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Diffusion of a developmental asset-building initiative in public schools
Carolyn K Lafferty1, Colleen A Mahoney, Dennis L Thombs
1Mahoney Consulting Group, Wadsworth, OH, USA. cklafferty@hotmail.com
Objective:
To identify characteristics that distinguish between school personnel who do and do not adopt asset-building behaviors in the formative stage of a countywide initiative.
Methods:
An anonymous questionnaire, assessing constructs from diffusion of innovation and social cognitive theories, was administered to 467 adult personnel in 3 school districts.
Results:
Discriminant analysis revealed that implementation of asset building was most closely related to rating the initiative high on trialability, relative advantage, compatibility, and observability and low on complexity.
Conclusions:
Efforts to implement asset-building initiatives need to assess perceptions of adult personnel and should not assume that positive youth development will be widely supported in schools.