Positive Youth Development Theory in Practice: An Update on the 4-H Thriving Model

The 4-H Thriving Model predicts that participation in high-quality 4-H programs helps youth thrive and that thriving youth achieve key developmental outcomes, thus illuminating the process of positive youth development in 4-H. This paper provides an update on the 4-H Thriving Model, with particular attention to model modifications based on additional research. The paper then describes the formation of the Advancing the 4-H Thriving Model Task Force, a 3-year project chartered by the national 4-H Program Leaders Working Group (PLWG). The paper describes how the work of the task force will support efforts related to the professional development of 4-H youth development professionals and volunteers, replication of and further research on the 4-H Thriving model, and organizational alignment across the national 4-H system.

Locally, 4-H is delivered at the county or parish level by 4-H educators under the leadership of a statewide 4-H program located at a state LGU. Local stakeholder interests and community needs often determine program direction and offerings. This responsiveness to locally determined needs is an important aspect of Extension work in communities (Garst & McCawley, 2015).

A Theoretical Model of Youth Development
The first reason the 4-H Thriving Model was developed was to improve 4-H program planning and evaluation through the use of a standard theoretical model. As noted by Arnold & Silliman (2017), there is no consistent model or framework of PYD used across the 4-H program.
Instead, a variety of frameworks are used, some with little or no science to support them. The 4-H Thriving Model was first introduced as a theory of change model for planning 4-H programs in a paper included in a special journal issue devoted to updating Extension methods and practices (Arnold, 2015). In the original paper, the 4-H Thriving Model is presented as an "umbrella" model that translates research into a program theory of change and under which local 4-H programs can be planned (Arnold, 2015, p. 56). As such, the intention is not for the model to be implemented with absolute fidelity, but rather for it to serve three purposes: first, to provide a clear theory of change for 4-H programs; second, to establish scientific support for the process of youth development; and third, to illuminate the specific ways youth programs work, under which conditions and time, and with which youth (Bornstein, 2019). The model itself was developed based on a synthesis and analysis of current youth development literature in response to several key concerns related to positioning 4-H as a youth development organization (Arnold, 2018).

The National Study of 4-H Youth Development conducted by Lerner and his colleagues at Tufts
University provided the first scientifically supported national level evidence for 4-H as an Journal of Youth Development | http://jyd.pitt.edu/ | Vol. 15 Issue 6 DOI 10. 5195/jyd.2020.954 4-H Thriving Model Update 5 effective youth development program (Lerner & Lerner, 2013). The study also produced a model of youth development to guide the work of all youth-serving organizations using a positive youth development approach. The model, informally called the "Five Cs" , built on and scientifically tested the Five Cs framework put forth by Pittman et al. (2003). The Five Cs model predicts that youth who experience positive and supportive relationships with adults and who have opportunities for leadership and skill building will show positive development as indicated by the five Cs of competence, confidence, caring, connection, and character (Lerner & Lerner, 2013). The five Cs in turn lead to a young person who contributes back to society; contribution is sometimes referred to as the "sixth C." The Five Cs model became the prominent model of youth development across the research literature but remained underutilized in the 4-H program itself, despite a special handbook volume dedicated to disseminating to practitioners what was learned .
One reason for this underutilization is that the Five Cs model lacked practical specificity on how to translate the research into effective youth development practice, leaving local 4-H educators uncertain about how to use the model in programming (Arnold & Silliman, 2017;). At the same time, however, it is important to note that theoretical models of youth development are always youth-context-time dependent, reflecting the "specificity principle" (Bornstein, 2019, p. 342) and underscoring the need for any theoretical model to be translated into practice with the specific youth, context, and time in mind. Therefore, the adoption of a theoretical model is different than adopting a standard evidenced-based curriculum to be implemented with fidelity across program sites, which is what Borden et al. (2014) were calling for to improve 4-H.
Another reason the Five Cs model was not fully adopted in 4-H is that the processes through which program characteristics (sustained relationships with mentoring adults) and program activities (promoting life skills and leadership opportunities) led to the five Cs were not articulated, leaving in place the proverbial black box of program understanding (Yohalem & Wilson-Ahlstrom, 2010). As noted by Roth and Brooks-Gunn (2016), elucidating program processes is critical to understanding how to design and implement effective youth programs.
Furthermore, program evaluation increasingly makes sense only if program outcomes are connected to the settings and processes though which they are achieved (Borden et al., 2014;Lerner et al., 2016). The final reason the Five Cs model languished in terms of practical use in the 4-H program was the lack of translation into professional development for 4-H staff and volunteers. Publication in research journals alone will not change practice unless research findings are translated into practical training and professional development for program staff and volunteers. Without such training, the Five Cs model remained little more than a way to describe what 4-H does, and because they were difficult to articulate at the practical level, most programs never adopted the model, relying instead on earlier ways of describing how 4-H impacts youth, such the Essential Elements Framework (Kress, 2005) or the Targeting Life Skills Model (Hendricks, 1996).

Aligning 4-H With Positive Youth Development
A second reason for developing the 4-H Thriving Model was to align the 4-H program more directly with the broader scope of PYD research and practice. Over its evolution as a youth development organization, 4-H has often relied on its own internal descriptors, rather than utilizing research conducted outside of 4-H to describe program theory and processes. A case in point is the eight critical elements from which the Essential Elements Framework (Kress, 2005) was derived that describe the qualities of a 4-H program necessary for youth development. The list of critical elements was developed through a review of extant literature by the National 4-H Impact Team in 1999 and further distilled into the current four Essential Elements by Cathann Kress (2005), who at the time was the director of National 4-H Headquarters.
With some minor variation, the eight elements identified by the National 4-H Impact Team are reflected in the set of eight youth program quality indicators later identified by Eccles and Gootman (2002). Unlike the 4-H list, which was not used beyond the 4-H program, the list proposed by Eccles and Gootman was established through a rigorous and systematic review of youth programs and is widely recognized and referenced in the youth development field. This left the 4-H program using a different set of youth program standards than most other youth development programs.  (Hamilton, 2014), a situation perpetuated by 4-H's continued use of frameworks and models that are not connected to the current research in youth development, research and scholarship that is often taking place at the same LGU as a 4-H program.

Advancing Program Evaluation
The third reason for developing the 4-H Thriving Model was to advance program evaluation efforts in 4-H, particularly in the area of youth development outcomes, in addition to program content outcomes, which are more commonly measured. As noted by Borden et al. (2014), Roth and Brooks-Gunn (2016) and Lerner et al. (2016), the evaluation of youth development programs needs to evolve to determine the critical aspects of program quality that lead to impact, and the processes through which youth development happens. Only then can the outcomes of 4-H, or any other youth development program, be fully understood. conducted largely as outcome evaluations, independent of measuring program quality or process, and thus provide no way to examine how variations in program quality are related to outcomes, nor to elucidate the processes that led to those outcomes. Second, because of the lack of a program theoretical model, the connection between outcomes and the program contexts and processes that led to their achievement are not known, let alone measured.
Understanding program contexts and processes is key to addressing the specificity of the interaction of youth, context, and time (Bornstein, 2019 The 4-H Thriving Model complements and advances the work of 4-H Common Measures by providing a theoretical structural model that predicts program effect and connects program outcomes to the program quality and processes that produced it. The 4-H Thriving Model sets the stage for collecting program evaluation data across the country, leading to a greater statement of the impact of 4-H on its participants.

Originally Proposed 4-H Thriving Model 2
The 4-H Thriving Model originally proposed by Arnold (2018) has three structures that describe and predict the effect of 4-H programs on youth development ( Figure 1).
The first structure is the 4-H developmental context, which is comprised of the setting and experiences provided by 4-H for youth. The developmental context is made up of four elements: (a) facilitating youth sparks, (b) fostering developmental relationships, (c) following principles for high-quality youth development programs, and (d) promoting youth engagement.
Youth sparks are defined as a "passion for a self-identified interest or skill, or a capacity that metaphorically lights a fire in an adolescent's life, providing energy, joy, purpose, and direction" (Scales et al., 2011, p. 264). The relationships between youth and adults in 4-H form the second element of the developmental context. Youth-adult relationships are considered developmental when they express care, challenge growth, provide support and empowerment, share power, and expand possibilities for youth (Roehlkepartain et al., 2017). Developmental relationships also grow and change over time in alignment with a young person's developmental needs Li & Julian, 2012). The third element of a developmental 1 One notable exception was the national call for data in 2018 that invited states to submit data for aggregation using the 4-H Universal Outcomes instrument. The intent of the data collection was to assess outcomes experienced by 4-H youth and to examine variation in outcomes related to variables such as delivery mode, age, gender and level of involvement. In addition, large grant projects funded through National 4-H Council regularly collect robust sets of evaluation data using 4-H Common Measures that could be aggregated and similarly analyzed.

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context is adherence to the eight features of youth development settings identified by Eccles and Gootman (2002): physical and psychological safety, appropriate structure, supportive relationships, opportunities to belong, positive social norms, support for efficacy and mattering, opportunities for skill building, and integration of family, schools and community. The final element is promoting youth engagement in the program, considering the duration, intensity and breadth of participation (Weiss et al., 2005).

Figure 1. Originally Proposed 4-H Thriving Model
High-quality developmental contexts lead to youth thriving, which is the second structure of the model. The six indicators of youth thriving proposed by Search Institute (2014)  Statistical testing using structural equation modeling (Kline, 2011) supported a full mediational model, meaning that youth who participated in 4-H programs that provided a high-quality developmental context thrive, and thriving youth achieved positive developmental outcomes (Arnold & Gagnon, 2019). Whereas the 4-H Thriving model was developed for 4-H specifically, the model has universal application to youth development practice in general. The model articulates the way in which program context and processes lead to positive outcomes, thus elucidating the process of youth development (Roth & Brooks-Gunn, 2016) and establishing a way to evaluate that process (Lerner et al., 2016).
Based on the 2017 study, the model and its measurement were refined and retested in 2018 with 279 youth in Oregon 4-H clubs using a more parsimonious instrument resulting from the original study (Arnold & Gagnon, 2020). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) confirmed the constructs and measurement in the revised model. Structural equation modeling (SEM) supported the full mediational model of the first study. In the second study 73.8% of the respondents were female Youth ranged in age from 13 to 19 with a mean age of 15.21.
Seventy-five percent of respondents were White, 15% were Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin, and less than 3% reported other races. It is important to note that the participant demographics reflect the Oregon 4-H program enrollment and are not fully representative of the national 4-H program enrollment, thus emphasizing the critical need for additional research on the model with different youth in different program contexts.
A few important modifications from the theoretical model emerged after two waves of testing, resulting in a revised model, presented in Figure 2 below (Arnold & Gagnon, 2020): • Youth engagement did not factor into the developmental context structure in the first study. As a result, in the second study youth engagement was tested as a moderator influencing the relationship between the developmental context and youth thriving. The moderating effect was established in the second study, leading to the understanding that youth engagement is essential if programs are to have an effect on youth thriving (see Figure 2). Identifying youth engagement as a moderator underscores the importance of youth engagement in programs. Even the highest quality 4-H program will • The thriving indicator of openness to challenge and discovery factored into two separate constructs in the first study. We identified these constructs as openness to challenge and discovery, which describes a willingness to be challenged and to risk trying new things, and growth mindset, which describes a willingness to work hard to accomplish something. Because possessing a growth mindset has become a central tenet of youth development (Haimovitz & Dweck, 2017), the list of thriving indicators was expanded from six to seven in the revised model (see Figure 2).
• The developmental outcomes of healthful choices and reduction in risk behavior did not factor significantly into the model during the first testing. As a result, these outcomes were dropped from the revised model.
• An additional developmental outcome labeled "personal responsibility," which reflects a young person's dependability and ability to follow through on commitments, was added to the revised model because of the saliency of this outcome to the 4-H program.
Personal responsibility factored into the list of developmental outcomes in the second study (Arnold & Gagnon, 2020).

Advancing the 4-H Thriving Model
The results of the initial testing of the 4-H Thriving Model were received with enthusiasm across the 4-H system, creating buy-in and generating an eagerness to move forward in advancing the model for 4-H. In conversations with 4-H leadership, it became clear that the mechanism to advance the 4-H Thriving Model and to address the valid lingering concerns about its use across the system, was to receive approval for the formation of a PLWG chartered task force. As aforementioned, the PLWG is a representative group of state 4-H program leaders from each region of the country tasked with identifying and supporting key initiatives to advance 4-H youth development work. The PLWG charters these initiatives through an application and review process.

Professional Development
In their 2014 article calling the 4-H program to action, Borden et al. highlight the need for the professional development of 4-H professionals and volunteers and program evaluation that is focused on both outcomes and program quality. Arnold (2018) stated that the primary reason for proposing the model was the need to illuminate the processes through which 4-H promotes positive youth development. The call to elucidate these processes followed the completion of the National 4-H Study of Youth Development (Lerner & Lerner, 2013), which determined what needs to happen for 4-H to promote PYD, but not how to do it (Arnold & Silliman, 2017;). The pressure to understand how PYD is promoted through program settings and activities has been increasing across the general body of youth development literature as well (Lerner et al., 2016;Roth & Brooks-Gunn, 2016).
Program processes are the program's theory of action (Funnell & Rogers, 2011 (Arnold, 2015, p. 53). Because most 4-H programs are decentralized from a national directive and designed and implemented at the state or local level, it is the local 4-H educator who has the most control over developing programs that promote thriving (Arnold & Cater 2016). Therefore, providing professional development to train 4-H educators on the principles of creating a high-quality developmental context, and to design and implement program activities that promote youth thriving, is perhaps the most critical link in ensuring the full use of the 4-H Thriving model, and promoting PYD consistently across the 4-H system (Arnold, 2015). Despite the identification of these core competencies, the PRKC has been minimally used to direct systematic capacity building efforts for 4-H professionals. Some state 4-H programs use the competencies to describe 4-H youth work to new professionals and as a guide for assessing professional development needs ) and for designing professional development opportunities (Garst et al., 2007). However, there has been no national, system-wide adoption of or facilitation of the use of the PRKC to guide professional development efforts in 4-H.
Professional competency in the areas of youth development, youth program development, and volunteerism are key aspects of reaching the full benefit of using the 4-H Thriving Model for several reasons. First, understanding development across childhood and adolescence is necessary to help youth thrive. Take for example the thriving indicator of emotional regulation, which develops over childhood and adolescence. We are typically not surprised if a very young child has an emotional meltdown over not receiving something they desire (like a cookie). But 14 we would take notice if a senior in high school had a similar tantrum over not getting something they desired. The difference is in the developmental maturity of emotional and self-regulation that takes place between early childhood and late adolescence. In order for 4-H programs to be high quality, the developmental nuances of creating developmental settings and promoting youth thriving must be clearly understood (Jones & Deutsch, 2012). Second, designing and implementing high-quality 4-H programs requires professional competency. Without training in the areas of program design, delivery, fidelity, equity, and evaluation, 4-H educators have no understanding of the many important ingredients necessary for program success. Effective program design, delivery, and evaluation in 4-H is largely conducted at the local level by local educators. Thus, the strength and quality of 4-H programs that promote youth thriving, and in turn, achieve youth development outcomes, lie in the competency of local 4-H educators (Arnold & Cater, 2016).

Further Research: What Works for Whom Under What Conditions?
The 4-H Thriving Model represents the first attempt to articulate the 4-H program's theory of change to elucidate the processes through which 4-H achieves its outcomes (Chen, 2004).
Understanding processes that lead to outcomes provides a critical foundation for professional development-if we don't know how 4-H works its magic, how can we prepare 4-H professionals to conduct effective programs? A program theory of change is different than a logic model. Logic models describe what happens in a program, whereas program theory is both descriptive and predictive (Patton, 2002). Program theory provides an explanatory account of how a program works, with whom, and under what conditions (Astbury & Leeuw, 2010), and identifies the causal processes through which program success takes place (Pawson, 2013). As noted by Arnold (2015), without a clear articulation of a program's underlying theory, and an understanding of the causal processes that promote youth development, the implementation of Journal of Youth Development | http://jyd.pitt.edu/ | Vol. 15 Issue 6 DOI 10.5195/jyd.2020.954 4-H Thriving Model Update 15 4-H programs is left to chance, and the measurement of the resultant outcomes is suspect at best. A well-defined program theory of change illuminates the necessary ingredients for program success.
The research conducted to date on the 4-H Thriving Model has confirmed the theory of change for the 4-H program. This theory predicts that: (a) 4-H programs that provide high-quality developmental contexts for youth with a focus on activities that help youth thrive lead to (b) thriving youth, and (c) thriving youth achieve key developmental outcomes. In this theory, youth thriving is a mediating causal process (Chen, 2004), meaning that the process of youth thriving is what connects the developmental context of 4-H and the outcomes for youth participating in 4-H programs. Research on the model has also established a moderating effect, namely youth engagement, that influences the program's effect on youth thriving-that is, the more a young person is engaged in 4-H, the greater likelihood of increased thriving (Arnold & Gagnon, 2020).
One of the key criticisms of adopting the 4-H Thriving Model is the limited research that has been conducted to date, a criticism that is both fair and also an expected part of the process of theory development. What has been established so far is a main effect structural model that supports the theory of change for the 4-H program. This step goes a long way toward addressing some of the concerns about 4-H as a youth development organization raised by Borden and colleagues (2014) and about youth development programs in general (Roth & Brooks-Gunn, 2016). However, continued refinement of the model is necessary to understand what works for whom under what conditions, a phrase often associated with realistic program evaluation approaches (Pawson & Tilley, 1997), and consistent with the Bornstein's (2019) specificity principle that underscores the interaction of youth, context, and time. Both realistic evaluation and the specificity principle are premised on the idea that the processes that lead to a positive program effect vary from context to context and discovering and illuminating these differences strengthen a program's overall theory. Additional research on the 4-H Thriving Model will provide insight into program modifications or adaptions that may be necessary for 4-H to be effective with diverse youth across diverse settings. For example, much continues to be uncovered about the interaction of culture, race, identity, gender, personal experience, history, and socio-economic statuses with the effect of programs on youth.
Additional research will now focus on three aims: ( Recent consensus research highlights that youth have varying learning and developmental needs, influenced in large part by their contexts, brain malleability, and presence of buffering relationships (Bonnie & Backes, 2019;Cantor et al., 2019). The result of this research is a new emphasis on the science of learning and development, which is leading advances in contemporary developmental science and will surely have a key influence on youth development practice in the years to come (Lerner, Geldhof, & Bowers, 2019). Consistent with program design principles identified in the science of learning and development, the need to elucidate the processes of youth development is key to ensuring that 4-H and all PYD programs generate intended outcomes for youth. A young person who has suffered trauma and its impact on brain development, for example, may require different forms of support and interaction from a program's context to ensure a positive impact on that young person's development. The driving research question moving forward is: How does participation in the 4-H program enhance thriving, for which youth, in which contexts, and, in particular right now, as the COVID-19 pandemic and calls for social justice mark this point in history, for youth at this point in time (Arnold, 2020;Arnold & Rennekamp, 2020).
The second subgroup of the Advancing the 4-H Thriving Model Task Force, led by three 4-H specialist-level program evaluators and a lead methodologist, will focus first on a system-wide main-effect replication of the 4-H Thriving Model study. From there the group will work to identify the next steps for continued research to further test and refine the underlying theory of the 4-H Thriving Model to ensure its applicability for all 4-H participants and program settings.
Results of ongoing research will inform the work of the professional development group as we learn more about what works for which youth under which conditions, and how best to foster thriving in 4-H youth, with theoretical application to all youth development programs.

Enhancing Organizational Alignment Across the 4-H System
In their work on building evaluation capacity, Preskill and Boyle (2008)  Moving forward from this juncture will take considerable investment in terms of dollars, time, and energy. Doing so, however, will help us ensure the best 4-H programming for the youth we serve, and realize some key portions of the national 4-H strategic plan (NIFA, 2019). To not move forward in a united way at this point risks a gradual devolution of the 4-H Thriving Model into 50 or more different forms, with each state continuing to do 4-H in its own way. If this happens we will miss the chance to determine the large-scale impact of 4-H, let alone ensure that all youth who participate in 4-H receive the same high-quality experience that we know leads to youth thriving and key developmental outcomes. In short, if we do not harness the interest and expertise of the system's 4-H professionals to transform research into practice, 4-H will not rise to meet the challenges for improvement put forth by Borden et al. (2014), nor will it lead the field of youth development 3.0 (Roth and Brooks-Gunn, 2016) as it should, given its placement in the country's LGUs.
While the immediate goal of this paper was to share an update on the development of the 4-H Thriving Model, and the efforts in place to facilitate its advancement across the 4-H system, the paper has broader implications for youth development beyond 4-H. The first implication is the way in which the 4-H Thriving model advances our theoretical understanding of the process of PYD, as called for by Roth and Brooks-Gunn (2016). The 4-H Thriving model has illuminated one process, youth thriving, that connects youth outcomes to high-quality developmental settings. The constructs included in the model are not specific to 4-H, but rather universal constructs of program settings and youth development drawn from multi-disciplinary research in youth, child, and adolescent development. The key to using the model in other youth development settings lies in the recognition that the model is not something to be implemented with fidelity, but rather used theoretically, describing one way that programs can promote positive youth development. As such, whereas the applicability of the theory of the model (high-quality contexts lead to youth thriving, and thriving youth achieve developmental outcomes) may be more or less universal among youth development programs, the specifics of how the model is translated into practice will be different from program to program. Recent advances in developmental science have underscored the nature and importance of idiopathic development and its implications for research (Nesselroade, 2019) and youth development practice (Lerner et al., 2019). Advancing understanding of the specificity of youth in context, and its implications for research and practice is the cornerstone of current developmental science (Cantor et al., 2019). Rather than seeking a standard implementation model that fits every youth program, and thus violating Bornstein's (2019) specificity principle, all youth development practitioners must translate theoretical constructs into actions that fit the specific needs of each youth participant each time and each place a program takes place, with particular attention given to the racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the youth the program serves.