The HEW National Strategy for Youth Development Model is promoted as a community-based planning and procedural tool designed to enhance positive youth development and prevent delinquency. To investigate the relationship between the percentage of youths endorsing particular needs and problems and the relative predictiveness these items bear on self-reported delinquency (SRD), 1,037 male and female youths, aged 10-19, representing a 4 percent random sample of one county in the demonstration project area, completed the HEW Youth Needs Assessment Instrument. The instrument contains 53 problems and needs grouped into 11 clusters: employment, employment/discrimination, drugs, medical care, school, school/discrimination, police/legal, police/discrimination, parents/home, neighborhood, and recreation. Items are endorsed "yes/no" as being a problem and then the degree of seriousness is represented on a three-point scale. An analysis of the results showed no relationship between the youth needs/problems endorsement percentages and corresponding SRD predictive power. The more frequently endorsed items were not more SRD predictive. Although correlations between needs and SRD were found on 10 of the 53 items, allowing a forecasting efficiency of about 20 percent, further research needs to identify the extent to which knowledge of frequency and seriousness ratings, in addition to percentage endorsement of needs, can contribute to SRD and thereby serve as a starting point for community programming. (Author/BL)