Many of the youth participatory action research projects that aim to empower young people to lead change in their schools or communities often fail to fully integrate them into the process, diminishing participants’ learning opportunities and the projects’ potential impact, a recent study found.
Two scholars at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with extensive experience with YPAR projects — Amy Leman, a professor in the Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communications Program; and Jacinda Dariotis, the director of the Family Resiliency Center and a professor of human development and family studies and with the Carle Illinois College of Medicine — led a team that developed a comprehensive framework for these projects that better integrates young people into all facets of the work.
The team, who published the study in the Journal of Research on Adolescence, will present their work at the American Public Health Association’s annual conference later this month in Minneapolis.
Called the Youth Researcher Empowerment Framework, the team’s proposed framework ensures that young participants have an equal voice in these projects and connects the research activities they undertake with the development of 11 specific social and emotional competencies. These include skills such as data analysis, locating information on topics and devising research questions.
The new framework positions young people as experts in their lived experiences and priorities, providing a welcoming environment for their input and preferences, according to the study. The team vetted the framework with adults who work in this field and with teens.
In creating the new framework, the team reviewed 15 YPAR curricula, documenting the content that these programs covered, the competencies they sought to develop and the various components of the research projects.
“We tried to collect all of the components that might be necessary for a successful YPAR program into one place and then deliver those tools in a one-stop shop,” Dariotis said. “This paper will benefit all YPAR partners — adults, youths and researchers — as they're conceptualizing their outcomes, measuring their competencies, looking at how the program is being impactful and considering how to share power in the research process.”
The team held seven focus groups to gather feedback from 55 young people ages 13-18. They also met with four practitioners who were teachers and staff members in after-school programs. The focus group participants helped confirm and clarify the terms, concepts and phrases used in the proposed framework to ensure that they resonated with those who would be using the materials, Leman said.
“We want other researchers to understand when you work with youth and YPAR, you need to start at the very beginning and make sure everybody’s on the same page before you move forward,” Leman said. “Not everyone does that. We are teaching youth to be researchers, and we ask that adults think twice about the assumptions that they may have of youths and their perspectives.”
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