Abstract
The Positive Youth Development (PYD) perspective proposes that the experience of internal and external assets is associated with thriving among young people and contribution to the self and society. In this chapter, the experience of different internal and external assets was assessed together with associations with thriving or positive outcomes among 483 emerging adults in Ghana. The results confirm previous findings regarding the relationship between the assets, thriving and contribution. However, the majority of the Ghanaian participants had not experienced external assets such as support and constructive use of time. Since both internal and external assets are crucial for positive development, initiatives and programmes that make these assets accessible to the youth can be an essential step towards self- and national development in Ghana.
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Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen, Norway. The author would like to acknowledge Professor David Sam, University of Bergen, Norway, for overseeing the ethical process for the data collection, Elias K. Kekesi in Accra, Ghana, for supervising the data collection process and the students at the School of Social Sciences, University of Ghana for participating in the study.
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Wiium, N. (2017). Thriving and Contribution among Emerging Adults in Ghana. In: Dimitrova, R. (eds) Well-Being of Youth and Emerging Adults across Cultures . Cross-Cultural Advancements in Positive Psychology, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68363-8_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68363-8_6
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