Chicago Youth Research Articles

Coordinator and Young Adult Perceptions in Attracting and Retaining Chicago Youth in Out-of-School Time Programming

Youth from families with greater economic means have seen an increase in their participation in extracurricular activities, while the participation levels of youth from working class families have decreased. Knowing the benefits to youth participation in extracurricular activities, communities where youth of marginalized backgrounds reside have an obligation to engage their youth in activities offered through school and community out-of-school time programs. Interviews and focus groups with program coordinators and young adults were conducted to identify how youth in Chicago have been attracted, engaged, recruited, and retained in out-of-school time programs. Program aspects and strategies used to connect with youth and their families emerged, some of which have been previously found in the relevant literature to be positively related to youth outcomes, and some of which are specific to youth who identify as Latine and youth who identify as male. Practical implications and suggestions for future research are further discussed.

The ACHIEVE Program: Bringing Chicago Youth and Community Organizations Together to Impact Local Disparities

To evaluate the Advancing Community Health and Individual leadership through a noVel Educational (ACHIEVE) program uniting Chicago high school and undergraduate students (scholars) and community organizations to empower youth to meaningfully impact communities while enhancing organizational capacity. Between 2020 and 2022, the ACHIEVE program engaged cohorts of youth in classroom-based learning and community-based projects targeting health and education disparities. Pre and post-program surveys were administered to scholars to assess knowledge about disparities, skills, and self-efficacy. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with community organization leaders to examine programmatic impact. Descriptive and thematic analyses were performed. Across four cohorts (March 2020; September 2020-May 2021; September-November 2021; March-May 2022), 85 students participated in the ACHIEVE program. Scholars supported 19 community-based projects that increased awareness of local issues and resources and evaluated programs. Scholars reported advancement in their knowledge and skills as well as interest in sustaining their community engagement. Leaders shared several benefits at the organizational and community levels from collaborating with scholars. The ACHIEVE program enabled bidirectional learning between scholars and organizations. It also demonstrated that youth can contribute positively to addressing disparities while supporting local organizations and communities.

Language Brokering Over Time: A Study of Citizenship Becoming Through a Transliteracies Framework

ABSTRACT This paper integrates theories and research from the fields of transliteracies and language brokering to understand the language and literacy experiences of bilingual youth who grew up in Mexican immigrant families. Analyzing data from three interrelated studies that used ethnographic research methods to understand the language brokering of Mexican-American immigrant youth in Chicago from 2000–2010, we asked: How do language brokers negotiate diverse meanings of citizenship in their transnational contexts? How do their transliteracy experiences shape their “citizenship becoming” over time? Findings show how bilingual Mexican-American youth employed their transliteracies and translocal expertise for civic justice, as they increasingly helped family and other transnational community members gain equitable access to goods and just services through their language brokering practices. At the same time, in a period of increasing anti-immigrant discourses and policies, they also experienced personal challenges and developed a deep recognition of hard borders facing their racialized communities. The discussion considers implications of this work for disrupting traditional perspectives about citizenship and employing a stronger notion of politicized funds of knowledge in K-12 classrooms.

Community‐driven science and science education: Living in and navigating the edges of equity, justice, and science learning

Community‐driven science and science education: Living in and navigating the edges of equity, justice, and science learning

Co-Word Analysis of First-Authored Publications Written by Top Cited Scholars of Social Work

Purpose: Bibliometric analysis has been widely adopted to measure individual productivity and discipline development. This study aims to advance the application of this method in the social work discipline. Method: Using the knowledge mapping technique in CiteSpace 5.8.R3, this study performed a co-word analysis of 1,007 first-authored articles published from 2000 to 2022 by 60 scholars who are listed among the top 2% most-cited scholars on social work and are holding doctoral degrees in the same field. Results: The cluster analysis identified seven main research hotspots and burst detection results revealed four groups of research frontiers, including spiritual and cultural needs, children's wellbeing, social work practices and development, and social work research, with bullying and peer victimization, particularly among African-American adolescents and youth in Chicago's southside, continuing to attract much research interest. Discussion: This study examines how individual works contribute to the conceptual structure and scientific evolution of social work.

Title IX Experiences of Pregnant and Parenting Youth in Chicago: A Qualitative Study.

Under Title IX, pregnant and/or parenting students (PPY) are protected from discrimination and are required to receive equal access to education. This study examines the implementation of Title IX, investigating whether Title IX rights are upheld for pregnant and/or parenting students attending Chicago Public Schools (CPS) using qualitative research methods. Stakeholder interviews with pregnant and/or parenting students and staff members at CPS were conducted. Qualitative data were transcribed, and a codebook was developed of common key themes. Results indicated Title IX is not implemented to its fullest extent or consistently throughout CPS. Pregnant and parenting students experienced a range of academic environments from supportive to hostile. Some students lacked accommodations and academic planning. Study findings can inform policymakers in improving Title IX policy and guide schools on compliance with Title IX. Schools must aim to act beyond policy to meet the needs of pregnant and parenting students and ensure their future success.

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor

Exploring Social Media Contexts for Cultivating Connected Learning with Black Youth in Urban Communities: The Case of Dreamer Studio.

Using the Connected Learning framework as a conceptual lens, this study utilizes digital ethnographic methods to explore outcomes of a Hip-Hop Based Education program developed to provide music related career pathways for Chicago youth. Using the narratives of the participants within the program, I draw on participant observation online and in-depth interviews collected to explore the link between the tenets of Connected Learning and digital participation in this artistic community of practice. I explore participants’ work within social media platforms toward building their creative skill, cultivating a public voice, connecting to mentors, and communicating in ways that strengthens the social bonds within their peer community. This study’s findings affirm prior studies that suggest late adolescence is an important time frame where children are developing social identities online in affinity spaces but in ways that are tied to civic engagement, self-empowerment, and critical skill development for their future pathways. To conclude, I suggest that investigating participant activity on social media platforms as a part of field work can help ethnographers to better connect their impact to the agency and life trajectories of their youth participants.

Discrimination in Context: Examining Neighborhood-Level Variation in the Incidence and Adverse Effects of Perceived Racial and Ethnic Discrimination Among Chicago Youth.

A growing body of research links interpersonal racial and ethnic discrimination to adverse youth outcomes. Yet, studies examining the relevance of neighborhood context for discrimination are sparse. This study examines neighborhood-level variation in the incidence and impact of perceived racial and ethnic discrimination on depressive symptoms, suicidal behavior, violent behavior, and substance use. Hierarchical regression models on a sample of 1333 African American and Hispanic youth (52.44% female; x̄ = 13.03 years, SD = 3.25 at wave 1) residing in 238 Chicago neighborhoods from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods indicated little to no neighborhood-level variation in the incidence and impact of discrimination. Findings suggest that the experience of discrimination among youth of color is ubiquitous.

Association between youth homicides and state spending: a Chicago cross-sectional case study

ObjectiveTo identify contributing factors associated with rapid spikes and declines in Chicago youth homicide from 2009 to 2018.SettingCity of Chicago, Illinois, US 2009–2018.ParticipantsHomicide count data come from the National Violent...

The impact of anticipated, vicarious, and experienced racial and ethnic discrimination on depression and suicidal behavior among Chicago youth

There is a growing body of research linking racial and ethnic discrimination to adverse youth outcomes. Beyond experienced racial and ethnic discrimination, this study considers the relevance of anticipated and vicarious racial and ethnic discrimination for depression and suicidal behavior. Hierarchical regression models on a diverse sample of 1147 youth (50.31 % female) within 79 neighborhoods from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods indicated that experienced, anticipated, and vicarious racial and ethnic discrimination were associated with an increased risk of depression and suicidal behavior. Additionally, African American and Hispanic youth were disproportionately exposed to—but not differentially impacted by—racial and ethnic discrimination. Findings suggest that developmental research should account for experienced, anticipated, and vicarious racial and ethnic discrimination.

The Experience of Being Fathered of Mexican-origin Male Youth

Fathers are important influences for the healthy development during the transition to adulthood of their children. Despite the theoretical acknowledgement of the reciprocal nature of the father–child relationship, we currently know very little about the experience of being fathered, particularly of immigrant male youth. Drawing on qualitative data from a study of Mexican-origin male youth in Chicago, this article documents the respondents’ experiences of their fathers as providers, role models and authority figures. The analysis reveals however, that the respondents experienced these rather traditional father roles in different ways, ranging from extreme violence and neglect to dedication and sacrifice, which in turn, led to rejection, modification, or emulation in their own conceptions of fatherhood. The findings urge researchers to examine the long-term effects of being fathered among immigrant youth and more specifically, how the experience of being fathered leads to different or similar patterns of fathering behavior later in life.

Rethinking the Benefits of Youth Employment Programs: The Heterogeneous Effects of Summer Jobs

This paper reports the results of two randomized field experiments, each offering different populations of Chicago youth a supported summer job. The program consistently reduces violent-crime arrests, even after the summer, without improving employment, schooling, or other arrests; if anything, property crime increases over two to three years. Using a new machine learning method, we uncover heterogeneity in employment impacts that standard methods would miss, describe who benefits, and leverage the heterogeneity to explore mechanisms. We conclude that brief youth employment programs can generate important behavioral change, but for different outcomes, youth, and reasons than those most often considered in the literature.

‘We [mostly] carry guns for the internet’: Visibility labour, social hacking and chasing digital clout by Black male youth in Chicago’s drill rap scene

Much negative attention has been given to the ‘drill’ music genre, a subgenre of gangsta rap that was born in Chicago’s underground hip hop scene in early 2010s. Previous scholarship has highlighted how social media has shifted how gang-affiliated youth in Chicago carefully manage their street reputations, communicate with peers and fuel gang rivalries through platformed creation. Yet still, in the context of drill, I argue that social media self-branding practices also provide these youth a way out of containment and sequestration to gain visibility in the music industry and empower their neighbourhoods. Based on interviews with drill recording artists and their support workers, I explore the content and character of their work, the centrality of work ethic to their racial identity construction and the way they use social media work to build and maintain status, authenticity and cultivate connections with fans, friends and other cultural producers. Bridging traditional theories of urban sociology with emerging new media scholarship, I suggest this group of artists is a representative case of how the digital practices of disadvantaged Black youth have typically gone mischaracterized in the literature. This study offers new insights into ‘capping’ as an important tenet to hip hop’s visibility labour on social media and how the ‘always on’ nature of digital labour adds another dimension to the typical utilization of street authenticity in narratives of hip hop music. This article concludes by illuminating the many deep contradictions and misconceptions about technological ingenuity, Black youth agency, hip hop culture and street credibility in urban communities.

Declining health risk exposure among Chicago public high school students: Trends from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey 1997-2017.

There have been improvements nationally in teenagers' self-reported health risk since the 1990s. This study provides an overview of trends in substance use, sexual health, violence and victimization, and suicide risk among Chicago Public High School (CPS) students over a 20-year period. We compared responses to 29 identically worded items from the 1997, 2007, and 2017 Chicago Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) in the four domains. We show changes in responses across individual items, mean changes across the four domains, and change in the proportion of students with highest risk exposure (≥10 affirmative responses). Analyses control for CPS students' grade, sex, and race/ethnicity. Reductions in substance use, sexual health risk, and violence and victimization (30, 40% and 40% in the mean number of affirmative responses, respectively) were observed. Suicide risk showed an initial improvement from 1997 to 2007, only to worsen by 2017 and show little difference from 1997. There was an approximate 70% decrease in the likelihood of being in the high multiple risk category (≥10 affirmative responses) in 2017 compared to 1997 (OR 0.33; CI 0.22-0.49). In alignment with national trends, our study documents significant improvement in Chicago public high school students' long-term health risk exposure over the 20-year study period, with the notable exception of suicide risk. This study emphasizes the need to invest in strategies both inside and outside of the classroom to mitigate the effect of adversity and promote protective factors, which are at the root of academic success and overall wellbeing.

Safe Spaces Embedded in Dangerous Contexts: How Chicago Youth Navigate Daily Life and Demonstrate Resilience in High-Crime Neighborhoods.

Much is known about how experiences of community violence negatively affect youth, but far less research has explored how youth remain resilient while living in dangerous neighborhoods. This study addresses this need by analyzing in-depth, geo-narrative interviews conducted with 15 youth (60% Black, 27% Latinx, 53% female, 14 to 17years old) residing in low-income, high-crime Chicago neighborhoods to explore youths' perceptions of safety and strategies for navigating neighborhood space. After carrying geographical positioning system (GPS) trackers for an eight-day period, youths' travel patterns were mapped, and these maps were used as part of an interview with youth that explored daily routines, with special consideration paid to where and when youth felt safe. Drawing on activity settings theory and exploring youth voice, we find that experiences of community violence are commonplace, but youth describe how they have safe spaces that are embedded within these dangerous contexts. Perceptions of safety and danger were related to environmental, social, and temporal cues. Youth reported four overarching safety strategies, including avoidance, hypervigilance, self-defense, and emotional management, but these strategies considerably varied by gender. We discuss implications for practice and future directions of research. HIGHLIGHTS: This study explored Chicago youths' safety strategies and resilience in high-crime neighborhoods. Safe and dangerous spaces are embedded or overlapping settings. All youth practiced safety strategies but they considerably varied by gender. Perceptions are intersubjectively created due to the codes, rules, and norms of community life. Violence is common and extreme in everyday life of this sample of Chicago adolescents.

Book Review: America the beautiful and violent: Black youth and neighborhood trauma in Chicago

Book Review: America the beautiful and violent: Black youth and neighborhood trauma in Chicago

You Set Me Up: Gendered Perceptions of Twitter Communication Among Black Chicago Youth

We sought to identify the key dynamics in the relationship between social media and violence by identifying new mechanisms that elucidate how Internet banging becomes offline violence through the perceptions of the Black and Latino boys and men. We conducted 33 interviews with Black and Latino boys and men aged 14–24 who live in Chicago, have experience with gang violence, and are social media users. In our investigation of the use of social media by boys and young men to navigate neighborhood violence, we uncovered a recurring narrative about gender relationships in violence. Male participants often attributed escalations of violence to girls and young women, beginning with online communications that migrated to face-to-face meetings. They described girls and young women as the precipitators of violence through “set-up” meetings that began under the guise of romance, dating, and courtship. This study provides an in-depth examination of how males perceive girls and young women as unique threats to their personal safety, a narrative we must engage with in order to further current violence prevention efforts. Future research is needed to examine the lived experiences of young women, their experience with and exposure to social media-related gang violence, and their view of social media behaviors of men that may lead to violence.

Contextual Analysis of Social Media: The Promise and Challenge of Eliciting Context in Social Media Posts with Natural Language Processing.

While natural language processing affords researchers an opportunity to automatically scan millions of social media posts, there is growing concern that automated computational tools lack the ability to understand context and nuance in human communication and language. This article introduces a critical systematic approach for extracting culture, context and nuance in social media data. The Contextual Analysis of Social Media (CASM) approach considers and critiques the gap between inadequacies in natural language processing tools and differences in geographic, cultural, and age-related variance of social media use and communication. CASM utilizes a team-based approach to analysis of social media data, explicitly informed by community expertise. We use of CASM to analyze Twitter posts from gang-involved youth in Chicago. We designed a set of experiments to evaluate the performance of a support vector machine using CASM hand-labeled posts against a distant model. We found that the CASM-informed hand-labeled data outperforms the baseline distant labels, indicating that the CASM labels capture additional dimensions of information that content-only methods lack. We then question whether this is helpful or harmful for gun violence prevention.

Performing the Progressive Era: Immigration, Urban Life, and Nationalism on Stage ed. by Max Shulman and J. Chris Westgate

Reviewed by: Performing the Progressive Era: Immigration, Urban Life, and Nationalism on Stage ed. by Max Shulman and J. Chris Westgate Catherine M. Young Performing the Progressive Era: Immigration, Urban Life, and Nationalism on Stage. Edited by Max Shulman and J. Chris Westgate. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2019. Pp. xii + 285. $90.00, paper. The so-called Progressive Era (henceforth PE) covers thirty years (1890–1920) during which profound demographic shifts, technological advancements, and political changes reshaped the United States of America as a modern empire. Max Shulman and J. Chris Westgate’s collection contains eleven chapters about performances largely taking place in the Northeast (especially New York City), Cleveland, and Chicago. Laurence Senelick’s foreword celebrates the European immigrant culture of his 1940s Chicago youth and its connection to PE urbanism, arguing that “the Progressive Era is not simply a temporal rubric. . . . It brought modernism to the United States, setting the course for the political, social, and artistic movements of the next decades” (xi). The introduction draws on Sabine Haenni’s The Immigrant Scene, Shannon Jackson’s Professing Performance and Lines of Activity, and Ric Knowles’s Reading the Material Theatre to substantiate the book’s foundational argument that “the Progressive Era was brought into being in no small part through the ubiquity of performance” (3). Shulman and Westgate identify the significance of the “top-down perspectives” of governments and reform organizations during the PE. Some were conservative and “attempted to define and implement limits of acceptability for the nation” (6), while others were “more liberal” and focused on acculturation (6). Jane Addams’s work with the Chicago settlement Hull House and her 1909 book The [End Page 275] Spirit of Youth and the City represent the top-down acculturation model. In contrast, performances by and for “immigrants, the working class, and bohemians” reveal “heterogeneous ambitions and collisions with mainstream society” (7). Several essays explore understudied theatrical texts. The cogent opening chapter by Amy Arbogast evaluates three plays from the 1890s that represent ruralness in New England, the South, and the West. Arbogast convincingly shows that representing ruralness no longer meant looking to a bucolic past or separate space. Instead, rural plays were future-oriented and saw “the country-side as . . . an evolving part of the nation that both contributed to and benefited from . . . industrial and technological developments” (33). Hillary Miller deftly draws on scholars Daniel Czitrom and Esther Romeyn to evaluate Charles Hale Hoyt’s 1894 musical farce A Milk White Flag “as a subversive commentary on the regulation of representation” (38) that pointedly engaged with New York City police’s anti-vice reform efforts. Miller turns to film studies to think through the filming of key scenes from Hoyt’s work, and this disciplinary diversity enhances the volume. Westgate revisits James Halleck Reid’s 1907 play From Broadway to the Bowery, examining the representation of Irish, Chinese, and black servants. He claims that the play “endorsed and perhaps accelerated the shift toward the conservative tradition of racial nationalism” (56) in what Gary Gerstle calls the “Rooseveltian nation.” By explicating three plays depicting narcotics addiction within the context of antidrug legislation, Shulman contends that the plays “reveal the overlap of medical science, reform movements, and popular culture” (213). Together, these four essays indicate that PE drama frequently used melodramatic structures and genre mixture even as playwrights grappled with con- tentious social issues. Three spectacle-focused essays evince deep archival research and attention to subjects that would readily pique the interest of readers in and beyond theatre and performance studies. Ariel Nereson brings a welcome dance studies lens to the tension surrounding the public and private freedoms during the PE. The tango sparked fears that nonwhite tango experts would dismantle “the long-established gate-keeping work of whiteness” (133). Women’s “tango teas served as ambivalent sites of possibility for women” (126), particularly regarding political mobilization for suffrage versus consumerism. Similarly paradoxical, Megan E. Geigner argues that Chicago’s Columbus Day parades fostered a “hybrid ideal of Americanness” that embodied “the tensions between Columbus Day as an Italian American holiday and . . . as a civic-pride day” (101). Susan Kattwinkel turns a critical gaze to the liminal humanity...