The Logic of Youth Development: Constructing a Logic Model of Youth Development through Sport

In recent years, considerable attention has been paid to the importance of programs in parks and recreation departments that promote positive youth development. These programs are designed not merely to decrease negative behaviors, but more importantly to assist youth in obtaining the competencies and assets that will help them develop into healthy adults in many different aspects of their lives. Youth sport is one area within parks and recreation services which has great potential for positive youth development. Although youth sport programs are not inherently good, they do have the potential to contribute to positive youth development. However, positive youth development is more likely to occur in youth sport programs if parks and recreation professionals use intentional programming when designing their programs. Intentional programming will help ensure that the experience these young athletes have in practices and games is positive rather than negative. One promising method for intentionally programming youth sport leagues involves logic models. Logic models are an easy, clear, and understandable system for organizing information that enables key stakeholders to have a picture of how programs work. In other words, they provide a visual of how the intended program connects with the desired results. A variety of other fields currently use logic models, including education and extension services, but little information in parks, recreation, and tourism, has been published about them. Therefore, this article will explain how youth sport can be used to promote positive youth development using logic models. More specifically, it will review the literature on youth development and youth sport, describe the logic modeling process, and then provide a detailed example of how to construct a logic model for a program designed to use youth sport as a means of contributing to positive youth development. This will provide practitioners, administrators, and other parks and recreation professionals with a valuable tool to communicate their currently successful programs and validate the need for future ones.