One of the real success stories in the youth development field over the last 30 years has been the growth of youth mentoring from a niche service provided primarily to boys from single-parent homes. It is now a cornerstone strategy that is meaningfully embedded in youth development programs and education, public health, workforce development, juvenile justice, child welfare, and many other systems and institutions. This growth in the application of mentoring relationships was initially facilitated by emerging research from organizations like Public/Private Ventures. Their studies of Big Brothers Big Sisters programs (among others) starting in the late 1980s began to shed light on the significant positive impacts that volunteer mentors could have on the children they serve. Youth mentoring programs show great promise as a low-cost intervention for youth at risk for developing a range of psychological, social, and behavioral problems. Recent research has highlighted the positive impact of one-on-one mentoring relationships for children and adolescents, showing externalizing behaviors such as aggression (Jolliffe and Farrington 2007), substance use (Rhodes et al. 2005), and other delinquent behaviors (Tolan et al. 2008). In addition, one recent study assessed the influence of mentoring relationships on a wide range of youth outcomes and showed particularly potent effects for mentoring on youth depressive symptoms (Herrera et al. 2013). As a result, youth mentoring programs have grown in popularity as a strategy for intervening with youth-at-risk for diverse problems (Blakeslee and Keller 2012), and an estimated 2.5 million U.S. children and adolescents are paired with caring adults through mentoring programs each year (Raposa et al. 2017). However, important questions remain about the extent to which mentoring interventions influence youth outcomes and the conditions under which they are most effective (e.g., Aos et al. 2004). Many of the existing meta-analyses designed to summarize the effectiveness of mentoring programs have focused on subsets of youth or particular program approaches (e.g., Tolan et al. 2008).

Number of U.S. youth population from 2000 to 2010, age group 14 to 24

This statistic shows the development of young people between the ages of 14 to 24 in the United States from 2000 to 2010. In 2010, approximately 47 million young people from that age group lived in the U.S.

What Determines Young People's Engagement with Performing Arts Events?

Increasing demands on the modern educational curriculum tend to result in less time for arts education programs (Gibson & Anderson, 2008; Stearns & Glennie, 2010). However, evidence suggests there are beneficial effects of the arts on adolescents' developmental, academic, and non-academic outcomes. Harland, Kinder, Lord, Scott, Schagen, and Haynes (2000) and Ewing (2010) propose that arts education outcomes range from intrinsic effects (e.g., enjoyment and personal achievement) to the development of thinking skills and their transfer to other curriculum areas. 

Livermore (1998; see also Aprill, 2001; Bamford, 2006; Bower, 2004; Deasy, 2002; Hetland & Winner, 2001; Hunter 2005; Smithrim & Upitis, 2005) argues that the arts can facilitate personal and social development, learning in other curriculum areas, and developing a range of skills and understandings that can be applied in vocational and other life situations. Engagement with the performing arts can also be considered an essential element of young people's leisure and participatory behavior more generally (Gibson & Anderson, 2008). 

Performing Arts, Leisure, Extracurricular Activity, and Positive Youth Development 

Recent research and theorizing have emphasized the importance of positive youth development and the role of young people's ecologies as contexts for their product. Research and theory have highlighted the relationship between individuals and their settings based on human development (Caldwell & Witt, 2011; Lerner, 2005). This perspective on youth development counters earlier deficit models in that young people are seen as capable of thriving and that this is achieved through aligning young people with their social and physical contexts (Benson & Saito, 2000; Caldwell & Witt, 2011; Damon, 2004; Lerner, 2005; Rose-Krasnor, Busseri, Willoughby, & Chalmers, 2006; Witt, 2002). These perspectives position young people as active agents in positive development as it pertains to the individual. They further argue that we must study these young people in their function's developmental contexts (Bronfenbrenner, 2005; Lerner, 2005).