Exploring Adolescents' Supervised and Unsupervised Out-Of-School Time Experiences and Their Relation to Positive Developmental Outcomes.

Out-of-school time (OST) constitutes a period of risk and opportunity for youth. The variety of supervised and unsupervised activities that they may spend this time engaging in may relate to positive or negative developmental and behavioral outcomes. For researchers and practitioners interested in promoting positive youth development, it is important not only to understand what youth are doing in their OST, but to also understand individual and contextual factors that promote healthy experiences and development within the OST context. This dissertation aimed to better understand youth's supervised and unsupervised OST experiences in two studies. The first study utilized qualitative data collected from African American middle school students to examine how adolescents perceive their supervised and unsupervised OST contexts. Findings indicate that adolescents perceive three different OST contexts related to adult supervision: direct supervision, indirect supervision, and no supervision. Within these three contexts, adolescents reported positive and negative perceived settings, behaviors, experiences, and constraints. The second study used findings from the first study to develop a measure of OST that included questions about adolescents' perceived settings, behaviors, and experiences within directly supervised, indirectly supervised, and unsupervised OST contexts. Exploratory factor analysis using data from a sample of 303 African American middle school students (Mean age = 12.97; SD = 1.03) revealed similarities and differences among adolescents' perceived settings, experiences, and behaviors across the three contexts. Within the directly supervised context, the following OST themes emerged: positive feelings, negative feelings and behaviors, and conscientious behavior. Within the indirectly supervised context, the following themes emerged: positive feelings, positive behaviors, negative feelings, adult support and guidance, and freedom. Within the unsupervised OST context, the following themes emerged: positive feelings, positive behaviors, negative feelings, conscientious behavior, freedom, unhappiness with the context, and participation in thrilling behavior. Within context subscale composite scores were computed based on results from the exploratory factor analyses. Factors from within-context SEM models related to positive developmental outcomes (i.e., social competence, self-efficacy, responsible choice making, clear and positive identity, school engagement). Finally, a latent model that included all OST subscales across contexts was tested, but the model fit was poor. Even though the fit of the cross-context model was not acceptable, the within context models indicate that the relationships between OST contexts and developmental outcomes share similarities and differences across contexts, revealing the need for researchers of OST to conduct studies that attend to the three adult supervision contexts: direct supervision, indirect supervision, and no supervision. These findings also have implications for applied work as practitioners can use such findings to help design ways to: recruit youth into and retain them in organized programs; promote healthy behaviors in unsupervised contexts, and identify key OST components that may promote positive developmental outcomes.