Understandning Negative and Positive Youth Development within one Unifying Paradigm: an Agentic Perspective

In this research project we examine whether the reasons for young people's activities are the same for young people who engage in society and politics (music or sports), or engage in criminal activities. We build our argument on Deci and Ryan's self-determination theory, SDT. According to SDT, young people will be motivated to further develop activities that satisfy their needs for independence, relatedness, and competence. We assume that both the young people who are involved in pro-social activities and those who carry out criminal acts have these motives.