How Youth at Neighborhood Youth Services Perceive School Over Time

Abstract

A common form of research in human service professions is to look at the effectiveness of interventions and then considering improvements to be made to service delivery. The program I currently intern for, Neighborhood Youth Services (NYS), is no different. The staff at this after school program for at-risk youth have objectives that they are working towards providing during their programming, such as working towards good nutrition, improving self-esteem, and increased academic achievement. In a typical day at NYS, I spend over half of my time working with youth on homework or other learning activities. As a program, NYS would like to know if the efforts are making a significant difference across these objectives, and also if there is anything we can be doing to further improve youth outcomes. For this reason, I am very interested in seeing how youth at Neighborhood Youth Services perceive school, and how that impacts their academic achievement.