Youth-led Participatory Research Research Articles

Dreaming is not enough. Audiovisual methodologies, social inclusion, and new forms of youth biopolitical resistance.

The eleventh Sustainable Development Goal, "make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable," can only be truly answered when there are no individuals in our societies who feel forgotten by the various social institutions. Not in Education, Employment, or Training [NEET] are among those most affected by this social invisibility. Nevertheless, these young people are not alienated or lost. Far from it. Instead, some of them found in the arts registered in the community-music, dance, photography and graffiti-a possibility to resist the various social stigmas attached on them. This was the view on which we conducted our artistic and social intervention, based on the innovative "arts-based research" methodology and "youth-led participatory research," called "The Neighborhood is Ours II!," with young NEETs in the socially underprivileged Cerco neighborhood of Porto in Portugal in 2022. We propose a theoretical-empirical approach around a visual/narrative sociology-namely using digital cinema-which will be based on a short film about the life narrative of a young NEET, who has used artistic practices to establish himself in the city of Porto as a cultural mediator. Thus-through these processes of co-creation of knowledge (cine-making)- we aim to demonstrate how the use of the arts can be a key tool in promoting social inclusion and reducing/minimizing feelings of insecurity, but also act as a means of resistance to the daily adversities experienced by marginalized young people and, of course, demonstrate the ways in which the use of artistic practices plays a pivotal role in the development of sustainable and alternative professional, social futures and citizenship.

“Bounded” Empowerment: Analyzing Tensions in the Practice of Youth‐Led Participatory Research in Urban Public Schools

This multi-method study examines tensions in the practice of youth-led participatory research (YPAR) in urban high schools among 15 semester-cohorts. Student participants in the present study were 77 ethnically diverse youth from four high schools in a major metropolitan school district. Data were gathered using systematic classroom observations, interviews with teachers and students involved in the projects, and participant observation. The two most commonly-constrained phases of the YPAR project were issue selection and action steps. A central tension in the issue selection phase for projects enacted across multiple semester cohorts was the tension between original inquiry and "traction:" Sticking with the same topic enabled sustained building of strategic alliances and expertise for making change, but limited the incoming cohort's power to define the problem to be addressed. In further analyses, we identified processes that promoted student power despite continuity-related constraints-teachers' framing and buy-in strategies, "micro-power" compensation, and alignment of students' interests with the prior cohort-as well as constraints in other phases of the projects. This study's findings regarding the promotion of youth power in the face of constraints advance the integration of theory and practice in youth-led research and have implications for participatory research more broadly.

Assessing the Key Processes of Youth-Led Participatory Research

Youth-led Participatory Action Research (YPAR)—in which young people conduct research aimed at improving problems in their schools and communities—is increasing in public health, youth development, and education. We report on the development and psychometric testing of the YPAR Process Template (YPT)—to assess the quality of key YPAR processes in a systematic, flexible manner. Pairs of raters independently coded 40 live and videotaped observations. All scales achieved good to excellent interrater reliability with the exception of the power sharing over major decisions scale, which had interrater reliability in the acceptable range. This instrument can be useful for a range of settings practicing YPAR and similar youth empowerment programs. We further report findings generated by YPT assessments that demonstrate that power sharing was a robust predictor of observed youth engagement in the YPAR classes after controlling for the classes’ baseline level of engagement.

The Impact of Participatory Research on Urban Teens: An Experimental Evaluation

Although there is much practice of community-based participatory research in economically-developing countries and increasingly in North America, there has been little systematic assessment of empowerment effects. Youth-led participatory research holds particular promise for fostering positive development and civic participation among economically disadvantaged urban youth. The present investigation uses a clustered-randomized, within-school experimental design to test the effects of youth-led participatory research on the psychological empowerment of 401 students attending urban public schools. We find that attending a participatory research elective class during the school day was associated with increases in sociopolitical skills, motivation to influence their schools and communities, and participatory behavior. We found no significant effects for perceived control at school. The implications for participatory research and related youth development interventions are discussed.

Beyond School Spirit: The Effects of Youth‐Led Participatory Action Research in Two Urban High Schools

Prior research highlights the mismatch between adolescents' growing capacities for autonomy and the limited opportunities for influence in U.S. secondary schools. Youth‐led participatory research (YPAR), an approach in which young people research and advocate for change on problems of concern to them, could increase students' autonomy in secondary schools. This qualitative study of YPAR examined whether and how the intervention meaningfully affected the interactions and roles of students and adults in two distinctive urban high school settings, identifying concepts for further empirical investigation. Results suggested that YPAR enabled processes of student professionalization that led to novel student‐adult “collegial” interactions, expansion of domains of student influence, and diversification of students with opportunities to influence policies and practices across these two schools.

The Diffusion of Youth‐Led Participatory Research in Urban Schools: The Role of the Prevention Support System in Implementation and Sustainability

This article discusses the dissemination of a process of youth-led participatory research in urban secondary schools within the Interactive Systems Framework for Dissemination and Implementation (ISF) developed in collaboration with the CDC and its university partners (Wandersman et al. American Journal of Community Psychology, 41(3-4) 2008). The focus here is on the development of the Prevention Support System with respect to general and innovation-specific capacity building. The specific process under study involves youth-led needs assessment and research to inform the planning of prevention programs and policies to address students' health and developmental needs. The article first briefly describes the youth-led research process, its potential benefits, and a case example in two urban secondary schools. It then describes challenges and responses in providing support for the diffusion of this model in 6 secondary schools. The settings are urban public schools with a majority of students of color from diverse ethnic groups: Asian-American, Latino, and African-American. This project constitutes a collaborative partnership with a university school of public health and community-based organizations (CBOs) to build capacity for long-term, sustainable implementation of this innovative process within the local school system. The perspectives of the university-based researcher and the CBO partners on the development and effectiveness of the Prevention Support System are presented.