This month’s e-newsletter focuses on the Developmental Assets Profile (DAP), an individual or group assessment that measures young people’s strengths across the 8 asset categories and in five context areas: personal, social, family, school and community. It consists of 58 items and takes 10-15 minutes to administer. It has been used by researchers, both here and overseas, as a component in their research designs. You’ll learn about two research projects in the stories that follow. The DAP is also being used by counselors who work directly with individual youth. We hope these stories offer you some ideas you can use in your own work.
Next month’s issue will take us on a tour of several Healthy Communities – Healthy Youth initiatives. Watch for those stories in February.
The Developmental Assets Profile: Individual/group assessment that measures young people’s strengths
A Search Institute assessment tool that measures an adolescent’s experience of the 8 broad categories of Developmental Assets™—the positive experiences and qualities essential to raising successful young people—can provide youth-serving practitioners, researchers, and clinicians valuable insight of the positive influences and experiences in the lives of the youth they serve… CLICK HERE to read more about the Developmental Assets Profile
The Developmental Assets Profile in the Philippines
The Educational Development Center (EDC) based in the north eastern United States, is an international non-profit that works on projects with the goals of “enhancing learning, promoting health, and fostering a deeper understanding of the world.” With 325 projects that it manages in 35 countries around the world, the EDC is a strong house of research and resources. One of these projects is a collaborative effort between Dr. David Sloan Wilson of Binghamton University, the EDC and Search Institute’s Arturo Sesma using the Developmental Assets Profile to work with out of school youth in the Philippines.
Read the rest of this article (pdf)…
Binghamton, NY, explores the assets in its neighborhoods
The Educational Development Center (EDC) based in the north eastern United States, is an international non-profit that works on projects with the goals of “enhancing learning, promoting health, and fostering a deeper understanding of the world.” With 325 projects that it manages in 35 countries around the world, the EDC is a strong house of research and resources. One of these projects is a collaborative effort between Dr. David Sloan Wilson of Binghamton University, the EDC and Search Institute’s Arturo Sesma using the Developmental Assets Profile to work with out of school youth in the Philippines.
Read the rest of this article (pdf)…
Visit the Binghamton Neighborhood Project website
Visit David Sloan Wilson’s blog.
Millard schools uses the DAP district wide
The Millard school district in Omaha, NE was first introduced to the DAP in the school year of 2005. They began by administering it to at risk students and students that had been placed on long-term suspension for drug or alcohol use, figuring that a strength-based approach had the potential to show positive results with this group. It was not long, however, before parents and teachers of other students began asking about the DAP. Since then the DAP has become the snowball gathering strength and speed among schools in Omaha.
Read the rest of this article (pfd)…
Using the DAP with at-risk students
We are all familiar with what our system terms the “at risk students,” the students that seem to get into trouble no matter how much help they have, no matter how much attention they receive. Many have troubled home lives. Some have problems with drugs and alcohol. Sometimes it is violence that becomes the issue. Whatever it is, many of these students confront us with problems that seem impossible to solve. How can we help show these students their strengths when it almost seems that they have none?
