Category Archives: Methodology

Asset & Power Mapping as Tools for Youth-Led Research

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By: Jessica Forrester

This post is the 7th publication in a YPAR series, which aims to explain participatory research, youth-led measurement and evaluation approaches, and strategies for youth-adult collaborations in YPAR.

Highlights:

  • In this series on Youth Participatory Action Research (or YPAR), we have started to share tips & strategies for facilitators.
  • Some YPAR facilitators use two types of modeling activities in their research projects, community asset & power mapping.       
  • This blog includes explanations of these mapping exercises, reflections on the iterative nature of creating maps, and downloadable examples to use in future work.
Source: North Minneapolis Asset Map made by Mychi Nguyen in YoUthROC Magazine 2022

Interactive activities are central to Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR). These activities encourage youth to think critically about their communities and provide opportunities to strengthen problem-solving skills. Exercise examples include community asset mapping and power mapping. Below I’ll describe these two maps, when to include them in your YPAR process, and steps your team can follow for your research project. Additionally, there are templates and examples to support future YPAR projects.

Community Asset Mapping

Community asset mapping is an action-oriented process that documents often unexplored resources within a defined community. Assets are valuable resources for communities to maintain their well-being. These resources include individuals, land and physical environments, culture, stories, businesses, and citizens’ associations.

In other words, community asset mapping visualizes a community as inherently full of social and physical resources rather than defined by deficits that need remediation.

Asset mapping is a data collection step that can support a YPAR project after you’ve decided on your research goals or as a stand-alone project to document resources and build collaborative relationships. Regardless of your route, community asset maps are a powerful tool to understand the context of research projects and envision how resources already occurring in a community can be used to create change. Additionally, taking the time to find out what is already happening in a community will avoid duplicating services or solutions that others have done.

Here are some steps to create your own community asset map:

  1. Identify where and who makes up the community that you want to explore. Are you or your youth interested in your neighborhood, school, or entire city?
  2. Determine what kind of assets you want to know about and how you’ll find out about those assets. For example, youth can interview community members about their positive experiences in the community or read newspapers to find out about groups organizing local events.
  3. Logically organize the community asset map to share, use, and maintain.

Templates & Examples of Assets Maps

Community Mapping ActivityDownload

UC Berkeley’s YPAR Hub created an activity to guide YPAR teams in defining what community means and identifying the resources within a community.

Example of an Asset Map in ActionDownload

YoUthROC (a community and University-connected youth research team that supports the growth of YPAR) created asset maps for their magazine to highlight their research finding surrounding nourishing youth assets and agency.

Power Mapping

Power mapping is a visual representation that organizes people and organizations based on how much a person/group supports your project and how much power a person/group has to help your project progress. Completing this visual exercise will help YPAR teams understand how power operates within your community.

In addition, power mapping can help YPAR teams strategize about stakeholders who strongly support their research goals, opposers who might hinder their project, and people/groups in the middle who could be influenced to assist.

You can incorporate power maps into various steps of your research process. For example, a) during the early brainstorming stage as youth think about the proposed audience of the project, b) when they finish the project and are preparing to present the findings, or c) when they create an action plan and are contemplating who can help them make positive change. Regardless of which step, power maps can help youth and your team create a framework for success to meet the research, action, and relationship-building goals.

Here are some steps to create a power map:

  1. Brainstorm a list of people/groups in your community who make decisions on the YPAR topic. This list can include those responsible for creating the problem you want to change, those who may want to fix the problem, those already working to fix the problem, and your YPAR team.
  2. Place each person/group on the power map template based on their level of support and power (see the Power Mapping Activity below for the template). Questions you can ask yourself are: Do they agree or disagree with the goals of our YPAR project? How much power do they have over decision-making? You can do this virtually (via Jamboard or Google Slides) or in person with a whiteboard and sticky notes.
  3. Reflect on how people/groups are organized on the map and determine the next steps. Future actions can include engaging with your influential supporters or limiting the impact of powerful non-supporters.

Templates & Examples of Power Maps

Power Mapping ActivityDownload

A guide created by Community Futures, Community Lore (UC Davis) to assist YPAR teams in thinking strategically about supporters and detractors while you focus on your action efforts.

Example of a Power Map in ActionDownload

On the second slide of the Instagram post, YoUthROC completed a power map with local partners during their Research to Social Action workshop series.

Reflections on Mapping

Asset maps are just the beginning. Typically in community mapping exercises, assets are listed with short descriptions for brevity. In actuality, each asset could be further broken down and described. Youth and research teams can work towards transcending from maps to more detailed inventories that document individuals’ self-identified skills, partnerships between institutions and community groups, and strategies to identify additional resources. These steps would give a more well-rounded view of community assets and allow researchers to be more knowledgeable on community values, issues, and organizing efforts before proposing community-engaged projects.

Maps should be re-visited. An essential step in creating asset or power maps is to re-visit and update them. These tools are not final, and the continuation of participatory research depends on continually revising community resources. For example, organization leaders change regularly. It may be worthwhile to update the asset map depending on the new leader’s values or update your power map to reflect their level of support and possible allyship.

Missed a post in the YPAR series? Check out all the tips and resources:

  1. The Benefits of Engaging in Participatory Approaches to Research
  2. Why Young Investigators Are Important
  3. Youth Voices in YPAR (includes youth)
  4. Strategies for the YPAR Collaboration Process (includes downloadable resources)
  5. How Can Youth Voice Amplify Research? Listening & Leadership Are Key
  6. 4 Universal Facilitation Tips for YPAR Collaboration
  7. Asset & Power Mapping as Tools for Youth-Led Research (includes downloadable resources)
  8. Why YPAR Matters: Youth Are “Looking at the World Differently” (includes youth)

If you have any comments or questions about this post, please email Youth-Nex@virginia.edu. Please visit the Youth-Nex Homepage for up to date information about the work happening at the center.

Author Bio: Dr. Jessica Forrester is a postdoctoral researcher working directly with Youth-Nex and the Youth Action Lab. Before joining the University of Virginia, Jessica earned a Ph.D. in STEM Education from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor’s and master’s degree in biomedical engineering. Her dissertation combined her interest in STEM engagement with justice-oriented practices in education to create mathematics activities for an after-school tutoring program in North Minneapolis. Specifically, qualitative and community-based approaches were utilized to acknowledge community assets and, in turn, value those assets during mathematical learning to influence students’ identity development, skills development, criticality, and joy. Additionally, Jessica explores equity and justice through youth participatory action research and mentoring networks.

4 Universal Facilitation Tips for YPAR Collaboration

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By: Olivia Burke

This post is the 6th publication in a YPAR series, which aims to explain participatory research, youth-led measurement and evaluation approaches, and strategies for youth-adult collaborations in YPAR.

Highlights:

  • Detailed in earlier in this series, engaging youth in participatory action research promotes autonomy, self-efficacy, critical thinking skills, empowerment and civic engagement.
  • Effective facilitation is the key to successful YPAR partnerships.
  • In this blog, I share tips for facilitators based on years working in YPAR at multiple sites across a diverse range of students.
Source: Canva

This summer marks my third anniversary with the Youth Action Lab. The intersection of my two academic passions, education research methodology and adolescent development, this lab caught my attention as an undergraduate in UVA’s School of Education and Human Development. While working on my master’s, my interest in utilizing Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) as both a research method and youth-empowerment tool continued to blossom.

The bulk of my research with Youth Action Lab focuses on successful participatory action research facilitation. My experience facilitating YPAR with six different youth groups/schools ranges from: in-person to remote settings, ages 3rd to 12th grades, and highly selective leadership groups to alternative school models. In reflecting on the years, I identified four universal facilitation tips that help me establish successful YPAR collaborations.

Intentionally Break Down the Adult-Youth Power Structure

After the initial introduction to YPAR, spend time breaking down the traditional youth-adult power structure. YPAR is often facilitated in a school or school-like setting where the youth are traditionally ‘knowledge consumers.’ While the youth will learn throughout the YPAR process, they are also considered a primary source of knowledge. Unlike a traditional student-teacher relationship, the youth-researchers and YPAR facilitators have equal decision-making power. Being explicit about the shared ‘power’ throughout the YPAR process allows youth the space to share their truth and confidently make research decisions. As a facilitator, make sure you:

  • Intentionally share the idea that the youths’ knowledge and points of view are as important as the facilitators’.
  • Treat the youth with the same level of respect as you would any other co-researcher or adult colleague.
  • Spend time encouraging students to use their voice in the facilitation time; they will likely begin to speak up, unprompted, throughout the year.
  • Position yourself, physically, in a space that does not imply a power dynamic. For example, in a circle of desk rather than in front of the class like a teacher might.

Build Foundational Connections with Youth Researchers

Establishing a genuine relationship with the youth-researchers is crucial for a successful partnership. Once the youth-researchers feel comfortable around you, they will be more likely to explore authentic research topics. Though researchers strive to remove bias from the process, overarching research topics are inherently personally and often are sparked from emotions or reactions to everyday experiences. Building an authentic connection allows space for the youth-researchers to be vulnerable and explore their true interests. As you hone your YPAR facilitation skills, remember to:

  • While respecting your own boundaries, be vulnerable and authentic yourself. I often share a bit about my personal experiences and what makes me ‘me.’
  • Allow the youth to get to know you as a ‘normal’ person first—this also helps break down power structures between facilitator and youth-researcher. Having casual conversations about the latest trends or music tastes will remind the youth-researchers that we are just like them and normal people.
  • Share some of your own interests, research interests and how you personally connect to them.

Follow an Adaptable Curriculum & Timeline

The Youth Action Lab follows a general curriculum adapted from the University of California Berkeley’s YPAR HUB. I found that this YPAR curriculum is best utilized as a starting point to spark engagement and teach youth-researchers the social science research process. Since YPAR is rooted in empowering youth to make their own research decisions, it is important to be flexible to the youths’ interests and not get caught up in following the curriculum verbatim (like a teacher needs to in the classroom). The youth may feel more drawn to different aspects of the process than others, and it is not only OK but encouraged to follow their lead. As you consider YPAR curriculum, remember your goal as the facilitator is to:

  • Give youth the space and time to explore each step of the process. For example, a youth-researcher may enjoy spending the bulk of their time on background research or exploring data collection methods.
  • Spend more time on aspects of the social science process that excites and energizes the students.
  • Create a broad timeline from the start but be flexible at each stage. For example, allowing students more time to research their topic of interest or presenting their findings to different groups.

Meet the Youth Where They Are At

As mentioned in previous series posts, reflecting and checking personally bias is crucial for successful YPAR facilitation. In YPAR, the youth possess the content knowledge and it is their worldview that drives the research project. I, like most of us, have preconceived notions of how the world works and what is ‘right and wrong.’ My worldview may vary drastically from the youth though. Checking my bias throughout the research process promotes a research product authentic to the youth.

I also strive to meet the youth where they are at that day, and in some YPAR meetings you may need to pivot in the moment if that is best for them. While it is a collaborative process, not everyone involved has a fully developed prefrontal cortex. Provide the youth-researchers with more support on the days you notice they may be struggling. Giving them space to have ‘bad days’ promotes trust, mutual respect, and ultimately a more successful partnership. As a YPAR facilitator, it is essential that you:

  • Allow youth to explain their thinking and share what experiences are driving their opinions (often you will learn something new from them).
  • Share your own worldview and prompt a conversation to highlight where we, as co-researchers, may differ.
  • Check-in with the youth, as people, at the beginning of each session. Not every YPAR session needs to be 100% focused on the research project.

Missed a post in the YPAR series? Check out all the tips and resources:

  1. The Benefits of Engaging in Participatory Approaches to Research
  2. Why Young Investigators Are Important
  3. Youth Voices in YPAR (includes youth)
  4. Strategies for the YPAR Collaboration Process (includes downloadable resources)
  5. How Can Youth Voice Amplify Research? Listening & Leadership Are Key
  6. 4 Universal Facilitation Tips for YPAR Collaboration
  7. Asset & Power Mapping as Tools for Youth-Led Research (includes downloadable resources)
  8. Why YPAR Matters: Youth Are “Looking at the World Differently” (includes youth)

If you have any comments or questions about this post, please email Youth-Nex@virginia.edu. Please visit the Youth-Nex Homepage for up to date information about the work happening at the center.

Author Bio: Olivia Burke is an incoming PhD student studying Research, Statistics, and Evaluation at the School of Education under the guidance of Dr. Nancy Deutsch. She completed her B.S.Ed. as a Youth and Social Innovation major in 2021 and her M.Ed. in Quantitative Analytics for Education in 2022. She spent the last year as a data analyst at the National Student Clearinghouse on their Custom Research team. Since her initial involvement with in 2020, she has continued her work with Youth Action Lab as a YPAR facilitator and researcher. During her PhD, she plans to utilize and promote PAR-methods in education research.

Youth Engaged in Research: Strategies for the Collaboration Process

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This post is the 4th publication in a YPAR series, which aims to explain participatory research, youth-led measurement and evaluation approaches, and strategies for youth-adult collaborations in YPAR.

By: Shereen El Mallah

Highlights:

  • In this YPAR series, I’ve shared that participatory research is an approach to research, rather than a single research method, that intentionally considers power and equity with respect to both processes and outcomes.
  • Youth have a unique insight into their own needs and lived experiences, and engaging them in the research process can leverage their expertise on how best to support their own learning and development.
  • In this blog, I share specific strategies that facilitated the collaboration process to support the design and application of participatory research in practice.
Source: Dr. Shereen El Mallah

Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is an approach to conducting research increasingly used by educators, administrators, practitioners and researchers alike. However, there is still a lack of practical knowledge about how participatory research can best be designed and applied in practice.

In a recent publication, I provide examples or starter templates for researchers who are seeking to develop culturally sensitive measures and/or who are inviting youth stakeholders to transition from the passive role of informant to the active role of co-researcher. These are included below but first, I share some of the strategies that supported the youth-adult collaboration in this study.

How To Guide

The collaborative process can be broken down into multiple phases. During the planning phase (i.e., prior to engagement), the research team took the following steps:

  • Planning a “shadow day,” to follow a subgroup of students for three hours as they went about their regularly scheduled school day. This has previously been used as a teacher training and professional development exercise, and in the context of the case study, it held the same purpose of better understanding the realities of students in their daily environment.
  • Toward the same goal, disposable cameras were handed out to 30 randomly selected seventh and eighth grade students. They were asked to take pictures throughout the week of “things that were important to them.” The adult researchers were asked to do the same. All pictures were printed and later put on display in the room where collaborative working sessions took place.

During the partnering phase, the research team took the following steps:

  • The first collaborative working session was dedicated to collectively drafting a “contract” that discussed expectations, identified priorities and articulated the collective goals of the team. This conversation revealed varied outlooks among the youth researchers, from hesitation and apprehension (stemming from poor experiences in the past or a general distrust of adult outsiders) to hope and excitement at the prospect of playing a role in improving the student survey experience.
  • A lot of attention was also directed towards ensuring the statements in the contract were explicit, with very little room for ambiguity. For example, stating a commitment to shared decision-making was followed by a detailed description of the voting process (two-thirds majority for all votes) and a clear rationale provided for the few decisions that would be exempt from the process (e.g., the adult-driven research design decisions that were already underway, the decisions around any disciplinary matters that might emerge, etc.).

During the training phase, the research team took the following steps:

  • Youth researchers were encouraged to coin their own terms for the research concepts. For example, most youth researchers referred to quantitative and qualitative analysis as “numbers” analysis and “word” analysis; and although this may not be a technically accurate, it helped them more quickly distinguish between the two approaches
  • With regard to preparing students to lead cognitive interviews with their peers, the adult researchers employed reciprocal teaching strategies (“I do, we do, you do”): first modeling the interview protocol, then role-playing the interviewee for the youth researchers and eventually creating space for the youth researchers to offer one another feedback as they honed their interviewing skills.

During the learning phase (i.e., data analysis and interpretation), the research team took the following steps:

  • Youth researchers were guided through semi-structured data interpretation activities which included reflecting on surprises between what they expected and what they found in the data, as well as identifying patterns within the sample.

During the sharing phase (i.e., dissemination), the research team took the following steps:

  • The youth researchers created a social media page to highlight some of the key decisions and work products that emerged from each collaborative session.  One member of the team was charged each week with taking candid photographs to include in the updates that were co-authored by the adult and youth researchers on the team.
  • At the end of the data collection and analysis process, the youth researchers prepared four more comprehensive presentations to be delivered at a schoolwide assembly (targeting their peers), a school board meeting (targeting school and district leadership), a staff meeting (targeting their teachers) and a parent-teacher night (targeting families). Adult researchers in attendance took notes during the interactive presentations, documenting any questions or concerns raised by audience members. During the subsequent collaborative working sessions, the research team debriefed on key take-aways from the experience, as well as brainstormed new strategies to refine the dissemination process (e.g., after the first presentation, the decision was made to have handouts available for audience members).

Download Resources

To promote more widespread use of YPAR approaches, five resources were included in the publication and linked below. These resources were written for a general audience to ensure broad applicability and include examples, templates, and tools that may be helpful for those seeking to initiate research involving youth-adult collaborations. Each one was designed with the intention of drawing a more explicit link between the abstract guidelines and the concrete practices that are often associated with the YPAR process. 

Sample Recruitment FlyerDownload

A template of a recruitment flyer that can be used to invite students to work with adult researchers on improving school survey experiences.

Sample Project PlanDownload

An example of a project plan that begins with a broad overview of the research process in a youth-adult partnership, followed by a more detailed breakdown of the focus and purpose of each collaborative working session.

Sample Training Tool: Survey EvaluationDownload

A newly developed measure called the “KIVI” used by both youth and adult researchers to examine the clarity, relevance and coverage of items on survey measures.

Sample Training Handout: Types of ValidityDownload

A training handout explaining the different types of validity used to evaluate surveys in an age-appropriate and relevant way for youth researchers.

Sample Training Handout: Interview PromptsDownload

A training handout used to help youth researchers obtain richer responses from their peers when conducting interviews.

Missed a post in the YPAR series? Check out all the tips and resources:

  1. The Benefits of Engaging in Participatory Approaches to Research
  2. Why Young Investigators Are Important
  3. Youth Voices in YPAR (includes youth)
  4. Strategies for the YPAR Collaboration Process (includes downloadable resources)
  5. How Can Youth Voice Amplify Research? Listening & Leadership Are Key
  6. 4 Universal Facilitation Tips for YPAR Collaboration
  7. Asset & Power Mapping as Tools for Youth-Led Research (includes downloadable resources)
  8. Why YPAR Matters: Youth Are “Looking at the World Differently” (includes youth)

If you have any comments or questions about this post, please email Youth-Nex@virginia.edu. Please visit the Youth-Nex Homepage for up to date information about the work happening at the center.

Author Bio: Dr. Shereen El Mallah is interested in the intersection of applied science and social justice. As a scholar-activist, her work draws heavily on rapid cycle evaluation, participatory approaches, design-based research, and the framework of QuantCrit to address three notable gaps: 1) The gap between what works in research and what works in practice, 2) The gap between valuing what we can measure and measuring what we value, 3) The racial/ethnic and socioeconomic gaps in developmental and educational outcomes that are rooted in longstanding structural and systemic inequities. El Mallah regularly engages in research-practice partnerships intent on interrupting inequitable practices, policies, and research, as well as explores communication and dissemination strategies that facilitate the use of evidence. She is committed to working with and for underrepresented, marginalized, or systematically minoritized groups to leverage both quantitative and qualitative data in challenging dominant narratives.

Youth Engaged in Research: Why Young Investigators Are Important

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By: Shereen El Mallah

This post is the 2nd publication is a YPAR series, which aims to explain participatory research, youth-led measurement and evaluation approaches, and strategies for youth-adult collaborations in YPAR.

Highlights:

  • Participatory research is an approach to research, rather than a single research method, that intentionally considers power and equity with respect to both processes and outcomes.
  • The added value of participatory research for both academic and nonacademic partners can be seen at each and every phase of the research process.
  • In this blog, I share more about why youth involvement in research is essential and how having youth researchers working with youth participants can improve the quality of data collection efforts.
Source: Canva

In a recent Q&A I described what participatory research is, how it is important, and why more researchers should be using it. In this second publication of the series, let’s examine why engaging youth in participatory research can change the existing researcher-subject power dynamic as well as amplify the voice of under-researched groups through meaningful involvement in the research process.

Youth Expertise in Research Processes

Typically, adults conduct research on youth and youth serve as the data source. Accordingly, adult researchers are considered the experts and hold ownership over the research process and data use. However, we know youth have unique insight into their own needs and lived experiences.

Engaging youth in the research process can leverage their expertise on how best to support their own learning and development. By incorporating their voice in the design, implementation, analysis, and/or dissemination stages of research, we are likely to increase the accuracy and validity of research findings, as well as enhance research translation.

Additionally, engaging young people in participatory approaches during adolescence is a developmentally responsive practice.

By collaborating with adults throughout the research process and actively participating in group decision-making, adolescents develop the skills, knowledge and dispositions to be active and engaged community members.

This includes cultivating a sense of self-efficacy and belonging, inspiring a sense of purpose, generating psychological empowerment, promoting strategic thinking…all of which helps to bridge the “civic empowerment gap,” and pushes both adult and youth researchers to more accurately consider how the lives of marginalized individuals are often shaped by their culture, their communities, and the social, political and economic systems they live under.

Young Researchers Engaging Other Youth

When adults interview youth it tends to be a unidirectional process in which the interviewer asks questions and the participant responds. In this case, the power imbalance tends to be two-fold: first in the researcher-participant paradigm and again in the power and social imbalance between adults and youth.

Having youth researchers interview youth participants through peer interviews recognizes that interviewing is a more dynamic social process that involves co-construction of knowledge. It helps to minimize or eliminate a number of factors that can influence adult-youth interviews including:

  • power imbalances,
  • insider/outsider status,
  • language and ways of using language,
  • ways of knowing,
  • the socio-cultural environment, and
  • societal and economic status.

In a recently published study, it was very easy to see how the use of peer interviews between youth researchers and youth participants facilitated the development of rapport and increased the level of candor, both of which ultimately reduced potential bias and improved the quality of data collection.

Challenges to Note

There are many benefits to engaging youth in the participatory research process, but there are also challenges to the collaborative process that are important to note.

The reality is that youth sometimes struggle to appreciate their own expertise (or accept the idea that adults may not have the “best” or “smartest” answers). This can make it challenging to break out of the typical “adult as authority” and “student as subordinate” patterns of interaction. So, it will likely take time and some trial and error to identify the most effective ways to empower youth researchers and to uncover the right strategies to promote hierarchy flattening.

Youth researchers can also be lose interest when they do not see concrete progress or tangible outcomes related to their efforts. This can be the difference between participatory studies seeking ameliorative change—creating change within a system and transformative change—changing the system itself. The latter takes more time so it becomes important to celebrate early and small “wins” with youth researchers along the way.

Missed a post in the YPAR series? Check out all the tips and resources:

  1. The Benefits of Engaging in Participatory Approaches to Research
  2. Why Young Investigators Are Important
  3. Youth Voices in YPAR (includes youth)
  4. Strategies for the YPAR Collaboration Process (includes downloadable resources)
  5. How Can Youth Voice Amplify Research? Listening & Leadership Are Key
  6. 4 Universal Facilitation Tips for YPAR Collaboration
  7. Asset & Power Mapping as Tools for Youth-Led Research (includes downloadable resources)
  8. Why YPAR Matters: Youth Are “Looking at the World Differently” (includes youth)

If you have any comments or questions about this post, please email Youth-Nex@virginia.edu. Please visit the Youth-Nex Homepage for up to date information about the work happening at the center.

Author Bio: Dr. Shereen El Mallah is interested in the intersection of applied science and social justice. As a scholar-activist, her work draws heavily on rapid cycle evaluation, participatory approaches, design-based research, and the framework of QuantCrit to address three notable gaps: 1) The gap between what works in research and what works in practice, 2) The gap between valuing what we can measure and measuring what we value, 3) The racial/ethnic and socioeconomic gaps in developmental and educational outcomes that are rooted in longstanding structural and systemic inequities. El Mallah regularly engages in research-practice partnerships intent on interrupting inequitable practices, policies, and research, as well as explores communication and dissemination strategies that facilitate the use of evidence. She is committed to working with and for underrepresented, marginalized, or systematically minoritized groups to leverage both quantitative and qualitative data in challenging dominant narratives.

The Benefits of Engaging in Participatory Approaches to Research

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This Q&A is the 1st publication is a YPAR series, which aims to explain participatory research, youth-led measurement and evaluation approaches, and strategies for youth-adult collaborations in YPAR. This Q&A was originally posted on the EHD website.

Source: EHD

Shereen El Mallah, an assistant research professor with the UVA School of Education and Human Development’s Youth-Nex and CASTL research centers, argues it’s time to rethink how academics engage with the people affected by their research.

In a recent publication, El Mallah wrote about an approach called youth participatory research, the importance of engaging historically marginalized populations, and tips on how facilitate the adult-youth collaborative process. 

El Mallah is interested in the intersection of applied science and social justice as both a scholar and activist, and regularly engages in research-practice partnerships intent on interrupting inequitable practices, policies, and research. We sat down with El Mallah to learn more about participatory research.

Q: What is participatory research?

A. Participatory research is an approach to research, rather than a single research method, that aims to co-create knowledge and solutions with individuals or communities directly affected most by the research issue. It draws on their “insider expertise” that can improve the rigor, relevance and reach of developmental science. 

Those who were previously identified as “subjects” of the research are involved as partners in the process of inquiry. Together, researchers and their collaborators develop or shape the research questions, design the study and/or execute implementation. 

Q: How does participatory research differ from traditional research approaches?

A. Participatory research often involves going beyond fact gathering and report writing to using local knowledge to guide and energize collective change in programs, organizations or communities. Participatory research is typically achieved through iterative cycles of inquiry and action, rather than a sequence of linear steps. It is also grounded in principles of equity, so it is oriented toward reducing hierarchical power dynamics between the researcher and researched. All of this moves us away from the longstanding assumption that only the researcher holds expert knowledge, which is embedded in more traditional research approaches.

There is growing consensus that existing measurement approaches in academic research have been found to reinforce stigma and sustain power imbalances. More specifically, many measures are White normative and adult centric meaning they are largely constructed through a narrow White adult lens, with the perspectives and real-life experiences of diverse and under-researched youth populations overlooked or undervalued. Moving towards culturally sensitive measures requires challenging generational and cultural notions of power and control—and participatory approaches are rooted in self-determination: The capacity of individuals and groups to chart their own courses. 

Q: What are the benefits of participatory research?

A. Participatory research adds value for both academic and non-academic partners which can be seen at each phase of the research process—from identification of what to study, to enhancing the quality and validity of data collected, to ensuring more accurate interpretation and wider dissemination of results. 

For example, when determining the purpose and scope of the research, there is consistent evidence demonstrating that “insider knowledge” helps researchers acknowledge and consider cultural assumptions and norms, the community’s history and context, and the reality of structural inequities. For non-academic partners, active participation in the early stages of the research process initiates ownership, empowerment and capacity-building.

As the research is being implemented, there are contextual advantages on both sides. Non-academic partners can help researchers develop more appropriate study designs and methods for the population and setting under study. This includes working together to determine which measurement tools should be used to gather information, how information should be shared in the community, and whose information needs to be prioritized. Take for instance a community that relies heavily on narrative and storytelling. Non-academic partners may recommend qualitative data collection rather than surveys. In return, academic partners offer specialized research knowledge, skills and experience that can help non-academic partners address concerns and engage in problem-solving they determine are important for their community.

Read more from the original Q&A.

Missed a post in the YPAR series? Check out all the tips and resources:

  1. The Benefits of Engaging in Participatory Approaches to Research
  2. Why Young Investigators Are Important
  3. Youth Voices in YPAR (includes youth)
  4. Strategies for the YPAR Collaboration Process (includes downloadable resources)
  5. How Can Youth Voice Amplify Research? Listening & Leadership Are Key
  6. 4 Universal Facilitation Tips for YPAR Collaboration
  7. Asset & Power Mapping as Tools for Youth-Led Research (includes downloadable resources)
  8. Why YPAR Matters: Youth Are “Looking at the World Differently” (includes youth)

If you have any comments or questions about this post, please email Youth-Nex@virginia.edu. Please visit the Youth-Nex Homepage for up to date information about the work happening at the center.

Author Bio: Dr. Shereen El Mallah is interested in the intersection of applied science and social justice. As a scholar-activist, her work draws heavily on rapid cycle evaluation, participatory approaches, design-based research, and the framework of QuantCrit to address three notable gaps: 1) The gap between what works in research and what works in practice, 2) The gap between valuing what we can measure and measuring what we value, 3) The racial/ethnic and socioeconomic gaps in developmental and educational outcomes that are rooted in longstanding structural and systemic inequities. El Mallah regularly engages in research-practice partnerships intent on interrupting inequitable practices, policies, and research, as well as explores communication and dissemination strategies that facilitate the use of evidence. She is committed to working with and for underrepresented, marginalized, or systematically minoritized groups to leverage both quantitative and qualitative data in challenging dominant narratives.

On Being Brief: Skills and Supports for Translating Research to Practice via Brief Reports

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By: Summer S. Braun, Daniel A. Camacho, Chelsea A.K. Duran, Lora J. Henderson, and Elise T. Pas*

This blog was originally posted on Inside IES Research: Notes from NCER & NCSER.

Have you ever found yourself at a gathering fumbling to find the words to describe your academic work to family and friends? Do you find it difficult to communicate your scholarship to, and build partnerships with, non-researcher audiences? Are you an early career or seasoned researcher interested in disseminating research to practitioners, policymakers, or community members but struggling to find the best way to do so? Or are you a senior researcher mentoring a trainee through this process?

If your answer to any of these questions is “YES!”, then read on! Writing research briefs is an instrumental part of professional development but, for many researchers, not a formal aspect of training. Drawing on our experience writing research briefs, here are some tips for the challenging, but rewarding, process of translating your research into a brief.

Source: Inside IES Research: Notes from NCER & NCSER blog

Why Write a Brief?

Research briefs deliver the essence of research findings in a relatable manner to a non-researcher audience. Briefs can

  • Broaden your research’s impact by disseminating findings to non-researcher audiences, including communities historically marginalized in research
  • Strengthen university-community partnerships and relationships by transparently communicating with partners
  • Facilitate future partnerships and employment through increased visibility

What Exactly IS a Research Brief?

A research brief is a concise, non-technical summary of the key takeaways from a research study. Briefs communicate research insights to the public, thereby translating research and evidence-based practices into real-world settings.  

The focus of a brief varies depending on the intended audience. Provide explicit recommendations for practice if you want to reach a practitioner audience. Explore policy and infrastructure needs when writing for a policymaker audience.

Plan to share briefs in diverse settings. Share briefs with research partners (participating districts, schools, teachers), professional networks (at conference presentations), and broader audiences (on personal websites).

Lead researchers on our research team are part of a statewide partnership to support the dissemination of the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports framework. This partnership involves researchers and representatives from the Maryland Department of Education, a large behavioral health organization, and all school districts within the state. Researchers regularly write and share briefs with the statewide group, taking into account evolving needs and interests. Check out some of the briefs here.

Briefs Should Be…

  • Brief. Condensing a full-length manuscript into a two-page document is challenging. But doing so helps distill the study’s real-world implications and identify steps for future work. Two pages is optimal as it can be easily shared as a one-pager when printed.
  • Accessible. Graduate-level coursework in statistics should not be required to understand a brief. The usual audience for briefs will not have the time or energy to absorb methodological details or nuanced theory. Write as if you were presenting to a family member or your favorite high school teacher.
  • Visually appealing. A visual representation of an idea will capture attention better than text and help with brevity. Your paper likely already has some type of visual (for example, a logic model) that you can tweak. If not, pull from your visual-making skills you have already honed when creating posters and conference presentations! This process may have you re-thinking how you visually present your research, even in peer-reviewed publications.
  • A team effort. Individuals bring diverse skills and strengths to the research team. The study’s lead author may be able to articulate results, but a co-author may have the vision to creatively illustrate these findings in a figure. Make use of each member’s skills by making brief-writing an iterative, team effort.
  • Tailored to your audience. If you are developing a brief for a specific audience, ensure that key takeaways and recommendations are relevant and actionable. In some cases, you may have a more technical audience to whom you may present the data more formally. In our own experience, district partners have sometimes asked for more numbers and statistics.

Building Expertise with Brief Writing

Training in doctoral programs, which often encourages lengthy, detail-oriented writing, runs counter to the skills inherent in writing research briefs. While certain programs offer training for writing for non-academic audiences, we advocate for a greater focus on this skill during graduate training. All of the post-doctoral authors of this blog got their first exposure to writing research briefs on this research team. Inspired by our own on-the-job training, we provide the following recommendations for mentors:  

  • Frame writing the brief as an opportunity. Briefs may feel tangential to the graduate student research mission and challenging to existing skillsets. Thus, the process should be framed as an opportunity to develop an integral set of skills to advance professional development. This will help with motivation as well as execution.
  • Provide a template for the brief that can be easily tweaked and tailored, so that graduate students have a model for the finished product, minimizing formatting issues. Publisher and Word have visually appealing templates for flyers that can be easily populated and organizations that publish briefs may provide templates and layouts. 
  • Know your audience and their interest in the work. The audience should be well-defined (for practitioners, policy makers, or other researchers) and their perspective and interests well-understood. Although knowledge of the audience could come from prior work experience, direct communication with the audience is desirable to gain a firm grasp on their lived experience. If direct interaction is not feasible, mentors should “think aloud” to mentees about which details, words, and images would be most effective and appealing for this audience.  
  • Early scaffolding should be followed by continued support. After being a co-author on a brief, a graduate student can transition to writing their own brief. They may still need support to complete this task autonomously, with continued feedback from mentors and co-authors.
  • Provide graduate students with targeted experiences and formal training opportunities to facilitate proficiency and efficacy in brief-writing. This might include:
    • University-based or paid workshops for students and early career faculty focused on writing for non-academic audiences
    • Opportunities to interface directly with practitioners

Concluding Thoughts

Writing research briefs is a key translational activity for educational researchers, but for many, requires skills not cultivated in formal training. Our research team has embarked on the journey of developing and sharing research briefs regularly over the past few years. This is an evolving and rewarding process for all of us. We hope this post has provided some helpful information as you continue your journey to be brief!

*Note: Authors are listed alphabetically and contributed equally to the preparation of this post.

If you have any comments or questions about this post, please email Youth-Nex@virginia.edu. Please visit the Youth-Nex Homepage for up to date information about the work happening at the center.

Author Bios:

Summer S. Braun is a postdoctoral research associate at Youth-Nex at the University of Virginia’s School of Education and Human Development. She will be joining the Psychology Department at the University of Alabama as an Assistant Professor.

Daniel A. Camacho is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and a postdoctoral research associate at Youth-Nex at the University of Virginia’s School of Education and Human Development.

Chelsea A.K. Duran is a postdoctoral research associate at Youth-Nex at the University of Virginia’s School of Education and Human Development. She will be starting a position with the University of Minnesota in the summer of 2021.

Lora J. Henderson is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and postdoctoral research associate at Youth-Nex at the University of Virginia’s School of Education and Human Development. She will soon be starting as an assistant professor in the Department of Graduate Psychology at James Madison University.

Elise T. Pas is an Associate Scientist (research faculty) at the Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Young Adolescents’ Reactions to the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville

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Highlights:

  • Recent 2021 opinions from the Virginia Supreme Court have allowed the City of Charlottesville to consider acting on Confederate monument removal.
  • These statues have been a topic of petitions and rallies since 2016, including the deadly Unite the Right Rally in August of 2017.
  • New research sheds light on how adolescents were making sense of the rally and events that unfolded within their community in 2017.
Source: Journal of Research on Adolescence and the UVA School of Education & Human Development

In the spring of 2016, Zyahna Bryant, a 15-year old high school student at the time, wrote a petition to City Council calling for the removal of the Confederate statue of Robert E. Lee and the renaming of Market Street Park (then still named Lee Park) in downtown Charlottesville. Although the park has changed name twice (first to Emancipation Park, and then to its current name, Market Street Park), the statue remains in place despite calls for and multiple attempts at its removal.

In addition to being home to the statue, Market Street Park was the main site of the 2017 Unite the Right rally where members of white supremacist and affiliated groups gathered to protest the statue’s removal. At the time, this was one of the largest and most violent U.S. gatherings in decades.

In April 2021, the Supreme Court of Virginia issued an opinion to reverse previous circuit court rulings that had prevented the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue. As the City of Charlottesville starts a process to act on the monument removal, Youth-Nex is revisiting new research findings about adolescents’ perceptions of the Unite the Right rally that occurred in their own town, during the summer of their middle school years.

Dr. Joanna Williams, a Youth-Nex faculty affiliate, was interviewed by Kalee De France and the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA) to explain this unique and important research of how young adolescents were making sense of the events that unfolded within their community.

Question: What, in your opinion, is the main takeaway of the article?

Williams: I’ll start by saying there’s like a lot of context to this paper. All of the authors were living in Charlottesville in 2017 when the Unite the Right rally happened. We were about to start year two of a mixed-methods project that was focused on investigating diversity and social relationships in early adolescence. The Unite the Right rally happened in August of 2017, about two weeks before the school year started and, because of the focus of our project, we decided to ask students about their understanding of what had happened.

One of the key takeaways is that we should expect heterogeneity in how youth process events like this. There was a lot of heterogeneity in how kids interpreted and were responding to the Rally. One group of students said things along the lines of “Yeah, I know what happened, but it’s not really on my radar.” A second group knew a lot of the details of what happened but didn’t feel personally impacted – they sounded like news reporters in their accounts.

Another group of students had spent a lot of time processing and talking about what happened. And for some of them, their processing led to disillusionment, like “I can’t believe that stuff like this still happens” or “I thought we were beyond racism”.

There was a fourth group who were feeling, either at the time or a few months later, a sense of fear and vigilance. They said things along the lines of “We know why the KKK was here, and I’m Black. And I know that they were here because of people like me”. These students shared feelings of anger, fear, or just general concern. And, finally, there was a smaller subset of students who were sort of dismissive—they felt like people were overreacting to the situation. They said things like “I’m embarrassed to live in Charlottesville because we’re getting so much attention because of things like this”

The second type of heterogeneity that we saw was in relation to who belonged to these groups. On one hand, the group of students who expressed fear and vigilance were all students of color and most identified as Black. On the other hand, there were also many Black and other students of color who did not express any personal stress or concern, but there were White students in this group as well. White students made up the bulk of students who sounded like reporters or who expressed disillusionment or sympathy. The small group of dismissive students all identified as White.

It’s important to make sense of this heterogeneity in the context of what we know about young adolescents: they’re making meaning of important and abstract concepts, like racism and white supremacy while also trying to make sense of their own identities.

For more from this Q&A including the experiences of Dr. Williams’ team when asking these tough questions and what she is looking forward to seeing in upcoming research, please see the SRA blog. For more on these research findings, please see the Journal for Research on Adolescence article entitled “From Apathy to Vigilance: Young Adolescents’ Reactions to the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville.”

If you have any comments or questions about this post, please email Youth-Nex@virginia.edu. Please visit the Youth-Nex Homepage for up to date information about the work happening at the center.

Positive Mentor Relationships Predict Better Outcomes for Girls

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By Angela Henneberger, YN researcher (PhD, Applied Developmental Science, ’12)

Group of YWLP girls

Related posts are available under Research and Community.

Nancy Deutsch has been Director of Research for the Young Women Leaders Program (YWLP) a combined group and one-on-one mentoring program for middle school girls, since 2004. She is interested in the contextual study of adolescents’ lives and identities.

In a recent paper on YWLP (Deutsch, Wiggins, Henneberger, & Lawrence), to be published in The Journal of Early Adolescence, she uses a mixed methods approach to examine group processes that contribute to mentees’ satisfaction with their one-and-one mentoring relationships and their mentoring groups. Interestingly, there were no differences between groups on girls’ reports of how satisfied they were with their experiences in their mentoring groups. Continue reading →

Critical Considerations in a Capability Focused Approach to Intervention Design and Evaluation – YN Panel Video

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Nancy Deutsch

Related posts available under YN Working Conference April 2012

View the video for this discussion looking at methods, broadly and integratively, through a Positive Youth Development lens.

Panelists used four guiding questions:
1. How do we bring in developmental theory as we design evaluations of programs? Specifically, how do we relate Positive Youth Development processes and constructs to expected outcomes. How do we resolve the tension between evaluating competencies— promotion, and measuring problem behavior—prevention? Continue reading →