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Abstract

The Positive Youth Development (PYD) perspective has expanded since its inception. Today, PYD is gaining interest in communities and research projects across the globe, including the Cross-National Positive Youth Development Network (CN-PYD), which was initiated in 2014 at the University of Bergen, Norway. CN-PYD builds on the central PYD assumptions that thriving is enhanced when there is an alignment between youth strengths (e.g., social competencies) and contextual resources (e.g., opportunities for experience). CN-PYD operates with the overall aim of testing and extending strengths-based perspectives of development with samples and in settings that are often underrepresented in social and behavioral research. Accordingly, CN-PYD’s twofold goal for working with diverse youth and emerging adults is to: (1) explore what is positive development and its determinants, and (2) identify and advance resources and opportunities that facilitate thriving. The pursuit of this goal is to ultimately increase the potential for substantial theoretical innovation within developmental science (which includes the fields of PYD and developmental psychopathology [DP]), contribute to better representation within the global youth evidence base, as well as promote effective interventions and initiatives through policies and partnerships with stakeholders and young people themselves. In this article, we focus on selected highlights from CN-PYD’s research that examine a key assumption of strengths-based frameworks, as well as describe new domains of inquiry, and current PYD research and methodological challenges. This article then addresses how the fields of PYD and DP can inform one another and thereby advance developmental science. Finally, we end with consideration of the implications of CN-PYD research for the wider strengths-based study of youth.

Keywords

PYD global diverse youth and emerging adults new grounds challenges developmental psychopathology

At the beginning of the 20th century, Granville (G.) Stanley Hall (1904), who has been considered the founder of the scientific study of adolescent development, described the period of adolescence as one of likely, if not inevitable, storm and stress. This idea that young people should have heightened problems during adolescence (i.e., problems should be normative and widespread because the adolescent period is a less advanced time of development, individually and collectively relative to adulthood in Hall’s (1904) view) has followed youth research for decades and even into the present day.

However, at the turn of the 21st century, psychological research and theory conceptualized adolescence in an increasingly positive view (e.g., Dimitrova & Wiium, 2021; King & Mangan, 2023). One of several lines of research, such as the positive youth development (PYD) perspective,¹ was strengthened and gained prominence, bringing in its wake, a vital breadth to youth research that had been limited by a deficit approach which mainly saw young people as being defined, in large part, by their problems (Buchanan, Romer, et al., 2023; Buchanan, Zietz, et al., 2023; Hollenstein & Lougheed, 2013). PYD alluded to a strengths-based approach that drew attention to what was working (e.g., competencies, sense of identity, and belonging) and what youth themselves had to offer as agents of positive change in the contexts in which they live, play, and work (Larson, 2000; Roth & Brooks-Gunn, 2003).

Consistent with PYD’s central assumptions, thriving or positive development is enhanced when there is an alignment between youth strengths (e.g., social competencies) and contextual resources (e.g., opportunities for experience). Collectively, youth strengths and contextual resources are referred to as developmental assets, strengths representing internal assets, and contextual resources, external assets (Benson, 2007; Syvertsen et al., 2021). To determine the building blocks of positive development, Benson (2007) proposed a Developmental Assets Profile, which reflects four internal assets and four external assets categories. The internal assets categories include Commitment to learning (e.g., achievement motivation and bonding to school), Positive values (e.g., honesty and responsibility), Social competencies (e.g., planning and decision-making), and Positive identity (e.g., personal power and self-esteem). The external assets categories comprise Support (e.g., family support and caring neighborhood), Empowerment (e.g., community’s perception of youth as resources), Boundaries and expectations (e.g., school boundaries and significant others’ expectations of young people), and Constructive use of time (e.g., in creative activities and religious community). Together, these eight categories of assets are embedded in young people’s personal, social, family, school, and community contexts, indicating an ecological perspective of the strengths and resources that come together to promote positive development.

To assess thriving or positive development, the 5Cs of PYD (Geldhof et al., 2014) have typically been used. These Cs representing Competence (academic, physical, and social), Confidence (self-worth, appearance and positive identity), Character (behavioral conduct, social conscience, personal values and values diversity), Connection (healthy relationships with school, family, community and peers) and Caring (empathy and sympathy) can in turn initiate a 6th C, Contribution, which denotes contribution to self, family, school, and community (Lerner et al., 2015). Thus, PYD also assumes that youth who are elevated on the 5Cs would be contributing to their context. Moreover, these youth would be expected to report less risk and problem behaviors, thereby suggesting a protective role for strengths-based indicators of PYD (Lerner et al., 2015).

Much of the PYD research began in the United States and has been largely rooted in this socio-cultural context, theoretically and empirically. Theoretical frameworks, concepts/constructs, and measurement tools like the Developmental Assets Profile (Benson, 2007; Syvertsen et al., 2021) and the 5Cs of PYD (Lerner et al., 2015) were developed to provide a vision of what PYD could entail, as well as sought to describe conditions that could foster it. In these perspectives, developmental changes happen via person–context interactions and processes of development as captured from the vantage point of different research approaches, such as at the ideographic (the utterly unique life course), differential (subgroup specific), and nomothetic (general patterns of development operating in a normative way for the typical or average person across a cohort or subgroup) levels (Lundh, 2024).² Other key features of some theories about PYD are that thriving happens at the individual youth and contextual levels, as well as theory-based expectations about what it means to thrive in relation to problems and risks (e.g., is there an inverse association between strengths and problems, are strengths and problems operating independently of one another, or other patterns of association).

The last decade has seen a growing interest in the PYD perspective in several non-US research groups and projects (e.g., Qi et al., 2022; Shek & Dou, 2024; Shek & Wu, 2016). Consistent with this trend, the Cross-National Positive Youth Development Network³ (CN-PYD; for details see https://www.uib.no/en/rg/sipa/pydcrossnational) was initiated in 2014 at the University of Bergen, Norway. The network aimed to investigate positive development and its determinants in youth and emerging adults from a global perspective, and uniquely in the field, the network has adopted a theoretically pluralistic/inclusive approach (examining specific constructs such as well-being, along with allied but distinct theories like the 5Cs and the developmental assets framework). The network also aimed to identify and advance the resources and opportunities (developmental assets) that facilitate thriving in youth and emerging adults from diverse backgrounds. This aim was to be achieved through intervention development, policy formulation, partnership with stakeholders, and young people themselves.

With diverse expertise in human development, intervention and implementation science, and ongoing data collection involving over 20,000 minority and majority youth and emerging adults (aged 16–29) in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe, as well as Australia, New Zealand, and the Middle East, CN-PYD’s ultimate goal has been to make a global impact by improving what is known about the many underrepresented youth who live in the 89%–95% majority world (majority in terms of population) that has often been neglected within psychology and developmental science, which as fields should have global relevance and benefit (Arnett, 2008; Thalmayer et al., 2021).

In the rest of this article, we provide examples of CN-PYD’s research⁴ on central PYD assumptions against a more globally relevant evidence base. We also explain what the new grounds or areas of inquiry in PYD-related research are, as well as address pressing research and methodological challenges. To connect with this Special Issue’s theme on developmental psychopathology (DP), we then focus on synergies between PYD and DP. This article ends with a consideration of the implications of CN-PYD research for the study of youth and developmental science.

CN-PYD’s Research on PYD’s Central Assumptions: Illustrative Findings

CN-PYD research on several of the central PYD assumptions (e.g., that developmental assets facilitate thriving and, in turn, contribution) included investigations into strengths as well as the contextual resources of young people using a broad theoretical standpoint that has included the developmental assets framework (Benson, 2007) and 5Cs of PYD (Lerner et al., 2015). Other indicators of youth development, such as academic achievement and other thriving indicators, have also been examined in relation to the aforementioned strengths-based models. These research investigations took place either within a single nation or across multiple countries. In CN-PYD research, our initial steps in data analysis have been to assess the psychometric properties of the PYD scales that were studied, and for studies involving multiple countries, measurement invariance was conducted to ensure that the same constructs were being measured across countries.

In one of the cross-national studies that involved Italy, Norway, and Turkey, three European countries that differ economically, culturally, and politically, CN-PYD partners explored the generalizability of the developmental assets framework to these contexts and found that the assets that were developed in the US context were also experienced by the youth living in these European contexts (Wiium et al., 2018). Interestingly, the experience of assets appeared to differ across the European contexts, with youth in Norway (in particular, females), reporting in comparison with the other samples, the most assets; results that may be supported by Norway’s economy, pragmatic social values and work toward supporting greater gender equality (Norway ranks highest among the three European countries on Global Gender Gap index—an index that reflects the prospect of females relative to males in four areas: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment).

In another cross-national study by Adams et al. (2018), three samples living within rather comparable countries in sub-Saharan Africa (i.e., comparable per Youth Development Index [YDI] as indicative of five areas of youth engagement: political participation, health and well-being, employment and opportunity, education, and civil participation) were studied. Results indicated that those in the Ghanaian sample reported fewer assets than the Kenyan and South African samples, although Ghana as a nation led in youth development according to the YDI indices relative to Kenyan and South African indices. This was rather an unexpected result and appears to suggest a nonlinear association between the report of assets and YDI.

In our CN-PYD research, where the importance of gender has been emphasized, several gender differences have been observed. As noted in the study by Wiium et al. (2018) and also in Beck and Wiium’s (2019) study, females reported more assets compared to males in Norway, while males in Italy reported more assets in general than their female counterparts. As for the 5Cs that assessed thriving or positive development, female secondary school students in Ghana were more likely to report Caring, while more males relative to females reported Competence (Wiium et al., 2019). In another study involving youth in Portugal (Tomé et al., 2021), boys were more likely to score higher on Competence, Confidence, and Connection when compared to girls. In Spain, females reported higher scores on Connection, Caring, and Character, while males, compared to females, reported higher scores on Competence and Confidence (Gomez-Baya et al., 2024). Taken together, these results appear to reflect the role of gender socialization and how this socialization is embedded within the political, economic, and other cultural positions of the different countries represented in our studies.

Referring to asset-building community (i.e., behaviors and programs) and asset-building society (i.e., norms and policies), Benson (2007) described the conditions that tend to nurture developmental assets needed for PYD. Although not directly measured in these cross-national studies with youth reports of positive development, it is likely that the economic, cultural, and political initiatives of countries as they connect with the lives of youth can play a role in asset-building at the local community and societal levels. What is captured by these youth reports are participants’ perceptions of which contextual assets are available to them, which is arguably important but should also be considered along with directly measured assets within local contexts, which would provide more specificity in understanding differential importance of assets in subgroups of youth, with subgroups characterized by gender and national context (e.g., Wiium et al., 2018) or national context (e.g., Adams et al., 2018).

In yet another line of inquiry, when associations between the developmental assets, thriving, and other youth developmental indicators were assessed, positive associations were observed in agreement with some wider PYD-based theoretical assumptions. For example, in Norway, Nag Delgado et al. (2021) observed positive associations of four asset categories (Commitment to learning and Positive values as internal assets, and Empowerment and Constructive use of time as external assets) with youth thriving (reflecting indicators like good physical health, leadership, delayed gratification, and overcoming adversity, among others). Furthermore, developmental assets, such as Commitment to learning, Positive values, and Positive identity, were related to thriving among university students in Ghana (Wiium, 2017), while Commitment to learning and Support were found to be related to academic achievement in youth living in Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Serbia (Uka et al., 2021). In Chile, Pérez-Díaz and colleagues (2022) found a positive association between Positive identity and wellbeing in a youth sample. Moreover, components from the 5Cs have been observed to be associated with academic achievement in Slovenian youth (Kozina et al., 2018) and wellbeing among undergraduate students in Malaysia (Abdul Kadir & Mohd, 2021).

Concerning our studies on developmental assets, internal assets, relative to external assets, have often been found to be more predictive of youth outcomes, such as grades in secondary school students in Africa (Adams et al., 2018), academic achievement in Norwegian secondary school students (Beck & Wiium, 2019), wellbeing in Latin American college students (Manrique-Millones et al., 2021), and thriving in Roma youth in Bulgaria and Kosovo (Wiium & Uka, 2021). Nonetheless, while the strengths and competencies of young people may appear to be driving their positive development, our research has also shown that internal assets like Positive identity can be enhanced by external assets like Support, Empowerment and Boundaries and expectations in a study that involved young adults from four European countries: Norway, Romania, Slovenia, and Turkey (Dost-Gözkan et al., 2021). These findings, as a whole, highlight that the theoretical assumption of the alignment needed between internal and external assets for positive development to occur is important and evident, but that much more work is needed to understand how the cross-context and context-specific strengths may play for youth living in different parts of the world who have access to different contextual resources.

An exciting new line of inquiry, in our research group, also highlights how strengths-based views of PYD connect to environmental concern and behavior. Associations have been observed between the 5Cs of PYD and the 6th C of Contribution, where not only Character, especially, but also Competence and Caring are thriving indicators that appear to enable Norwegian secondary school students to contribute to local, community, and global issues through helping behaviors, positive attitudes to the environment, environmental behaviors and intentions as well as environmental responsibility (Bøhlerengen & Wiium, 2022; Wiium, 2022). When associations between the 5Cs and the indicators of environmental concern were examined in Ghanaian university students, similar results were found, but associations with environmental responsibility were not significant (Kabir & Wiium, 2021). Likewise, Gomez-Baya and colleagues (2024) found several of the Cs (Character, Connection, and Caring) to be associated with social contribution and pro-environmental behaviors in a sample of Spanish-emerging adults.

An important research investigation also involves the connections between strengths and problems. In our CN-PYD research, developmental assets and the 5Cs of PYD have been found, in general, to be negatively associated with poor mental health and risk behaviors, for example, in Croatian secondary and university students (Stabbetorp et al., 2024), in Norwegian secondary school students (Wiium et al., 2021), and in Albanian youth living in South-Eastern European countries: Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Serbia (Pivec et al., 2021; Uka et al., 2021). Thus, the assumed associations between the developmental assets, the 5Cs, contribution, and problem behaviors largely appear to hold true in countries within majority and minority world contexts.

Yet, there is a notable exception to this general finding about an inverse or protective relation between strengths and problems. CN-PYD research has not always found the presumed relations between Caring and Contribution. Indeed, the associations observed were not only non-significant but, in some cases, Caring appeared to be maladaptive. Theoretically, Caring is a thriving indicator that should promote contribution to self and society and should be inversely associated with problems. However, in several of our studies, we have found higher scores in Caring to be associated with higher scores in anxiety, for example, in a Slovenian youth sample (Kozina, Wiium, & Pivec, 2021), and in cross-national samples of youth and emerging adults in Slovenia and Spain (Kozina, Gomez-Baya, et al., 2021). Thus, with positive development in youth, the indicators of empathy and sympathy reflected in Caring may not be as adaptive as the other components in the 5Cs. More research and theoretical development are important to clarify the processes that connect youth strengths and problems. Such efforts that holistically consider adolescents in terms of the positives/potentials and problems/challenges are vital to advances in developmental science, and it is important that these insights be pursued at the individual, subgroup, and cohort levels of analysis with diverse youth.

New Grounds for PYD-Related Research

In addition to extending the generalizability of the central PYD assumptions, CN-PYD research has made substantial contributions conceptually, methodically, geographically, and in terms of the scope of PYD. Conceptually, our group has contributed by having at the heart of our activities more than one strengths-based perspective as a guide (e.g., 5Cs and developmental assets, as well as other relevant constructs that have their own theoretical and empirical history). Illustrations of constructs with substantial standalone scholarly work would include facets of social-emotional learning (Tolan et al., 2016), as well as civic engagement (Mužík et al., 2024). Theoretical pluralism is important when attempting to understand youth and contextual strengths in varied parts of the world. Our beginning premise is that different theories and methods may prove to have varied explanatory importance to youth development and thriving in the diversity of contexts youth live in from a global standpoint.

As an example of the benefits to be gained by theoretical pluralism, we can point to our own and other researchers’ exploration of the value added by another possible facet of PYD, namely Creativity (described as a novel and adaptive, problem-solving ability; Batey, 2012). The long-standing field that concerns the study of creativity is important on its own grounds and is also a useful extension of already existing PYD theories, such as Lerner and Lerner’s 5Cs (Lerner et al., 2015). In our research with youth and emerging adults around the globe, we discovered that for some young people, thriving indicators were not limited to the 5Cs (Lerner et al., 2015). Due to limited resources in their contexts, it is imperative for many young people, especially in the majority world, to be able to engage creatively with the resources and opportunities available in their communities to realize their full potential. Creativity thus promises to become an important PYD indicator for these young people. In a study that we conducted to ascertain the role of Creativity along with the other Cs in positive development across three Asian low- and middle-income countries (LAMICs): India, Indonesia, and Pakistan (Dimitrova et al., 2021), we obtained significant results, which suggested a psychometrically reliable and valid measurement of a 7Cs model of PYD that included Creativity.

Moreover, studies have observed significant associations between Creativity (either alone or as part of a PYD model) and several youth outcomes. In the study that involved the three Asian LAMICs (Dimitrova et al., 2021), significant structural relations between the 7Cs (the 5Cs plus contribution as conceptualized by Lerner and colleagues plus creativity = 7Cs) and a factor indicating developmental assets (as conceptualized by Benson and colleagues) were observed, while these two views of positive development were jointly associated with young people’s scores on hope, which was conceptualized as a thriving outcome in this study. In another study that involved emerging adults in Malaysia (Abdul Kadir et al., 2021), not only was the reliability and validity of the 7Cs model confirmed, but the findings also indicated a significant relation with mindfulness, a positive psychological concept that denotes the ability to be aware of the present moment, a mindset of openness to novelty and the ability to engage and draw novel distinctions (Langer, 1989). Abdul Kadir and Mohd (2022) also found Creativity (along with Positive identity, Support and thriving) to be related to mental wellbeing among Malaysian emerging adults. Furthermore, the 7Cs model has been tested among emerging adults in Colombia and Peru with promising results (Manrique-Millones et al., 2021). The results indicated a significant negative association with risky behaviors (alcohol use, drug use, violence, and suicide attempt), suggesting a protective role of the 7Cs model for a sample of emerging adults in Latin America.

In addition to the conceptual contribution to PYD, CN-PYD has regularly employed rigorous psychometric testing, testing for measurement invariance, to be able to make meaningful comparisons across diverse groups. For example, in a study of the factor structure of the 5Cs of PYD in a Chinese adolescent sample, Chen and colleagues (2018) compared results from confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) and found that ESEM produced better model fit (ESEM had higher fit indices and within the acceptable range, but not CFA) and lower factor correlations than CFA; thus, suggesting appropriate statistical procedures (but also theoretical sound decisions) that allow for the use of all the items in a scale rather than dropping items to achieve a model fit.

Most of the PYD research, including ours have used variable-oriented analytic approaches, where averaged parameters have been estimated and applied for all individuals in the study sample (a nomothetic research approach; Howard & Hoffman, 2018). Nonetheless, in some of our studies, we have used a person-oriented approach, which allows us to understand subgroups. For example, in a study that was conducted with university students in Romania (Ferrer-Wreder et al., 2021), results from latent profile analyses (person-oriented approach) indicated 5Cs responses patterned themselves into two latent classes. These identified classes diverged on Caring and Character; individuals in Class 2, which was the numerically more common profile, had elevated scores on Caring and Character compared to individuals in Class 1, a less frequently occurring profile. Moreover, in Pivec and Kozina’s (2023) study involving Slovenian youth, four distinctive profiles of the 5Cs were identified: High PYD, Self-efficacious (had higher scores on Competence and Confidence), Socio-emotional (had higher scores on Caring and Character), and Low PYD were observed, results indicated that young people, even those living in similar context may differ in their pattern of thriving.

More importantly, the patterns observed in the studies by Ferrer-Wreder and colleagues (2021) and Pivec and Kozina (2023) tended to vary across several other outcomes. For the former study (Ferrer-Wreder et al., 2021), while the two classes were similar on problematic behaviors, purpose in life, and psychological complaints, Class 2, in comparison with Class 1, was higher on hope, as well as general wellbeing and social wellbeing, although Class 2 also reported more somatic complaints, a finding that was unexpected. For the latter study (Pivec & Kozina, 2023), which aimed to examine how general anxiety and COVID-19 anxiety varied across different latent profiles, individuals in the High PYD profile reported lower anxiety and moderate COVID-19 anxiety; the Self-efficacious profile reported lower anxiety and the lowest levels of COVID-19 anxiety, the Socio-emotional profile reported moderate anxiety and the highest levels of COVID-19 anxiety, while the Low PYD profile reported higher anxiety and moderate COVID-19 anxiety. Such person-oriented findings are important and complement what we can learned from variable and ideographic approaches, as well as serve as a basis for intervention efforts.

In addition to the conceptual and methodological advancement made in CN-PYD, our research has extended the geographical settings of PYD research. In our attempt to make a global impact with our research, the aim, as part of our twofold goal, has been to include in the global knowledge base the many underrepresented young people not only across the majority world but also in marginalized communities in the minority world. Notably, our research has involved marginalized minorities, such as Roma and Egyptian youth living in Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Serbia, samples that have rarely been featured in scientific studies (Miconi et al., 2021, 2023; Uka et al., 2021; Wiium & Uka, 2021). In CN-PYD research, we are not only providing better representation of knowledge about young people in many underrepresented parts of the world, but also helping to address the Sustainable Developmental Goals, especially goals 4, 5, and 10, which have to do with ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and the promotion of lifelong learning opportunities for all; achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls; and reducing inequality within and among countries (United Nations, 2017).

Moreover, to improve knowledge about underrepresented youth living in the majority world, CN-PYD involved scholars from several countries around the world in a Handbook of Positive Youth Development (Dimitrova & Wiium, 2021), which not only widened the scope of PYD but also consolidated wide ranging knowledge about youth and emerging adults as seen from the standpoint of scientific scholars from 38 countries, many of them located in the majority world. In doing so, the scientific work presented in the Handbook also advanced PYD theoretical and empirical knowledge base in a global perspective, refined methodological issues and measurement in understudied contexts, as well as integrated PYD scholarship with relevant research, policy, and practice.

At the beginning of 2024, CN-PYD made great strides again when the book entitled Addressing Social Justice: A Positive Youth Development Approach (Wiium et al., 2024) was published. The nine-chapter book featured a protocol, experimental, theoretical, and empirical studies that improved what is known about the positive development of youth and emerging adults living in seven countries located on four continents: Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. The publication is based on articles that were presented at the First Conference on Positive Youth Development in a Cross-national Perspective, a virtual conference that was held in April 2022 and hosted by the University of Bergen. As a continuation of the conference with a theme on “Bridging Research & Practice Cross-Nationally: A PYD Approach to Social Justice,” and CN-PYD’s commitment to identifying and advancing the resources and opportunities that facilitate thriving in youth and emerging adults from a global perspective, the publication was to provide insights into how the PYD perspective can be used to address issues pertaining to social injustice and to advocate for equity among young people from diverse backgrounds.

Research and Methodological Challenges

While CN-PYD has progressed in research and other scientific activities, our work, like many others, has had its share of challenges. With the applications of scales like Geldhof and colleagues’ (2014) 5Cs of PYD (Competence, Confidence, Character, Connection, and Caring), Search Institute’s Developmental Assets Profile, Keyes et al.’s (2008) Mental Health Continuum, Reisman and colleagues’ (2016) creativity scale and other scales constructed to assess youth health and developmental outcomes, there has always been the question as to how scales developed in the US context will be applicable in our non-US contexts. Indeed, while the overall utility of these scales has been confirmed in our CN-PYD research, we have also run into several situations where items on some scales have been problematic in our research. For example, poor psychometric properties for the Constructive use of time subscale in the developmental assets profile have usually been found (Dost-Gözkan et al., 2021; Wiium et al., 2021), while for the 5Cs of PYD, items in the subscale of Character, which relates to conduct behavior, have not always conformed to the proposed theoretical factor structure in our samples (Kabir et al., 2021).

Items included in Constructive use of time relate to being involved in a religious group, in creative activities like music, theatre, and other arts, as well as involvement in sports activities, a youth club, or other youth groups. Depending on the context, culture, or country, all these arenas can be important developmental asset contexts, where youth and emerging adults can have access to resources and opportunities to develop their full potential. However, as argued by Benson (2007), the nurturing of developmental assets is dependent on asset-building community and asset-building society, which reflect the attitudes and behaviors, as well as programs and policies embedded or initiated in a youth context. We have found evidence of Benson’s assertion in our CN-PYD contexts. For example, in our Ghanaian context, due to the attributed cultural importance of religion, items on religion work quite well, while the opposite is true for our Norwegian context, where involvement in or attending religious programs or activities is not as widespread as it is in Ghana. Even so, the good news is that youth contexts have resources, some of which may be unique to certain contexts and others shared, and much work is needed to identify this balance between unique and shared resources in diverse contexts across the globe.

Developmental Psychopathology

To put PYD in a wider developmental science context, we will offer some reflections on how PYD and DP can inform one another. Both views place importance on explaining processes of developmental change across time, focus on the need to understand person–context interactions through the interplay of internal and external resources, and demand an interdisciplinary approach. Furthermore, both views embrace a recognition that adaptive and maladaptive processes can co-exist within the same individual, as well as focus on the utility of variable and person-oriented research methods and the overlap of constructs that are assets in PYD studies and serve as explanatory, protective, and/or promotive factors in DP studies.

In terms of distinctions, DP is focused on understanding and ameliorating psychological “human suffering” (Beauchaine, 2024, p. 2) and is central to the wider field of clinical science. Examples of the kinds of suffering addressed by DP researchers include investigations into the etiology, heterogeneity, and comorbidity of developmental trajectories of internalizing and/or externalizing problems, as well as other forms of psychopathology. In contrast to DP, PYD is concerned primarily with adaptative (i.e., doing okay) to optimal functioning (i.e., thriving). DP as a meta-theory can be thought of as a meta-paradigm for scientific inquiry that offers a conceptual foundation (interdisciplinary, person–context interactions, transactional models with consideration of the moderation and mediation of effects) for specific theories and research about psychopathology (Beauchaine, 2024; Davies & Sturge-Apple, 2024). DP considers suffering as emerging from person–context interactions (e.g., Humphreys et al., 2024) and such suffering is viewed as multidetermined. Furthermore, suffering can be explained at the population (risk factors in probability models linked to a future outcome for a cohort) and/or person levels (individuals’ unique experiences and interpretations of the meaning of their own life course; Lundh, 2024⁵). From these starting assumptions, as has been noted, DP calls for an explanatory approach that incorporates more than one level of analysis and considers more than one point in time in a person’s life. Beauchaine’s (2024, p. 5) nested model for child depression with levels spanning the “child, household, proximal and local environment, primary culture, institutional environment, and national culture” is an illustration of a multilevel approach within DP.

Because the psychological life of people and their life contexts are viewed in similar ways as in developmental systems views of human development (e.g., bioecological theory—Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006; holistic-interactionistic—Magnusson, 1988), DP has moved the study of psychopathology away from nondevelopmental and noncontextual approach and as the sole concern of a few specialized sciences and practices to a multidisciplinary scientific effort that seeks to consider suffering across levels of analysis in persons and contexts (e.g., Beauchaine, 2024), as well as across the lifespan by addressing questions such as why does suffering begin and end—continuity and discontinuity (Sroufe & Rutter, 1984) and what is the meaning of suffering and adaptation in different cultural and historical contexts?

Theories About PYD and DP

If human psychological suffering is the providence of DP, and if the providence of PYD is adaptation to thriving, what can DP and PYD offer one another⁶? Early on in DP’s history, there was recognition that understanding adaptation and resilience informs what is known about maladaptation. For example, this is reflected in Masten’s (2006) consideration of what DP’s goals should be

to prevent or reduce psychopathology and alleviate the burden of suffering it brings to individuals, families, and communities, while at the same time promoting healthy behavior and development. (p. 52)

Considering the historical juxtaposition of adaptive and maladaptive, typical and atypical, health and disease, and appreciating the shared developmental science approach that DP and PYD exemplify, one idea for advancing the respective fields is to identify those phenomena and processes of development (e.g., promotive and protective factors) that are highly important to understanding both adaptation and maladaptation. For example, in Eisenberg and colleagues’ (2024) review of relations between prosocial behavior and empathy and internalizing and externalizing problems, there were several empirical examples of situations in which empathy could be to the service of many (associated with reduced chances of externalizing problems in most cases) and yet still be to the detriment of others. Eisenberg et al. (2024, p. 5) noted that there can be a positive association between empathy and internalizing problems under certain conditions (e.g., when “. . . mothers’ negative emotions are chronic and salient to offspring . . .”) and within selected subgroups of individuals based on demographic and psychological variation. Indeed, our research group has also found contingent associations between Caring as a thriving indicator (linked in expected ways with other thriving indicators in several studies), and still yet in other studies, Caring was connected with elevated anxiety. Caring/empathy is an example of a psychological phenomenon that has potentially nuanced associations with adaptation and maladaptation. This is one of many possible examples of potential trans-valence factors (valence refers to a factor that is important to positive and problematic development) that could be of greater theoretical and empirical focus for both DP and PYD.

As summed by Eisenberg and colleagues (2024):

The adaptive and less adaptive aspects of children’s functioning would be expected to be interrelated, albeit sometimes in complex ways. Nuance in terms of differentiating among various forms of prosocial behavior, empathy-related responding and developmental psychopathology is necessary if reliable patterns of findings are to be identified. (p. 8)

We argue that such a consideration of empathy in connection to developmental psychopathology would benefit from an expansion of this aim to also consider empathy’s role in typical functioning and thriving, and thereby approach it as a more “whole person view” (Lundh, 2024) of the role of empathy in human development across contexts. This example regarding empathy is only illustrative of a wider potential. Thus, PYD could profit from research conducted on an even wider range of internal assets within DP studies.

As noted, DP and PYD both aim to explain whole-person functioning across developmental time. Explanatory principles that have been well used in DP, like transactional models with developmental cascades, equifinality and multifinality, concerns about continuity and discontinuity can apply equally well to the prediction of suffering as to the understanding of adaptation and thriving, and many of these principles are needed to fast-track advances in the next wave of wide-scale global longitudinal PYD research.

What PYD can clarify for DP is the recognition that positive development is not solely defined as the mere absence of problems. Furthermore, as noted in the example, empathy/caring illustrating adaptation and maladaptation can co-exist, which then moves one conceptually to a key premise of some PYD theories, which posit that all individuals have psychological strengths to varying degrees and functionality within their contexts. We posit that this simple premise is absolutely core to intervention efforts that have programmatic reach and sound implementation. In practice, helping youth and caring adults remember what works and aspects of a young person’s identity that are valued by themselves, and others, is an essential starting point to make beneficial changes among youth facing serious challenges. Thus, the study of strengths applies not only to those who are thriving but also to those who are getting by (i.e., typical development) as well as among those who experience significant problems and challenges. While DP and PYD both recognize the interplay of internal/external assets co-occurring with risk and maladaptive processes, truly fulsome, wide-ranging investigations of positive and problematic development are few in number, and how risks and assets work (cumulative models, trans-valence explanatory processes) remains a potentially highly heuristic future research priority for PYD and DP. Finally, DP and PYD can both benefit from greater theoretical and epistemological pluralism that is expressed in the spirit of a “positive sum science” (Beauchaine, 2024, p. 4) in which different fields, approaches, and methods are viewed as potentially informative and are freed from their disciplinary and methodological silos.

Implications and Conclusions

With its advancement in conceptualization, methodology, geography, and the general scope of PYD, CN-PYD research has several implications for future youth research, policy formulation, as well as youth programs and initiatives. For research, CN-PYD’s application of theoretical pluralism paves the way for partnership with related disciplines or perspectives like DP and helps both fields to have a more holistic view of youth development, as well as the added value of utilizing other theoretical and methodological procedures that can further broaden the PYD research scope. Research that considers developmental processes that are associated with adaptive and/or maladaptive outcomes can provide unique insights into “whole person” functioning, which can effectively inform youth policies and programs. Not to mention, the conceptual, methodological, and wider geographical scope in CN-PYD research is more likely to lead to new insights, greater representativeness of our science, and a proving ground for what is robust and what is nuanced and context-specific. This richer and nuanced view of the whole young person promises to advance policies that will adequately address the needs of youth and emerging adults across cultures and contexts. Furthermore, in youth programs and initiatives, preventive, protective, and promotive strategies informed by theoretical pluralism applied in CN-PYD research can lead to better developmental outcomes than just a focus on one type of strategy (in contrast to single problem intervention approaches).

To conclude, in addition to providing more globally relevant evidence on the central assumptions of PYD perspectives, CN-PYD’s research continues to break new ground conceptually, methodologically, geographically, and in the general scope of PYD research. CN-PYD’s research has yielded substantial theoretical innovation, as well as testing measures and theoretical propositions in varied and underrepresented parts of the world. This widening of the scope of what positive development could be and how it could operate in different parts of the world has contributed to better representation within the global youth evidence base. This is in response to CN-PYD’s commitment to provide a forum for improving what is known about many of the young people living in the majority world, whose inclusion in research can provide a better representation of the conditions of youth and emerging adults, as well as inform the response to addressing these conditions.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Nora Wiium

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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Youth development in a global perspective: Broadening the scope

Abstract

Keywords

CN-PYD’s Research on PYD’s Central Assumptions: Illustrative Findings

New Grounds for PYD-Related Research

Research and Methodological Challenges

Developmental Psychopathology

Theories About PYD and DP

Implications and Conclusions

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Funding

Declaration of conflicting interests

Notes

References