The Youth Relatedness Scale: Development of a New Evaluation Tool for Youth Programs

摘要

This paper examines a study to develop a reliable measure of relatedness that utilizes language appropriate for youth, is simple for staff to administer in a field-based setting, and is consistent with the Youth Outcomes Battery. Pilot instruments were distributed to three residential summer camps serving female and male campers between the ages 10-17. The results of this study indicate that the Youth Relatedness Scale is an easy-to-use measure that exhibits good evidence of internal consistency and shows good criterion evidence of validity for this population of youth. This study was a positive step towards providing a theoretically grounded, simple, and versatile measure that captures youth perceptions of relatedness and that youth program administrators can employ to evaluate their programs.