The Making of Men Program: A Mixed-Methods Evaluation of a Gender-Sensitive Rite of Passage Program for Adolescent Males
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction Current gendered health disparities impacting the wellbeing of boys and young men require new early intervention-focussed approaches. Health promotion programs developed with young men’s health needs and preferences in mind commonly report positive outcomes. Male-specific rite of passage programs aim to formally acknowledge the life-stage transition from boyhood to manhood through a holistic focus on identity, community, and social responsibility. While these programs are growing in popularity, there is limited data available on their effectiveness. Methods This study undertook a pilot evaluation of the Making of Men rite of passage program in a sample of secondary school boys (n=61, age M=16.0, SD=0.5) and their accompanying fathers or male mentors (n=47, age M=52.1, SD=5.8 years) providing non-matched pre-test, post-test, alongside follow-up data for participating boys. Qualitative interviews were also undertaken with 15 individuals (5 mothers, 6 staff members, 4 fathers). Results Quantitative program feedback indicated acceptability, with most respondents providing positive feedback, particularly from participating fathers. Exploratory quantitative effects indicated potential improvements in subjective social support and open communication among boys. Fathers appeared to report lower conformity to traditional masculine norms post-program, in addition to more open communication. Qualitative interviews identified three main themes: enabling relational bonds, creating a men-specific context, and supporting developmental transitions. Conclusions Positive program acceptability and promising outcome effects highlighted the present rite of passage program as a promising mechanism for supporting healthy masculine identity development among adolescent males. Finally, limitations and future directions are discussed, particularly in terms of gender equality integration for rite of passage programs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".