A demographic analysis of developmental assets, misconduct behaviours, and depression among New Zealand youth in mentoring relationships

Abstract

Mentoring is often utilised to support youth who have low levels of protective assets. This study explored 300 NZ youth (16-18 years old) who were involved in mentoring relationships to better understand how developmental assets influence depressive symptoms and misconduct behaviours. Results suggest that most participants possessed low to fair levels of internal (77.3%) and external (72.6%) assets with high levels of major depressive symptoms (40.7%) and moderate to high levels of misconduct behaviours (29.4%). There were demographic differences in developmental assets (e.g. Pacific youth reported higher assets and non-student participants reported lower assets than others), depressive symptoms (e.g. higher ranks for females than males) and misconduct behaviours (e.g. higher misconduct behaviours among Māori youth, non-student and full-time employed participants). Importantly, lower levels of external assets (β = - .90, S.E = .20, p = <.001; 95% CI [-1.30, - .50]) and internal assets (β = - .76, S.E = 29 .28, p = <.001; 95% CI [-1.31, - .20]) predicted depressive symptoms and low levels of external assets significantly contribute to youth misconduct behaviours (β = - .40, S.E = .08, p = 31 < .001; 95% CI [-.56, - .23]). These findings suggest strategies, programmes and policies to improve developmental assets which may decrease emotional and behavioural distress among youth.

Keywords: Developmental assets; Kruskal-Wallis; New Zealand; adolescents; depression; external assets; internal assets; positive youth development (PYD); quantile analysis; risk behaviours.