Making Every Day Count - Teens

Endnotes and References 41did not, and that results on outcomes were similar for Latino/aand non-Latino/a youth, with frequency of participation beingrelated to the same outcomes for both groups.15 A survey of the overall BGCA population found that 55 percentof members are male and 45 percent female. See www.bgca.org/whoweare/facts.asp.16 Overall, 23 percent of youth reported receiving “mostly As,” 47percent “mostly Bs,” 25 percent “mostly Cs,” 4 percent “mostlyDs” and 1 percent “mostly Fs.”17 These statistics are in line with statistics from BGCA more generally.A 2007 national alumni study of 1,014 former Club membersfound that “on average, alumni reported participation inBGCA [Clubs] for 5 years, from just before their 10th birthdayto just before their 15th birthday.” Louis Harris and Associates,Inc. 1999. Report on the 1999 National Survey of Boys & Girls ClubsAlumni (Presentation to the 93rd Annual Conference). New York:Louis Harris and Associates, Inc.18 Granger, Robert C. and Thomas Kane. 2004. “Improving theQuality of After-School Programs.” Education Week, XXIII (23).19 Weiss, Heather B., Priscilla M. D. Little and Suzanne M. Bouffard(eds.). 2005. “Participation in Youth Programs: Enrollment,Attendance, and Engagement.” In Gil G. Noam (ed.) NewDirections for Youth Development, No. 105, 2005.20 A survey research firm conducted the follow-up surveys bytelephone, not at the Clubs. This strategy was used to get highresponse rates and include youth even if they were not regularlyattending the Club. A comparison of the 422 youth at baselinewith those 322 who also completed the follow-up survey (presentedin Appendix D, Table D.1) shows very similar rates, suggestingthat the sample who were followed include youth with awide range of participation rates, not only those who were highparticipators.21 These numbers include youth who did not come to the Club atall during that time period. If we compare only those youth whocame at least one day in both periods, the numbers are 34.43from January to March 2006 and 23.2 from January to March2008. These changes in participation over time were similar forboys and girls and for youth who were seventh and eighth gradersat the start of the study.22 Appendix D, Table D.4. provides a summary of these data.23 Each survey asked how often in the past four weeks youth hadparticipated in a Club and other out-of-school-time programs.Staff recruited teen members to come to the Club to be part ofthe study to represent both high and low Club participants; thus,there were youth who reported on the baseline survey that theyhad not been to a Club at all in the four weeks prior to the survey.24 Harvard Family Research Project. 2008. “Thinking Big: ANew Framework for Family Involvement Policy, Practice andResearch.” The Evaluation Exchange, XIV (1, 2).25 Eccles and Gootman 2002.26 Because we were interested in the role Clubs play in keeping allyouth involved, we also explored whether youth who identifiedthemselves as Latino/a felt as engaged as those who did not. Theresults indicated that there were no differences.27 Arbreton et al. 2008.28 See Miller, Beth M. 2003. Critical Hours: Afterschool Programsand Educational Success. Brookline, MA: Miller Midzik ResearchAssociates for the Nellie Mae Education Foundation. See alsoQuinn, Jane. 1999. “Where Need Meets Opportunity: YouthDevelopment Programs for Early Teens.” The Future of Children,When School Is Out, 9 (2). Los Angeles: The David and LucilePackard Foundation. See also Bridgeland, John M., John J.DiIulio, Karen B. Morison. 2006. The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives ofHigh School Dropouts. Washington, DC: Civic Enterprises. See alsoPedersen and Seidman 2005.29 We also explored whether duration (number of months of attendance)or retention (whether a youth had been to the Club inthe past six months) was related to changes in outcomes. Wefound that they both were related to a smaller subset (6) of thesame 15 outcomes that frequency was related to. Because frequencyexplained a greater number, this report focuses on therelationships between frequency and outcomes.30 A ninth outcome of interest, on-time grade progression, couldnot be examined in relationship to participation due to thesmall number of youth (12 youth, or 4 percent) who reportedthey were held back a grade over the study period.31 See Horwitz, Amanda and Jason Snipes. 2008. SupportingSuccessful Transitions to High School: Research Brief, the Council ofthe Great City Schools. Washington, DC: Council of the GreatCity Schools. See also Grossman and Cooney 2009. Pavingthe Way for Success in High School and Beyond: The Importance ofPreparing Middle School Students for the Transition to Ninth Grade.Philadelphia: Public/Private Ventures.32 Schinke, Steven P., Kristin C. Cole and Stephen R. Poulin. 2000.“Enhancing the Educational Achievement of At-Risk Youth.”Prevention Science, 1 (1), 51–60.33 The “other” drug use variable was created by combining acrossreports of use of four “other” drugs (not marijuana), becausethe incidence of use for each different drug was very low at thefinal survey (28.7 percent reported sniffing glue, sprays or inhalants;5.3 percent reported use of steroids; 5.3 percent reporteduse of OxyContin; and 6.2 percent reported use of ecstasy), andthus it was not possible to separately analyze the use of each inrelation to participation.