Educating parents about their influence on the level of achievement reached by their children in 4-H projects can lead to more youth participation and completion of projects. Involvement of parents as leaders is an ideal way to increase awareness of the 4-H program. The study pointed out that a higher percentage of youth depended on their 4-H agent for help in project completion rather than their local leader. Ideally, local leaders help youth to complete projects so that agents have more time to train leaders, thereby creating more leaders to help with project completion. Therefore, special efforts must be made to find people genuinely concerned with leading the 4-H youth in projects and helping youth understand the leader's purpose is to help with projects.
Ample evidence exists that members sign up for the clothing project to develop their sewing skills.
They view learning to sew and receiving praise from their parents as incentives. However, they discover the project also includes competition and record keeping that may not be strong incentives for project completion. Perhaps projects could be modified to emphasize doing rather than evaluating and competing. In any case, all goals should be identified in the presentation of projects to potential 4-H members. For Extension in general, this study indicates the continuing importance of attention to factors that encourage and support clientele in completing and following through on what they start.