Well-Being

Positive Development Across the Life Course

Marc H. Bornstein, Lucy Davidson, Corey L.M. Keyes, Kristin A. Moore

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781135641214
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

This volume derived from original presentations given at a conference in Atlanta, Georgia, under the auspices of the Center for Child Well-Being. Scholars, practitioners, public health professionals, and principals in the child development community convened to address a science-based framework for elements of well-being and how the elements might be developed across the life course.

Integrating physical, cognitive, and social-emotional domains, Well-Being is the first scientific book to consider well-being holistically. Focusing on a set of core strengths grouped within these three domains, the book also includes a fourth section on developmental strengths through adulthood that broadly examines a continuum of health and development, as well as transitions in well-being. This volume takes a developmental perspective across the life course, describing foundational strengths for well-being--the capacities that can be actively developed, supported, or learned. These foundational strengths--problem solving, emotional regulation, and physical safety--are the positive underpinnings of early child health and development, as well as ongoing well-being across the life course. Working together and blending their respective disciplinary perspectives and expertise, 53 experts in psychology, sociology, child development, and medicine have contributed to the book.

1

A Brief History of the Study of Well-Being in Children and Adults

Kristin A. Moore

Child Trends, Washington, DC

Corey L. M. Keyes

Emory University, Atlanta, GA

Introduction

Social commentators and politicians running for election often lay out a vision for what they see as the good or desired society and its vision of human functioning. Only recently, however, have researchers systematically joined in this endeavor. At present, and at last, a number of scientific disciplines are contributing to the current work on positive social and human development, and they have arrived at that place from quite different starting points. In addition to the treatment and prevention of problems and disease, there appears to be an interest in, and a desire to identify and promote, positive outcomes in children, in adults, and in their social environments.

The past century has seen remarkable progress in the eradication, treatment, and prevention of infectious diseases. Equally important, however, have been the public health advances that have helped to prevent the occurrence of disease, illness, and accidents (McGinnis & Foege, 1993; Foege, 1996). For example, the developments of vaccines and sanitation have prevented much sickness and early death. This concern with prevention has long moved public health researchers to work with community practitioners. Similarly, this concern has led public health researchers to consider ways to influence people’s environments, health habits, and decision making in order to reduce the risk of injury, chronic illness, and contagious diseases.

However, the focus of public health efforts remained more on the prevention of negative outcomes than on the promotion of positive development. Moreover, as one would expect, the goals of public health prevention efforts have traditionally focused on improving health outcomes. Despite those efforts, many social indicators suggest that problems, for example, of suicide, substance use, precocious sexual activity, and violence, have worsened rather than improved over the past three to five decades (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2000). Moreover, even when rates plateau or decline, rates of problem behavior remain very high. For example, since the teen birth rate peaked in 1991 at 61 births per 1,000 females aged 15–19, the rate has fallen to 49, but remains higher than any other developed nation except Armenia. (Moore, Manlove, Terry-Human, Papillo, & Williams, 2001). Persistently high levels of risk taking and problem behaviors suggest that new approaches are needed. As Sir Francis Bacon said many years ago, “He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator.” We believe the investigation and application of positive human development is a new perspective that is needed now more than ever. We now turn to a brief history of the nature and origins of the study of well-being in children and adults.

The Nature and Origin of Well-Being in Children

Well-being in children is usually equated with the absence of problem behavior and the presence of positive behaviors that reflect academic, interpersonal, athletic, and artistic success (see e.g., Moore, 1997; Scales, Benson, Leffert, & Blyth, 2000). However, in recent decades, the focus has been on the prevention of problem behaviors. For example, school counselors, psychologists, the police, religious leaders, and other youth workers more generally have sought to prevent problem behaviors, such as the use of illicit drugs, delinquency and violence, alcohol use, smoking, and adolescent pregnancy. Concern about these behaviors has stimulated numerous programs and policies designed to prevent these problems (Catalano, Berglund, Ryan, Lonczak, & Hawkins, 1999). Programs, however, have tended to focus singly on one problem at a time.

Funders have also tended to concentrate their focus on specific problem behaviors. For example, government agencies have been formed and funded to focus solely on adolescent pregnancy (The Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs), mental health (The National Institute of Mental Health), substance abuse (The National Institute on Drug Abuse), and juvenile delinquency (The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention). Many foundations also funded prevention and demonstration programs directed at specific social problems.

Perhaps reflecting these narrow funding mandates, researchers, particularly researchers studying adolescent behavior, have also tended to focus on specific problem behaviors (Hawkins, Catalano, & Miller, 1992; Moore, Miller, Morrison, & Glei, 1995; Kirby, 1997). However, through the 1980s, researchers increasingly documented that risk-taking behaviors tend to cluster and that adolescents who engage in one risky behavior have a higher probability of engaging in additional risky behaviors (Mott & Haurin, 1988; Elliott, Huizinga, & Mendard, 1989).

Catalano and colleagues (1999) suggested that a key turning point came when longitudinal studies began to generate information about the predictors of problem behavior, and this information was then incorporated into prevention programs. Inevitably, researchers came to look across problem areas, and they noted that different problem behaviors have common antecedents. In addition, researchers began to look across the separate or “silo” literatures that were accumulating. Again, they noted that the predictors of different problem behaviors are very similar (Moore & Sugland, 1996). For example, the four broad categories of predictors of adolescent childbearing identified by Moore and Sugland (1996)—early school failure, early behavior problems, family dysfunction, and poverty—are echoed in other reviews of quite different problem behavior literatures (e.g., Mendel, 1995). The discovery of common predictors led many researchers to suggest that more comprehensive intervention strategies might reduce multiple negative outcomes (Dryfoos, 1998). The empirical studies that have informed this paradigm shift have moved beyond simple correlational research and now encompass numerous longitudinal studies that employ multivariate statistical techniques and rich sets of control variables (e.g., Moore, Manlove, Glei, & Morrison, 1998; Paley, Conger, & Harold, 2000).

However, there have been too few experimental, intervention, or genetic studies as yet to distinguish between mere predictors and actual causes, and the causes are likely to be complex. Thus, only rarely do we have evidence of a causal nature. Nevertheless, identification of common predictors has led researchers to suggest that program providers focus on these predictors as “best bets” for improving children’s outcomes (Moore & Sugland, 1996).

Meanwhile, in response to this expanding knowledge base and their own insights from work in the field, service providers were also developing increasingly comprehensive programs and/or positive, strength-focused, asset-building programs. One insight from the service provider community was that adolescents are more responsive to programs that meet their needs and address their goals than they are to programs that attempt to simply eliminate problem behaviors. Another insight is succinctly summarized by youth advocate Karen Pittman, who stated, “Problem-free does not mean fully prepared” (Pittman & Fleming, 1991, p. 3). Others noted that programs provided by religious groups and organizations such as the Scouts have for many years provided positive experiences and challenges to children and youth. Local programs with a prevention focus began to evolve positive goals to augment their prevention goals (United Way, 2000).

Several social commentators also stepped forward with their own definitions of positive development. For example, William Bennett (1993) in his widely reviewed The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories, highlights a set of desired outcomes for children and youth. These virtues include perseverance, faith, friendship, courage, responsibility, and compassion. The Council on Civil Society calls for a stronger focus on civility, emphasizing the role of the family, local neighborhoods, the faith community, and voluntary civic organizations in restoring a civil society (Institute for American Values, 1998).

Despite this major change in orientation in the program, policy, and service fields, the research field as a whole was slow to shift. In particular, the major national databases continued to focus on problem behaviors, such as substance abuse, adolescent pregnancy, and delinquency. This limited the ability of researchers to address positive development. Analysts examined outcome variables such as drug use and teen parenthood; consideration of positive outcomes was therefore limited to the avoidance of these negative outcomes (i.e., not using drugs and not becoming a teen parent). Positive outcomes such as civility, sibling closeness, exercise, parent–child relationships, religiosity, character, and volunteering (Moore & Halle, forthcoming) were only occasionally included in national databases (the National Survey of Children being the early exception). Therefore, empirical studies using nationally representative samples only occasionally examined the presence and development of positive characteristics and behaviors. In addition, the system of child well-being indicators that developed in the 1980s and expanded dramatically in the early 1990s retained a negative cast. Calls for new measures of positive development started to be heard, for example, at the 1994 conference on indicators of child well-being organized by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Poverty Institute, and Child Trends (Moore, 1997; Takanishi, Mortimer, & McGourthy, 1997; Aber & Jones, 1997). However, the child well-being indicators field then and now was unable to provide more than a handful of positive indicators because the indicators had not been conceptualized, measured, and included in nationally representative surveys.

However, outside the Federal statistical system, individual researchers and groups had begun to conduct relevant research studies and to develop new constructs and measures. Several researchers have focused specifically on conceptualizing and measuring positive development. Key among these initial efforts is the assets framework developed by the Search Institute (Benson, 1993; Leffert, Benson, Scales, Sharma, Drake, & Blyth, 1998; Scales & Leffert, 1999). Internal assets within youth were identified as a commitment to learning, positive values, social competencies, and positive identity. External assets that support children’s development were also identified in families, schools, and communities.

Karen Pittman has consistently argued for a positive approach (International Youth Foundation, 1998) and has developed a definition of youth development that incorporates four desirable youth outcomes: confidence (a sense of self-worth, mastery, and future), character (a sense of accountability, control, self-awareness, and a relation to a deity, the family, and the larger culture), connection (a sense of safety, structure, membership, and belonging), and competence (the ability and motivation to be effective in terms of physical and emotional health, intellectual development civic action, and employment). She noted that the phrase “youth development” is often used to include “the range of informal education programs and organizations that operate in the out-of-school hours and focus on ‘non-academic’ outcomes such as recreation, wellness, service, the arts, leadership development, and life skills training.” (International Youth Foundation, 2001).

The report, Turning Points, prepared by the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development (1989), defined desirable outcomes for youth, including being intellectually reflective; being en route to a lifetime of meaningful work; being a good citizen; being a caring and ethical individual; and being healthy. Lerner, Fisher, and Weinberg (2000) posited the five C’s of positive development: competence, confidence or positive identity, connections, character or positive values, and caring. Roth, Brooks-Gunn, and Galen (1997) identified positive youth development programs as those that counter risk factors and enhance protective factors, that use an asset-based approach instead of a remedial approach, and that focus on the development of skills and competencies rather than the prevention of specific problem behaviors.

In a series of papers, Moore and her colleagues outlined a set of positive outcomes ranging from positive parent–child relationships to character and social capacity and began to explore the antecedents and consequences of these positive characteristics (Moore & Glei, 1995; Moore & Halle, forthcoming; Moore, Evans, Brooks-Gunn, & Roth, forthcoming; Zaff, Moore, Papillo, & Williams, 2001). However, they noted that the definition of positive outcomes is controversial, that the research evidence for positive constructs is thin and methodologically weak, that few longitudinal studies have examined positive development, and that substantial measurement and psychometric work is needed.

Well-Being in Adulthood

Well-being in adulthood, like childhood, needs to be defined broadly and includes the domains of cognitive functioning, behavioral functioning, physical health, and mental health. These domains, which are reviewed in this volume’s section on aging include positive thought processes, social engagement with one’s community, positive health behaviors including restorative sleep and resistance training.

From inception, social science has focused on the investigation of well-being. However, until about forty years ago, most research equated health and well-being with the absence of physical disease or mental disorder. At least three major developments have marked the rise of the study of positive aspects of adulthood. First, the period of humanism following World War II provided both methodological and conceptual tools for the study of how individuals view the quality of their lives. Second, the rise of gerontology and the study of successful aging provided conceptions of positive human development. Third, the study of stress and health matured to include models of the individual’s perception of stress and their coping strategie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Series Prologue
• Foreword
• Chapter 1. A Brief History of Well-Being in Children and Adults
• Chapter 2. The Strength-Based Approach to Child Well-Being: Let’s Begin With the End in Mind
• Chapter 3. Holistic Well-Being and the Developing Child
• Part I: Physical Domain
• Part II: Social-Emotional Domain
• Part III: Cognitive Domain
• Part IV: Adult Development Domain
• Part V: Overarching Issues and Themes
• About the Authors
• Author Index
• Subject Index