Using Positive Youth Development to Guide a Multidisciplinary Research Collaboration

Introduction: Researchers have recognized the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration to study, understand, and promote public health. Such collaborations may be particularly important for the study and promotion of youth health, considering the diverse influences (e.g., environments, relationships, individual behaviors, and health policies) that shape the health of young people in the United States. Multidisciplinary collaborations can be daunting, however, due to the challenges of integrating multiple disciplinary lens and approaches. Therefore, identifying a guiding framework that can incorporate diverse traditions and approaches is crucial.

Methods: In the development of our multidisciplinary approach focused on improving the health of low-income at-risk youth, we have relied on Positive Youth Development (PYD) to facilitate our collaboration involving researchers from three disciplines: aquatics and leisure studies, community nursing, and family science.

Results-Discussion: PYD proposes that youth thrive when they develop strengths in five key areas: competence, confidence, character, connection, and caring. We have used these five C’s of PYD as domains where we can situate our different disciplinary perspectives, methods, and outcomes. In this presentation we will provide examples of how PYD has provided us a shared language to guide our research efforts (e.g., creating a strengths based needs assessment, identifying community partners, and conceptualizing collaboration goals). We anticipate that our experiences will help other researchers develop effective collaborations focused on youth well-being.