Child Trends' latest brief, Improving the Lives of Adolescents and Young Adults: Out-of-School Time Programs That Have Significant Positive Impacts, identifies 43 programs that have somewhat to very sizable, statistically significant impacts on adolescent or young adult outcomes. The brief uses Child Trends' online database of experimentally evaluated social interventions for children and youth, Lifecourse Interventions to Nurture Kids Successfully (LINKS), to identify programs with manuals that have positive impacts on a range of outcomes, such as behavior problems, physical health, and education. The information on the program impacts, while somewhat technical, is useful for those interested in selecting or funding programs based on the magnitude of their impacts. 

 

This list of rigorously-evaluated effective programs for adolescents and young adults reflects important progress in indentifying programs and models that facilitate positive development. While the current number of social interventions that are effective for any given outcome is limited, the list is likely to grow as additional experimental evaluations are published  and the number of effective programs increases.