Program Innovations and Character in Cub Scouts: Findings from Year 1 of a Mixed-Methods, Longitudinal Study

Youth development programs seek to promote positive development through mentoring and engaging youth in opportunities for individual growth and community connectedness. We present findings from the initial phase of a mixed-methods, longitudinal study aimed at assessing the impact of one such program, Cub Scouts, on character development. We assessed if Scouting, and a recent innovation in Scouting focused on program quality, are associated with the development of character and other positive youth outcomes. Participants were 1,083 Scouts and non-Scouts, aged 5-12 years. At the start of the study, there was no difference in indicators of character between Scouts and non-Scouts, once matched through propensity score analyses. Through content analyses of interviews and short- answer questionnaires administered to leaders, we found that leaders’ views of character and of their roles corresponded to those envisioned by Cub Scouts. Implications for character development, and for the role of program components in character development, are discussed.

Women, Mathematics, and Computing

In 1963, Betty Friedan wrote these gloomy words: The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. ... Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night – she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—“Is this all?” The passage, of course, is from the The Feminine Mystique (Friedan, 1983, p. 15). Though it took another decade for the discontent that Friedan described to solidify into a political movement, even in 1963 women were doing more than making peanut butter sandwiches. They also earned 41% of bachelor’s degrees. By 1995, the number of degrees conferred had nearly tripled. The fraction going to women more than kept pace, at almost 55%. Put another way, women’s share of bachelor’s degrees increased by 25% since Betty Friedan first noticed the isolation of housewives. Consider two more sets of numbers: In 1965, 478 women graduated from medical school. These 478 women accounted for only 6.5% of the new physicians. Law was even less hospitable. Only 404 women, or just 3% of the total, received law degrees in 1965. By 1996, however, almost 39% of medical degrees and 43% of law degrees were going to women (Anderson, 1997). If so many women are studying medicine and law, why are so few studying computer science? That’s a good question, and one that has been getting a lot of attention. A search of an important index of computing literature, the ACM Digital Portal (ACM, 2005a), using the key words “women” and “computer,” produced 2,223 hits. Of the first 200, most are about the underrepresentation of women in information technology. Judging by the volume of research, what we can do to increase the numbers of women studying computer science remains an open question. While most investigators fall on one side or the other of the essentialist/social constructivist divide (Trauth, Quesenberry & Morgan, 2005), this article sidesteps the issue altogether in favor of offering a testable hypothesis: Girls and young women would be drawn to degree programs in computer science in greater numbers if the field were structured with the precision of mathematics. How we arrived at this hypothesis requires a look at the number of women earning degrees in computer science historically and in relation to other apparently similar fields.

Personal Experiences of Individuals with Aniridia

Editor’s Note: Since not much was known about aniridia for many years some doctors did medical procedures that we now know should not be done on aniridic eyes. Please do not use any specific story here as a guide for your journey, since some of the medical procedures mentioned should not have been done. Furthermore, please make sure to see a doctor with experience and knowledge of anirida. Lastly, please keep in mind, each person’s journey has different medical issues. Not everybody will experience the exact same medical challenges in their journeys. Many people affected by aniridia go through similar experiences. Some deal with bullies differently than others, and some may have difference experiences with employment-related issues. Whatever experiences you have had in your life, these stories will show that you are not alone. Many others have felt and gone through situations similar to ones you have gone through. It is our hope that these stories inspire and help you with any struggles you may have now or in the future. I was born with a case of sporadic aniridia in 1976 in Maui, Hawaii, to my parents, Mike and Pat. I have one brother two years older who has normal vision, but my mom had a miscarriage of a girl with the same aniridia condition. I had a normal childhood, doing everything the majority of kids did, including soccer, Cub Scouts, body surfing, boogie boarding, and bicycling. In my early teens I competed in outriggered canoe racing. This was questioned due to my vision, but my six-man crew placed first in the state championship regatta. This experience inspired me to continue in the area of sports and enjoy them while testing my limits, which was done with cross-country running and track and field in high school. When I graduated from Maui High School in 1994, it was considered a great accomplishment by my parents and many teachers who had doubts about my learning abilities due to the inability to read the work written on the board.

The Health Ideation Pictures (HIP): Reliability and Internal Consistency

A series of 11 pictures was developed to provide a method of measuring health ideation and adaptive health behavior. Responses were obtained from 31 Cub Scouts aged 8 to 10 yr. Coding procedures established for 3 dimensions, general perceptual awareness, health ideation and adaptive health behavior, proved to be highly reliable, and the pictures were found to provide internally consistent measures within each dimension.