Developmental Assets
A framework of internal and external assets associated with young people's development, including support, empowerment, boundaries, commitment to learning and positive identity.
Search Institute developmental assets field
This page is a plain-English practice summary. It attributes the source field and avoids presenting the framework as Positively Devious intellectual property.
What this framework helps with
- broadening youth work beyond problems
- mapping supports and opportunities around young people
- designing asset-building environments
Three questions it helps teams ask
- Which supports and opportunities are strongest?
- Which assets are missing or unevenly distributed?
- How can young people help define what thriving looks like?
How to use it in youth and community work
Use Developmental Assets as a lens for better decisions, not as a script. Start with the local context, invite the people affected by the work into the interpretation, and turn the framework into practical questions, design choices and learning habits.
For Positively Devious, this framework matters because it helps explain one part of the wider conditions around positive deviance: the relationships, opportunities, skills, systems and power arrangements that make uncommon positive outcomes more likely to be noticed and learned from.
What to watch out for
- asset lists should not become tick-box labels
- young people's own definitions of thriving matter
- assets are shaped by community and structural conditions