CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — 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 framework describes an eight-component research process, providing guidance on each, such as how to prep for a research question, data collection techniques and analyses, and communicating the findings with policymakers and the other audiences. The team noted that many of the projects identified as YPAR that they reviewed did not involve the young participants in all aspects of the research process and that the projects would have greater impact if they were youth driven.
“There are different models for YPAR out there, and we noticed that there were components lacking in those models,” Dariotis said. “We sought to refine the framework and gain greater understanding of the assumptions that are made within them, the assumptions that the adults and young people need to do this work and some of the social and emotional competencies that are developed and strengthened.”
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.
When beginning a project, Leman said the first objective is to ensure that the youths and the adult facilitators have a mutual, broad understanding of what constitutes research and the types of activities they will be performing. Frequently young people — especially younger children — have misperceptions that research is solely performed by scientists wearing white coats working in laboratory settings, a stereotype that does not consider the types of investigations performed by social scientists — such as collecting data through interviews, surveys, observations and focus groups, she said.
“We want other researchers to understand when you work with youths 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 youths to be researchers, and we ask that adults think twice about the assumptions that they may have of youths and their perspectives.”
During the 2023-24 academic year Leman, Dariotis and graduate students Daniela Markazi and Kate Suchodolski collaborated with a group of high school students on researching links between poverty and crime in their community. The participants, who were students at the Kenneth D. Bailey Academy in Danville, Illinois, presented their work at the U. of I.’s Undergraduate Research Symposium in April.
In another project, Dariotis and Leman worked with a group of middle school students who explored safety issues in their school, including building and food safety and sanitation. Leman also worked with a group of students who examined gender identity and inclusivity issues at their school, such as why the demographic data reported by their school listed only the number of “male” and “female” students, but not those who identified as nonbinary.
While many YPAR projects are geared toward middle school students or high school students, Dariotis and Leman said they are interested in working with younger groups of children as well. Dariotis has worked with children as young as preschoolers on such projects.
In working with groups such as young children or older adults where there are literacy concerns, the research project could be an arts-based investigation of photographs and drawings, she said.
“You can do a YPAR project with children of any age, including preschoolers and possibly even younger,” she said. “It is feasible. Even if you cannot do all the steps in the research process, you can touch upon many of them.”
The study co-authors are Illinois Extension specialist Zachary Kennedy; 4-H youth development educator Mynda Tracy; Ye Rang Park, then a research professor at the Family Resiliency Center; and Markazi, all at the Urbana campus. Aisha N. Griffith, a professor of educational psychology at the U. of I.’s Chicago campus, also co-wrote the paper.
The project was supported by a Research Scholar Initiative Award from the Institute for Government and Public Affairs at the U. of I.