Adolescence and Thriving

Peter C. Scales & Peter L. Benson

This entry describes the construct of thriving as an important and heretofore largely overlooked element in understanding positive adolescent development; posits several key conceptual and operational issues involved with the study of thriving; and describes initial results using one taxonomy of thriving, as well as the progress of a major new collaborative initiative designed to deepen knowledge of thriving and develop and broadly apply new thriving-measurement tools. The entry ends with suggestions for needed research in this area of adolescent development. The focus of most research on adolescence has for decades largely been to name problems or risk factors in young people's lives and attempt to identify methods for minimizing them (Benson, Leffert, Scales, & Blyth, 1998; Furstenburg, 2000). Indeed, a sweeping review of the early childhood literature concluded that there is much more known about deprivation than enrichment even in the early years of life. There is more focus ...

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