International Collaboration in the Study of Positive Youth Development

The goal of this chapter is to describe how international collaborative research can contribute to understanding of Positive Youth Development (PYD). Throughout the chapter, we draw on examples from the Parenting Across Cultures project, a collaboration among investigators from nine countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States) in which we have collected longitudinal data annually for 10 years on youth development and parenting, as well as examples from other research groups’ international collaborations. The chapter begins by defining PYD, drawing from emic and etic perspectives to understand how cultural insiders and outsiders may regard positive youth development. The chapter then describes examples from international collaborative research on within- and between-group differences in PYD as well as predictors of PYD in a cultural perspective. Next, the chapter highlights measurement and methodological issues that are salient in international collaborative research on PYD, such as how to handle invariance of instruments and whether to create new measures for new cultural contexts or to adapt existing measures for new contexts. The chapter concludes with implications for future research, policy, and practice, including the potential for researchers in one country to learn from researchers in other countries about strategies, policies, and programs that have worked well in one locale and might be worth adapting in others.