PARTICIPATION IN YOUTH CENTER ACTIVITIES - A SEQUENTIAL SPECIFICITY APPROACH

Youth centers both develop youths' sense of citizenship and their soci al integration and discourage their delinquency These centers, numerou s in Hong Kong, provide essential social services for youths. Promotin g youths' continuous participation in youth centers is, therefore, a r ecurrent issue in Hong Kong. A model-the sequential specificity model- appears to be useful in addressing this goat. This model differentiate s the sequence of participation and the corresponding specific and non specific determinants. Knowledge and the attitude toward youth center services are specific determinants hypothesized to affect participants ' participation intention more strongly than nonparticipants'. Analysi s of data from a sample of 1,755 high school students in Hong Kong sup ports this hypothesis.