Measuring Youth Perceptions of Being Known and Loved and Positive Youth Development: Cross-National Findings from Rwanda and El Salvador

Background

Dynamic, relational developmental systems-based models of development emphasize that developmentally-nurturant youth-adult relationships elicit in youth perceptions of being known and loved. Although such perceptions are foundations of positive youth development (PYD), such measures do not exist.

Objective

We sought to create a theoretically-predicated measure of youth perceptions of being known and loved by capitalizing on data sets in two countries (Rwanda and El Salvador) wherein a multi-national study of PYD was being conducted by Compassion International (CI).

Method

With Rwanda data (n = 1,204, M age  = 11.84, 50% CI-supported), exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses enabled refining the measure for robustness and parsimony. Measures of intentional self-regulation, hopeful future expectations, transcendence, and contribution were used for validation of the known and loved measure within the nomological net of constructs proposed in the Lerner and Lerner PYD model. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the use of the model within the El Salvador data set (n = 1,205, M age  = 13.03, 51% CI-supported).

Results

Robust psychometric properties were established in both national settings. Measurement invariance was found across age, gender, urban-rural location, CI-enrollment status, and nations, and involved both mean differences and correlations among latent factors.

Conclusions

The results provide evidence for a theory-predicated measure of youth perceptions of being known and loved and that scores for this construct covary within a nomological net specified in the Lerner and Lerner model of PYD. These findings serve international development organizations seeking theory-predicated measures for use in evaluating PYD programs in low- and middle-income countries.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10566-022-09725-6.

Are You for Real? Perceptions of Authenticity Are Systematically Biased and Not Accurate

Can people accurately perceive who is authentic? Laypeople believe they can tell who is authentic, and they report that authenticity is an important attribute in others (Studies 1a and 1b; N = 369). However, when we directly tested the accuracy of perceived authenticity, we found no significant correlation between self- and other-rated authenticity in two cohorts of adult students in randomly assigned teams (Studies 2 and 3; 4,040 self-other observations). In addition, we found that perceived authenticity was biased in two ways: (a) Other-rated authenticity showed a positivity bias compared with self-ratings, and (b) other-rated authenticity was biased by the rater's own authenticity. In Study 3, we also investigated authenticity meta-perceptions; although people expect their authenticity to be accurately perceived by others, their meta-perceptions did not correlate with other-rated authenticity. That is, beliefs about the visibility of one's authenticity are similarly not accurate. Overall, we found no evidence that people can accurately identify who is authentic.

The role of E-leadership in ICT utilization: a project management perspective

Covid 19 presents a great challenge and opportunity for remote working, highlighting the need for electronically-mediated leadership in team tasks and performance. What is the role of leadership in improving utilization of information communication technologies (ICTs) in teamwork? Framed within the e-leadership and project management literature and employing a longitudinal field observation method over 8 months that involves 52 subjects and 172 observations, this study finds that (1) first, strong leaders employ a consistent and high-level use of ICTs throughout the whole process of group work, especially at the planning and closing stages of a project. (2) Second, strong leaders alternate the use of various ICTs to match specific tasks at different phases of the project. Two media platforms—team discussion forum and document sharing— stand out as the most important for strong leaders to build trust and execute tasks. (3) Finally, in a project management setting with a group of transient members with clearly-defined tasks and time-sensitive responsibilities, trust-building is a continual and highly significant leadership responsibility that precedes other leadership responsibilities. Trust is built largely through alternating the use of two rich ICT media (discussion forum and instant messaging) with two lean ICT media (document sharing and presentation display). These findings highlight a significant role of e-leadership in organizations which see the emergence of ICTs especially during crises like Covid 19.

Does Differentiated Leadership Threaten Who I Am? Introducing a Self-Verification Perspective to Explain the Curvilinear Effect of Differentiated Empowering Leadership

Based on the self-verification theory, this research proposed a multi-level model for exploring whether, how, and when differentiated leadership had curvilinear effects on relationship conflict within a team and further on team members’ counterproductive work behaviors toward individuals (CWBI). Drawing on a sample of 297 team members nested in 78 teams, we found that differentiated empowering leadership had no direct curvilinear effects on relationship conflict. However, the results showed that the team competence variance could moderate the curvilinear relationship between differentiated empowering leadership and relationship conflict. Specifically, only in teams with high competence variance among members, differentiated empowering leadership had a U-shaped effect on relationship conflict. Moreover, differentiated empowering leadership interacted with team competence variance had a downstream effect on team members’ CWBI through relationship conflict. We ended up by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

The Benefits of Early Diverse and Late Shared Task Cognition

To perform well over time, teams must balance competing needs—the need to make quality decisions and the need to coordinate action. However, these elements are paradoxically related because the processes that improve one can inhibit the other. The present article examines the role of task accomplishment phases as moderating the value of cognitive structure on teams’ performance trajectory and end-state performance. Using student teams engaged in a business simulation, we find that heterogeneous task cognition is beneficial in the strategizing phase, but that this effect reverses during the implementation–adjustment phase when homogeneous task cognition becomes more useful. In addition, we examine action processes as a substitute for homogeneous task cognition during implementation–adjustment and propose that teams can overcome suboptimal cognitive configurations. We discuss the implications of our research in terms of what is important for team performance.

Paradoxical Virtual Leadership: Reconsidering Virtuality Through a Paradox Lens

This conceptual article moves the conversation about virtual leadership forward by blending extant knowledge on virtuality and on leadership. Drawing on paradox theory, we show that virtuality is a paradox; therefore, virtual leadership’s core function is to deal with paradox. Our paradoxical virtual leadership model introduces three distinct leadership styles: synergistic, selective, and stagnant. Synergistic leaders view virtuality through a both–and cognitive framework, integrate divergent forces into synergistic solutions, and engage in varied, even opposing, behaviors to synergize virtuality’s paradoxical tensions and leverage the power of paradox. In contrast, selective leaders view virtuality through an either–or framework, and attempt to either manage virtuality’s challenges, or to capitalize on its opportunities, thus failing to balance paradoxical tensions. Finally, stagnant leaders adopt an avoidant framework, ignoring or avoiding virtuality’s paradoxes, and fail to lead effective virtual teams. The practical implications of this model—especially as they relate to how virtual leaders can synergize paradoxical tensions—are discussed.