mately every 2 weeks over the course of the research

period at each program. In-depth face-to-face inter-views (lasting 45 70 min) were conducted at thebeginning, middle, and end of this period. Shorterbiweekly interviews (lasting 10 20 min) were con-ducted by phone in the intervening intervals. Allinterviews were tape-recorded and transcribed. Atotal of 648 interviews were conducted with the youthfrom the 11 programs. Interviews were also con-ducted with one to two adult leaders at each programfollowing the same schedule used with the youth (atotal of 122 interviews). In addition, site observationswere conducted approximately every 1 to 2 weeks (a

total of 159).

Interview and Research Protocols

The flexible interview protocols were designed toelicit youths narrative descriptions of their ongoingexperiences in the programs and how they wereaffected by these experiences. The protocol includeda range of open-ended questions on different areas ofdevelopment, such as identity, initiative, and socialrelationships. Youth were encouraged to describesalient experiences and changes in themselves(Auerbach & Silverstein, 2003).

Youths reports of the development of responsibil-ity emerged from these narrative responses. Most ofthe participants who identified themselves as becom-ing more responsible through program participationdid so in response to the open-ended question: Howhas participation in [this program] changed parts ofyou in any way? which was asked in the longerinitial, midpoint, and final interviews. Some youthreported becoming more responsible in the shorterphone interviews, either in response to a questionasking about their change and growth in the program,

Accounts of Becoming Responsible 297


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Table1

DescriptionoftheYouthProgramsand

ParticipantsintheStudy

Program

Programdescription

Programlocation

Primaryethnicity

ofyouth

Estimatednumber

ofyouthinthe

program

Yo

uthreporting

responsibilitydevelopment

(ofnumberinterviewed)

ClarksonFFA

High-sch

ool-basedFFAchapter;activities

includ

edserviceprojectsandregional

contes

tsfocusedonvocationalandleadership

develo

pment

Rural

White

77

5(11)

Art-First

Careerd

evelopmentprograminacommunity-

based

nonprofit;youthpaintedcommunity

murals,didinternships,andreceived

vocationaltraining

Urban

Latino,

Africa

n

American,W

hite,

Asian

16

1(12)

YouthAction

Community-basedyouthactivistprogram;

activitiesincludedplanningaYouthSummit

andca

mpaignstochangeschoolpolicies

Urban

Latino,

Africa

n

American

20

1(10)

LesMiserables

TheaterProduction

Ahighschoolproductionofamusical;activities

includ

edauditions,rehearsals,andfinal

performancesofthemusical

Rural

White

110

5(10)

FaithinMotion

Dancetroupeinanevangelicalchurch;activities

includ

edcreatingandrehearsingdance

performancesanddevotionalactivities

Smallcity

White,African

American

25

0(9)

PrairieCounty

4-HFederation

Acomm

unity-basedleadershipcouncilthat

plannedactivitiesforyounger4-Hmembers

inthe

county

Rural

White

15

1(8)

MediaMasters

School-b

asedmediaartstrainingprogramin

which

youthlearnedtousegraphicsoftware

andvideoequipmentandthencreated

artworkwiththem

Urban

Latino

22

5(8)

TheStudio

Community-basedcareerdevelopment

progra

mtargetedatoutofschoolyouth;

youth

producedandengineeredamusicCD

Urban

Latino,

Africa

n

American

20

2(10)

Harambee

Thesum

mercomponentofaschool-based,

schoolcommunitypartnership;activities

includ

edresearchoncitytransitissues,

creatin

gamuralandadocumentaryvideo

Urban

African

American

35

1(10)

ElConcilio

Theyouthcouncilforacommunity-based

organization;youthplannedeventsfor

neighb

orhoodyouthandconductedservice

activities

Urban

Latino

20

2(10)

SisterHood

Anall-fe

maleyouthgroupinacommunity-

based

youthagency;activitiesincluded

weeklydiscussions,trips,andworkshops

Urban

AfricanAmeric

an

10

1(10)

Note.Programsarelistedintheorde

rtheyweresurveyed.



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or more spontaneously during other questions con-cerning their recent experiences in the program.When individuals mentioned any change that oc-curred through program participation (such asbecoming more responsible), interviewers were in-structed to follow up this statement by asking howthis change came about. Thus, we obtained theirnarrative accounts of the process of change. We havesometimes drawn on material from prior interviewsto put these accounts into a larger temporal context.

It is important to note that there were no questionsin the interviews that directly asked youth whetherthey had developed responsibility. Consistentwith methods of discovery research (Auerbach &Silverstein, 2003), our aim was to allow youth toidentify the most salient changes they experiencedthrough program involvement, without imposing theresearchers language or theoretical framework onto

these accounts. This approach likely resulted in feweraccounts of youth acquiring responsibility thanwould have been obtained with direct questioning.However, we felt that requiring youth to spontane-ously mention increases in responsibility withoutbeing directly prompted provided greater confidencethat the cases of responsibility development weidentified were clear-cut and reflected the youthslived experience, as opposed to representing acqui-escence or compliance with the researchers agenda.

The interviews with the adult leaders also followedan open-ended protocol. They dealt with the leaders

philosophy, events within the program, challengesleaders faced in working with the youth and theirresponses to these challenges, and how they aimedto facilitate youths growth and development. Siteobservations were conducted using standard pro-cedures of participant observation whereby theresearcher observed sessions in a friendly but mini-mally obtrusive way and recorded field notes onevents and verbal behavior (Jorgensen, 1989).

Data Coding and Analysis

We used methods of qualitative and grounded

theory data analysis to identify patterns in the youthsreports on their experiences (Auerbach & Silverstein,2003; Strauss & Corbin, 1998; Taylor & Bogdan, 1998).Our first step involved developing criteria to definewhich youth reported becoming more responsiblethrough program experiences. Youth were identifiedas experiencing increased responsibility if they men-tioned: (a) becoming more responsible, (b) becom-ing more mature in a way that indicated they nowtended to fulfill obligations handed to them moreoften, or (c) becoming more self-disciplined or

having more will-power, as indicated by becomingbetter able to fulfill tasks. These three criteria werechosen because self-perceptions of responsibility arefound to be closely related to self-perceptions ofmaturity (Arnett, 2000; Hogan & Roberts, 2004) andself-control (Roberts, Bogg, Walton, Chernyshenko, &Stark, 2004). This coding wasdoneby the first andthirdauthors. We assess interrater reliability by having thetwo coders independently evaluatewhether responsesto the standard howhave you changed question metthe above criteria. These independent evaluationsshowed substantial agreement (j 5 .83). To protectagainst false positives, a passage was counted asreflecting responsibility development only when bothraters agreed that it met the criteria.

Analyses for the first two research questions en-tailed coding and evaluating the youths descriptionsof demands that resulted in their change in responsi-

bility and of why they accepted and adhered to thesedemands. Following procedures of grounded theoryanalyses (Strauss & Corbin, 1998), we first identifiedthe themes reflected in a youths answers to thesequestions, then grouped similar responses intoa smaller number of categories, and interpreted theunderlying patterns.

Analyses addressing our third research questionwere aimed at identifying the dynamic features ofprograms associated with responsibility develop-ment. To do this, we compared programs with highand low percentages of youth reporting that parti-

cipation resulted in increased responsibility. Weemployed matrix-based qualitative analysis (Miles& Huberman, 1994), where we first developed a setof working hypotheses regarding the features thatdistinguish these programs. We then read through theleader interviews for each program and identified allstatements that were indicative or counterindicativeof these features. Finally, we carried out iterative stepscomparing the programs that were high and low inresponsibility development for each feature. Thisprocess resulted in ruling out several hypothesizedfeatures that did not differentiate the high and lowprograms (e.g., leader monitoring) and revising the

operational definitions for several features to differ-entiate better the high and low programs.

Results

Identification of Youth Who Experienced IncreasedResponsibility

Of the 108 youth interviewed across the 11programs, 24 reported becoming more responsible



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through their involvement in the programs. These 24youth did not differ noticeably from others by gender,age, or length of participation in the program. Most ofthe youth used the word responsible explicitly todescribe their change. For instance, Jennie, a memberof the Clarkson FFA, credited the program withmaking her a lot more responsible and motivated.Pasco at Media Masters recalled that Im moreresponsible now with my work. Heather from theLes Miserables production reported that she learneda lot more responsibility, individual responsibility,being extra careful to take care of myself, hav[ing]self-discipline to know when I can and cant go outwith friends after rehearsals, things like that. Asdescribed in the Method section, some youth de-scribed the change using language with similarmeaning. Peter, a student in Les Miserables, recalledthat he was becoming more serious with the things I

do as a result of participating in the program, andCharnise from SisterHood reported that Ive becomea little bit more hard-working, especially gettingthings done on time.

The majority of youth reporting increased respon-sibility came from three programs (Table 1). At MediaMasters, the Les Miserables theater production, andthe Clarkson FFA, 5 youth in each (more than 45% ofthe interviewees) reported gaining responsibility,while 2 or fewer youth (less than 25%) reported thisat each of the remaining eight programs. The likeli-hood of reporting this change differed significantly

across the 11 programs (v25

22.41, df5

10, p5

.025),suggesting that these three programs may have pro-vided more favorable environments for the develop-ment of responsibility than the remaining eightprograms. We first examine the proximal processesexperienced by the 24 youth and then examine thedistinct features of these three programs that mayhave facilitated these processes.

Types of Demands That Led to Changes in PerceivedResponsibility

The analysis for Question 1 showed that these 24

youth regularly attributed their increased sense ofresponsibility to fulfilling demands and expecta-tions. These included expectations they had met,obligations they had fulfilled, and challenging cir-cumstances where they had acted in a dependableway. To identify the forms these demands took,grounded theory analyses were conducted on allstatements by youth in which they described theprocess of developing responsibility. This led to theidentification of three interrelated types of demandsassociated with youth coming to see themselves as

more responsible: task demands, demands of programroles, and time demands.

Task demands. Task demands included challengesrelated to the achievement of group or individualprojects within the program. Youth at Media Mastersmostly worked on individual projects, and Pasco,along with other students in that program, attributedhis development of responsibility to how we had tofinish our work, and always finish it. Never leave itundone or leave it half done. Youth in the ClarksonFFA had more collaborative activities, and Sarahreported learning to act more responsibly when shewas preparing for a team competition: You have tocarry your own. Mr. Baker and Mr. Jensen [the FFAadvisors], theyll push you, theyll give you anencouragement, but theyre not going to do it foryou: no way, shape, or form. Similarly, Lori, recalledthat she started seeing herself as responsible when the

FFA leaders entrusted her to perform duties such ascalling people for a blood drive. Later she explaineddiscovering that, You work as a team individually.You do a lot of stuff individually that youre doing,not for yourself, but for everyone else. Youth came tounderstand that working on group projects did notimply a diffusion of personal responsibility, but thateach youth had to do his or her part.

A more in-depth example of how task demands ledto development of responsibility was provided bySarahs description of her experiences on an individ-ual project. She had decided to raise pigs to enter into

the competition for a state FFA award. She reportedthat this summer I am kind of getting used to: Its justme. Im the one that has to push myself to do thesethings no matterhow badly I do not want to go step inthat pigpen and what not, I gotta do it, gotta do it.Raising pigs involved unpleasant tasks, but Sarahrecognized that the work needed to be done and that,if she did not do it, no one else would. This point wasdriven home for her when during a streak of partic-ularly hot summer weather, her pigs were in dangerofdying, and a redoubling of her effort was needed tokeep them alive and healthy. Sarah, like some otheryouth, described responsibility as following from

experiences in which the requirements of the taskbecame much larger than she had initially expected,and fulfillment of these requirements depended onher alone.

Demands of program roles. Some of the demandsthrough which youth learned responsibility wererelated to roles that youth held within the program.These included formal roles, like president, lightingdirector, or committee chair, as well as more informalroles, such as being a veteran program member. At theFFA program, youth ran for and were elected to



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positions as officers. In this and other programs,youth also chose roles or were assigned to roles byadult leaders, thus taking on the accompanyingexpectations as well as any unexpected challengesthat emerged.

Several youth who reported becoming moreresponsible attributed the change to the demands ofholding a formal role. Jeff pointed to the dutiesassociated with his role as president of the ClarksonFFA: Being President, theres lots of stuff you have todo in the chapter, and [you] just gotta make sureeverything is done by a set time. Lori, who was alsoan FFA officer, reported becoming more responsiblethrough learning how to interact with other youth ingroups: If you wanna be a chapter officer, thenyouve gotta treat others with respect and the wayyou wanna be treated, and youve gotta prove your-self [to be] responsible and mature and things like

that. Similarly, Heather was the stage manager forthe production of Les Miserables, and she attributedher increase in responsibility to carrying out thedemands entailed in managing fellow students.

Other youth reported that holding informal rolesfacilitated their development of responsibility. Peter,an upper-level student in Les Miserables, felt thatcertain behavior was expected from him due to theunofficial role of being an older student in the pro-duction: You have to set an example and stuff causeyoure an upperclassman. I think it puts a lot moreresponsibility on you and I think thats affecting just

overall. Indeed, adult leaders of the Les Miserablesproduction communicated an expectation that oldermembers of the cast and crewshow leadership and setgood examples.

Time demands. A number of youth described timedemands as central to their experience of becomingmore responsible. This was particularly common inthe Les Miserables production, which required 10 20hr of involvement per week. These youth frequentlyexpressed the need to reorganize or restrict otheractivities in their lives in order to fulfill duties of theprogram. In the early stages of rehearsals, Heather,like other youth in the production, reported that she

was stressed for time and tired a lot. But she also saidI have to get through it. It was much later in theproduction schedule that she reported becomingmore responsible. She explained:

I [had] to learn that you have to be organized withyour time and use your time wisely. Especiallywith sleep and things like that, because I think thatI have seen a total of three meals in the last threedays, just because Im running from one place tothe next and there are not enough hours in the day.

Heather reported learning that she had to takecare of myself and make sure Im sleeping as well asthe need to turn down friends who wanted to go outafter rehearsals, so that she could stay on top of thedemands of the program and school.

Other youth reported similar experiences. Victoriain Media Masters said she worked harder to budgether time in response to expectations that she arrive tothe programand finishprojects in a timely fashion.Sherealized that if I come out at 2:00 from school, I havean hour between [the end of school and the start of theprogram]. I need to figure out what Im going to do tobe thereon time. For ManuelfromArt-First, a demandon his time that helped him learn responsibility wasgetting up early in the morning to make the longcommute through the city to get to the program everymorning.He explained, I hadto get here sometimes at9 oclock, so Id have to get up at 6 or something to get

over here and make it on time. And just make sure allmy duties are done. This challenge was particularlysalient to him given the late-night schedule that he hadmaintained before entering the program.

In sum, task, role, and time demands appeared tobe central to youth accounts of change. These youthreported wanting to live up to the demands theyfaced, even when this required performing difficult oronerous tasks (e.g., cleaning up after pigs, workinglong hours, and meeting tight deadlines) or sacrific-ing time with friends. In the youths accounts, it wastheir success in meeting these demands that made

them see themselves as more responsible.

Reasons Individuals Accepted and Adhered to theDemands

The fact that the demands required effort and werenot always enjoyable leads to our second question:Why didyouth decideto performthese tasks? Indeed,the adult leaders reported cases where youth did notfulfill expected demands. A few youth in the pro-grams quit, anda numberof theyouthwe interviewedexpressed thoughts about quitting due to the expect-ations and demands. Suzanne in the Les Miserables

production described her moments of doubt:

[When youre in the musical] you get sleep but itsstill not enough, where on the weekends youresleeping in really late and still really tired and itfeels like you have done nothing, even though youhave done like a million things. So that was a bigthing that really made me want to quit.

To address the second question, we analyzedquotes where these 24 youth discussed why they



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performed demands that they encountered, includingtheir responses to questions asking whether they everhad thoughts of quitting and how they responded tothose thoughts. These analyses led to the identifica-tion of three themes.

Carrying out ones commitments. The most frequentreason youth gave for adhering to demands was theirexperience of an obligation to do so. They usedphrases like we had to or you gotta and invokedthe commitment they had made to explain why theyfulfilled the demands.

Youth in Media Masters, who were paid for theirparticipation in the program, reported adhering toexpectations because they thought of it as a job.Victoria described her duties to include being therethe times Im suppose to be there; Im responsible liketo respect others and follow the rules. Pasco indi-cated a similar sense of obligation and attributed it to

the role requirements that come with holding a job:Because there, youre almost like an adult. You havea job, so you have to act moremature. The youth hadaccepted the obligations of the job as their own.

Youth in Les Miserables described being motivatedby their commitment to the production. Heather, thestage manager, described regularly encounteringa temptation to quit as the time demands made itmore and more difficult to complete her homework,but said she never came close to actually doing it: Ihave a thing with commitment and if I say Im gonnado something Im gonna do it. I would never quit

a production. When Jessica was asked if she had everthought of quitting, she replied: Im too stubborn toquit. I wouldnt do it. Just because Im too stubborn.Like no, Ill finish it through. A similar dont quitethic was expressed by Peter, who was both a crewmember and had a substantial part in the play:

I very easily could have just whined and com-plained about it all the time and said Im not gonnado this, cause there were several people whodidnt get the part they wanted, like they didntget a big enough part and so they quit the show orwhatever. And that seems ridiculous to me, I mean

you just gotta, you know, you have it for a reason,so do it.

It is apparent from these examples that the youthssense of responsibility did not entirely emerge denovo from their experiences in the programs. Many ofthese youth appeared to have entered the programswith an inclination to follow through with obligationsthey had committed themselves to. Nonetheless,similar to the recursive process described by Aristotleearlier, the youths accounts suggested that the expe-

rience of fulfilling new, and perhaps more demand-ing, expectations deepened their perception ofthemselves as responsible.

Anticipation of the consequences for others. A relatedreason youth reported for adhering to demands wastheir anticipation of how their actions would impactothers in the program. This included anticipation ofpositive impacts from fulfilling the demands, as wellas negative effects from not fulfilling them.

These others were sometimes the adult programleaders. Often youth reported feeling respect andwarmth toward the leaders and said these feelingsled them to make greater effort to accomplish thetasks the leaders handed them. As Sarah from the FFAsaid:

Mr. Baker and Mr. Jensen are great. They tell yousomething they think you can achieve and then its

up to you to do that. And I guess its not likea pressure, but you do, theyre such nice peopleyou just kind of wanna live up to their expect-ations. You never wanna let them down.

Sarah recognized that the demand had come partlyfrom the adults, but she framed her reason for ad-hering to it in terms of her own agency, her desire tolive up to their expectations. LaShawna at Harambeealso attributed her increase in responsibility, in part,to a desire to validate the leaders trust in her tocomplete her assigned tasks, which involved interact-

ing with members outside of the program: I had toknow what I was doing there. And he had to trust medoing that. So I had to be responsible doing that. . . . Alot of times when you go places Im notjust represent-ing myself, but Im representing Harambee as well.

Some youth reported adhering to the demands outof consideration, not just for the leaders, but also theirpeers. Suzanne at Les Miserables explained, I con-sidered quitting during the program but then Irealized that it was way too late and I would be lettingdown a lot of people. So I think it would have beenawful if I would have quit. Charnise, a student fromSisterHood, found it difficult to get herself to sell her

quota of chocolates to raise money for their year-endretreat but eventually completed the task. When shethought about how she would have approached thetask before joining the program, she recalled that herattitude would have been if I dont get it done, then Idont get it done. No big deal. However, afterbecoming more connected with the youth in theprogram, her attitude changed: Something was like,just do it. Maybe youll feel better about yourself orsomething. . . . Maybe becauseI havea commitment tothem. Although the task was onerous for her, she



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may be a necessary but not sufficient condition forhelping youth come to see themselves as moreresponsible.

A priori structure. Second, while youth ownershipwas stressed in the three high programs, there wasalso a high degree of structure. There were rules,deadlines, and ways of doing things, set in advance,that needed to be followed. Media Masters was runlike a class with written assignments and schedules.The leader, Janna, said, Im here to set a tone anda structure. . . . Its very important to establish groundrules and guidelines. When students accepted a partin Les Miserables, the youth and their parents wererequired to sign a contract that laid out specificexpectations, including the high demands that wouldbe made on their time. Members of FFA competed indifferent district and state FFA contests (e.g., onlivestock judging, agricultural mechanics, and public

speaking), and each was governed by rules and hadfixed deadlines. Youth knew what was expected ofthem when they committed to program activities.

All three high programs also had structured rolesfor youth, with defined duties and expectations. TheFFA chapter had over a dozen officer positions, aswell as chair positions for 15 standing committees. Allmembers of Les Miserables had one or more roles inthe musical that they had to develop, and all wererequired to put in 10 hr of tech work. In MediaMasters, all youth were required to learn what wasinvolved in the roles of director, cameraperson, and

actor and took turns playing each role when theyfilmed videos. Youth were clearly told what theexpectations were for each role.

In contrast, the low programs had less structureand it was more ad hoc. Rules, deadlines, and ways ofdoing things were developed as work went along. Insome programs, this happened because the adultsfollowed a philosophy of youth leadership. Theywanted members to organize the activities, whichmeant that the youth had to create the structure fortheir work. In some of the other low programs, theadult leaders exercised a high degree of control andimposed the structure as they felt it was needed,

rather than in advance. At Faith in Motion, forexample, the leader planned each session ona week-to-week basis. Across the low programs, therewere also fewer structured roles for youth, and theexpectations associated with these roles were lessdefined. In the low programs, then, the demands onyouth were less definite, whereas in the high pro-grams youths actions occurred within a definedframework; expectations and demands were clear.

High expectations and accountability. Within thethree high programs, expectationswere not only clear,

they were set high and more often linked to conse-quences. Leaders in the three highprograms expectedyouth to meet deadlines, live up to the demands oftheir roles, and produce high-quality work. Althoughthese leaders emphasized youth ownership, they alsoemphasized that youth have to or need to docertain things. Janna at Media Masters repeatedlyreiterated the expectation that everything is done ontime, everything looks good. Youth in Media Mas-ters created multimedia projects and were requiredon a regular basis to present their work to the leadersand the group to get feedback.

Youth in the high programs also reported holdinghigh expectations for each other. The FFA youth hada collective expectation that members would placehighly in regional and state competitions, as they haddone in prior years. Members of Les Miserablesexpressed a shared expectation that everyone would

work hard and use time productively. Suzanne,a ninth-grader, reported: I really get frustrated whensomeone is not giving 100% or they are wasting yourtime, because Ive seen the value of like each second.Across the three programs, there was a shared ethosacross leaders and youth that high-quality work wasexpected.

Accountability in the high programs was vested inindividual youth. The FFA leaders, for example,reminded youth of the obligations they had takenupon themselves by getting elected to officer posi-tions. As Mr. Jensen said:

We try to impress upon our officers that ultimatelyeverything that we say we want to get done, itsyour responsibility to get it done. We dont expectany ofyou todo all the work. We expectyou tohelpour troops together, to work together to get thosethings done, but if we cant get anyone else there,ultimately the job falls back on your shoulders.

Adult leaders from the three high programs indi-cated that they did not rescue youth. Mr. Jensendescribed how some leaders in FFA programs end updoing a lot of the written work that is required by the

state FFA office but said, Mr. Baker and I do not dothat. If our kids dont do it, it doesnt get done.

There were tangible consequences associated withyouth fulfilling or failing to fulfill demands. Whena lead actress at Les Miserables had not put in herrequired hours with the productions technical crew,the leaders made clear that her choice was to do themimmediately or be out of the show. Actors in LesMiserables were also required to keep their grades upin classes, and one student was in fact dropped fromthe production because his grades fell below the



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required standard. As Annexplained, Each Thursdayor Friday a list [of grades] comes out. If they are notacademically where they should be, they can come topractices but they cant participate. I mean its a verystrict code and we live by that. Positive consequen-ces in these programs were also linked to fulfillingexpectations. For example, actors in Les Miserablesknew that they improved their chances of receivingmajor roles in future productions by demonstratingthat they could be relied on to carry out and excel inminor roles.

In contrast, in the low programs, leaders had lowerexpectations and more often let youth off the hook.They filled in or covered up for weaker work. Inseveral cases, when members of Youth Action did notcomplete or backed out on doing a task, the leaderreported doing the work himself. Similarly, whenseveral youth at Art-First fell behind schedule in

painting their murals, the situation was not formu-lated or handled in terms of individual accountability.Instead, other youth and even additional adults wereenlisted on thefinal dayto help theslowerindividualscomplete the murals in time. Leaders in some of theseprograms held youth accountable for attendance andfollowing rules, but not for the completion or qualityof their work. Youth at Harambee, for example, werepaid for their participation, as they were at MediaMasters, and several were docked pay or terminatedfrom the program for being repeatedly late or missingdays. But unlike at Media Masters, youth were not

held to high standards of accountability for theirwork.

Conclusion

These findings suggest features in the three pro-grams that may have facilitated the processdescribed in the analyses for Questions 1 and 2.Youth in these programs were encouraged to expe-rience ownership of their actionsto see themselvesas agents making willing choices to take on de-mands. At the same time, their actions needed tooccur within an a priori structure: The task de-

mands, time demands, and role demands wereunambiguous and clearly defined. Furthermore,meeting and completing these demands was per-ceived as normative within the programit wasexpected, it was part of the program culture. Andmeeting or failing to meet the expectations in theseprograms had consequences for both the individualand the group.

In sum, the three high programs appeared tosupport the process of responsibility developmentby providing substantial demands, supporting

youths ownership of these demands, and providingmeaningful individual consequences that helpedyouth adhere to them. Although exploratory, thesefindings suggest plausible theoretical linkages be-tween the process of responsibility development,based on the youths reports, and dynamic featuresof the program environment, based on discussionswith the leaders and observations of the programs.

Discussion

This research demonstrates that youth programs canbe contexts where youth develop a sense of respon-sibility, and it provides an account of the process thatmay underlie this developmental change. We foundthat approximately half of the youth in 3 of 11programs we studied described becoming more

responsible as a salient outcome of their participation.Given the importance of responsibility to adult workand family roles (Arnett, 2000; Barrick & Mount,1991), and given that youth may have limited oppor-tunities to develop responsibility in other contexts oftheir lives (Schlegel & Barry, 1991), these findingssuggest an important role that the larger context ofyouth programs can play in the development of theirparticipants.

The strength of our qualitative approach is that itprovides an account of the proximal processes under-lying the development of responsibility, as they are

experienced by youth. A useful and perhaps under-valued place for understanding the nature of envi-ronmental effects on youth development is to askyouth to detail their own experience of the changeprocess (Spencer, 2006). It should be kept in mind,however, that the process described here is based onpreliminary findings, principally from youths narra-tive reports, and are in need of more rigorous testingand confirmation. In this discussion, we examinewhat the analysis suggests about this change process,how programs might facilitate it, and then discussimplications for future research.

The Process of Becoming Responsible

The most important component to the process ofdeveloping responsibility appeared to be the youthsexecution of demands. The demands that youthperformed took different forms and came in differentways. The three types of demands that we iden-tifiedtask demands, role demands, and timedemandsall included expectations that were struc-tured into the program. These demands were oftenperceived as difficult or as entailing more than the



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responsibility should be viewed with sensitivity to thedifferent challenges faced by these programs. Allthree of the high programs were in schools and, asa result, had a more readily available pool of partic-ipants. These leaders thus did not face the samepressure to recruit and retain youth encountered bymany community-based programs (NRC, 2002) andmay have had an easier time imposing demands onyouth without fear of alienating and losing them. Itwill be important to define further the programfeatures that facilitate the development of responsi-bility and to understand ways in which these featurescoalesce or compete with other program goals such asretaining participants or facilitating the developmentof other characteristics.

Future Research

The current research begins to develop an ecolog-ically grounded theory of the process underlying thedevelopment of responsibility. Future research isneeded to refine, revise, and test this preliminaryaccount. Given the limits and potential biases innarrative reports, a natural next step is to evaluateand expand on these qualitative findings throughquantitative research (Brunswik, 1952; Gibbs, 1979).Quantitative studies using behavioral measures ofresponsibility, repeated assessments, and larger num-bers of youth and programs will permit more defin-itive tests of the process suggested by the current

qualitative investigation. Obtaining assessments ofresponsible behavior from other contexts of youthslives (e.g., at home, in class, or in future jobs) wouldalso clarify the extent to which changes in theprogram transfer to behavior in other settings (Wood,2007).

An objective of subsequent research should be toevaluate the process suggested here with representa-tive samples of both programs and youth. This studyintentionally focused on a sample of high-qualityprograms in order to increase the likelihood ofobserving youth who experienced positive devel-opmental effects through program participation.

Research across a wider range of programs is needed.Furthermore, the analyses here focused on a subsam-ple of youth for whom responsibility developmentwas particularly salient. This intentional method isappropriate for discovery research, where the aim isto understand a process such as the development ofresponsibility (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Nonetheless,more representative sampling would help to evaluatethe generality of the process described here acrossdiverse youth, including those differing in their initiallevels of responsibility.

Finally, although the current findings shed light onthe process underlying the development of responsi-bility in youth programs, they also point to inves-tigations that could further elaborate this process.Apart from simply encountering demands, we foundhow youth construe the program and the people inthe program may be critical. Further research willneed to examine how a youths adherenceto demandsdepends on the quality of their relationship withleaders or other youth in the program. Our analysisalso suggests that programs facilitate the develop-ment of responsibility by giving youth ownership atthe same time that they are held accountable for thedemands they take on. Further discovery researchwould help to illuminate how successful programsbalance the seemingly incongruent task of providingsupport to youth while, at the same time, enforcingindividual accountability. As discussed at the outset,

responsibility is an important characteristic for manyaspects of adult life, and many youth programs seethe development of responsibility as an explicit partof their mission. Research that improves our under-standing of this process will provide guidelines toachieving this important goal.

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