Making Every Day Count - Teens

Club Participation and Teens’ Outcomes 13and offer additional information drawn from staffand youth’s perceptions about how these outcomesare achieved.Past studies of out-of-school time have suggestedthat low levels of participation may impedeprograms’ ability to have sufficient contact andcontinuity with youth to make a difference in theirlives; 18 getting and keeping teens involved overtime has emerged as a particular challenge. For thisreason, an important part of this study was to documentwhether teens are attending Clubs frequentlyenough and are engaged at a level that might leadto positive outcomes.Researchers exploring the concept of participationin out-of-school-time activities describe it as multidimensional,including whom the programs are ableto reach and enroll, attendance and engagement. 19In this study, we examined participation along eachof these dimensions, using the Clubs’ daily attendancerecords and the surveys we administeredto youth. Because we administered the follow-upsurveys to youth regardless of how recently theyhad been to a Club and asked questions aboutother out-of-school-time programs and activitiesthey were engaged in, the data are informative forunderstanding older youth’s participation in out-ofschool-timeprograms beyond just Clubs. The surveysalso allow us to describe why teens choose tocontinue or end their participation in Clubs as theyget older.Thus, this chapter addresses four major questions:• What level of participation do the Clubs achieve?• How else do the teens spend their out-of-schooltime?• To what extent do teens feel attached to, andsupported by, the Clubs?• What factors help explain teens’ levels ofparticipation?As this chapter describes, Clubs are successfullyreaching and retaining teens and providing themwith the kinds of supports and opportunities thatresearch has deemed critical for positive development.The next chapter will then explore therelationship between participation and outcomes,ParticipationTeen participation in out-of-school-time programscan be sporadic and difficult to examine, particularlyin drop-in programs such as Clubs, where teens cancome any time, leave for months if they choose—andstill be welcomed back. To account for some of thiscomplexity (particularly in considering retention,since youth can return at any time), the study examinedparticipation along four “dimensions”:• Frequency: How many days teens attended theClub during the 30-month period.• Duration: How many months they attendedthe Club at least one day during the 30-monthperiod.• Breadth: How many different types of activitiesteens attended.• Retention: Whether teens have attended a Clubin the last 4 or 6 of the 30 months during whichattendance data were collected.Each of these dimensions of participation offersimportant insights into how programs are servingyouth. The measure of frequency of attendancereflects the amount of exposure to the Clubs thatthe teens are getting. “Duration” provides a pictureof youth’s connection to the Club, even if they arenot coming on a regular basis, and offers a measureof Clubs as a potential “safe haven” opportunity forteens. The breadth of activities in which youth participateat the Clubs provides an indication of thedegree to which Clubs are exposing youth to new,different and challenging activities that perhapsexpand their interests and skills. Finally, the measureof retention provides a gauge of the degree towhich the Clubs remain a part of the youth’s lives.Frequency and DurationTo document the frequency of attendance, we useddaily attendance records from the Clubs’ databaseto examine the number of days each youth in thesurvey sample attended the Club over the 30-monthevaluation period. To correspond roughly to thecategories of once or twice a month, once a week,