DOI: 10.3886/icpsr39391.v1
title: Youth Protective Factors Study: A Strategy for Promoting Success Based on Risks, Strengths, and Development, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, 2014-2024
title: Version 1

description: The Youth Protective Factors Study was a multistate examination of risk-need-responsivity and positive youth justice approaches and whether or not the effectiveness of these strategies varied by youths aged ten to 23 years old. In collaboration with the research labs at UMass Chan Medical and UC-Berkeley, the Council of State Governments Justice Center, and juvenile justice agencies in the three project states, the project examined violent recidivism after youths' juvenile justice involvement via two studies. One, a retrospective study involving over 30,000 juveniles to lengthen follow-up periods. Two, a prospective study of 3,380 youths referred to juvenile justice systems to obtain measures of protective factors and service participation. Variables included educational history, criminal background, behavioral measures, recidivism, family, and substance use. Additionally, age, gender, race, and ethnicity demographics were collected.
description: The study's purpose was to help agencies optimize their supervision practices through understanding the youth characteristics and corresponding interventions that would minimize reoffending and maximize youths' success. To that end, three goals were stated:

To improve juvenile justice agencies' capacity to accurately measure reoffending, which is essential to understanding both their population's needs and their own effectiveness in addressing them.
To advance understanding of how rates of reoffending differ naturally across youth's age, risk factors, and protective factors, independent of observation, to inform supervision practices.
To assess whether and how strengths-based services add value to risk-reduction services in predicting lower rates of reoffending.

In addressing these goals, the researchers hoped to answer the following questions:

Are there different rates of reoffending by specific risk factor and protective factor domains, and are the rates moderated by age?
Is there value added to reducing reoffending by using one type of service strategy (i.e., strengths-based services) over another (i.e., risk-reduction services) and is the value of services moderated by age?
description: Partnerships were formed with three state juvenile justice agencies responsible for youth under community supervision: Pennsylvania's Juvenile Court Judge's Commission,
Virginia's Department of Youth Justice, and Wisconsin's Department of Child and Family
Services. States had to meet the following criteria: they conduct validated risk-needs assessments with all youth before disposition, have centralized, electronic case management systems, invested in adopting positive youth development approaches, and can supervise youth past age 20 and/or receive a relatively high percentage of referrals for younger youth (age 14 and under).
Retrospective analyses used state-wide samples of all youth referred to the juvenile justice system who received a risk-needs assessment from probation. For prospective analyses, the researchers worked with state agency leadership to select five counties within each state that had 1) an exceptional track record of implementation of new practices, 2) a high volume of youth referrals and/or adjudications (for states that conducted the risk-needs assessment post-adjudication), and 3) more younger (age 14 and under) or older (age 18 and older) youth cases.
description: Presence of Common Scales: Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory Version 2.0 (YLS/CMI) (Hoge and Andrews, 2011)
Youth Assessment and Screening Inventory (YASI) (Orbis Partners, 2000)
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Prospective Baseline Dataset
DS2: Prospective Assessment Dataset
DS3: Prospective Placement Dataset
DS4: Prospective Service Dataset
DS5: Prospective Recidivism Dataset
DS6: Prospective Protective Dataset
DS7: Retrospective Assessment Dataset
DS8: Retrospective Baseline Dataset
DS9: Retrospective Placements Dataset
DS10: Retrospective Recidivism Dataset
description: Individuals within the Pennsylvania, Virginia, or Wisconsin juvenile justice system from 2014 to 2024.
description: record abstracts