Youth thriving in the context of sport participation: Idiographic, differential, and nomothetic dimensions

This chapter provides conceptual and methodological ideas about conducting research on Positive Youth Development (PYD) through sport. At the outset, it briefly reviews the relational developmental systems (RDS) metamodel and its contributions to the PYD perspective, using one operationalization of PYD, namely the Five Cs model to discuss the link between sport participation and PYD. An RDS program of research, such as a study of PYD through sport, might seek to understand the nature of relations between individuals and their contexts, including the dynamics of those relations across the life course. The model of the PYD process devised by Lerner and colleagues explicitly has drawn on the individual context RDS conception as its foundation. This model has been elaborated in the context of Lerner and colleagues’ longitudinal study, the 4-H study of PYD. Whatever the operationalization of PYD, conducting research that derives from RDS metatheory requires that theoretical ideas about development be actualized.