Perception Institute and UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute are excited to present this open-source Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) study kit. We hope that this kit will be useful for youth-serving organizations to conduct their own YPAR studies with youth participants.
This kit was created by Rheanna Ganapathy, Fahima Islam, and Sidra Shabbir at Perception Institute.
- For the full list of downloadable resources, scroll down to the How to Use This YPAR Kit section.
- For more on YPAR broadly, please see our new report "Youth as Architects of Belonging."
| Jump to section: | What is YPAR | Best Practices | Ethical Considerations |
| Research Process Overview | Methodology | How to Use This Kit | Roadmap |
What is Youth Participatory Action Research?
Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is a collaborative research approach that positions young people as co-researchers and is grounded in the belief that those closest to the research question or issue hold critical knowledge and insights.
Why is YPAR important to this work?
- Builds trust and shared learning between young people and the educators and program staff who work with them
- Amplifies youth voices and invites others to learn from their perspectives
- Fosters leadership, agency, and critical thinking for youth researchers
- Empowers young people and models belonging by showing them that their ideas matter and can drive change
Best Practices for YPAR
- Ground in the co-design approach. Respect the perspectives and experiences of the youth researchers. Youth researchers should feel empowered to play an active role in both ideating and decision-making when designing the assessment tools.
- Trust and psychological safety are key. Take youth researchers’ ideas seriously and create space for questions, experimentation, and creative risk-taking.
- Encourage collaboration and reflection. Reinforce the importance of collaborating on ideas together and reflecting during and after each step of the process.
- Be flexible. Identify any core elements of the research that are critical to your learning objectives and allow youth researchers to make creative choices within those parameters.
Ethical Considerations
Research involving young people, particularly those under 18, requires careful attention to consent, privacy, safety, and voluntary participation. Consider the following ethical principles based on the Belmont Report:
- Respect: Acknowledge the autonomy of the individual participant. The participants have the full ability to decide to participate in the research and to withdraw at any point in time, without coercion or undue influence from others.
- Beneficence: Researchers must “do no harm” and ensure they are minimizing risks while maximizing benefits of the research. Risks include physical, psychological, legal, social, and economic harms.
- Justice: Treat individuals fairly and recruit researchers for the study equitably. Ensure the burdens and benefits of the work are shared equitably.
If you have any questions on ethical practices and protocols when working with youth participants and researchers, always check in with the person at your institution responsible for youth safety or program oversight. If the project is subject to formal research review, also follow the requirements of the relevant review body.
Informed Consent
Informed consent is not just about obtaining a signature on a form or a verbal “yes” when asked to participate. Informed consent is an ongoing process of education and decision-making. Ensure the participants are fully informed about all the risks and details of the research. They can decide to withdraw consent from the study at any time.
- Youth Researchers: Youth researchers who are 18 or older can consent to take part in the research process. For youth researchers under 18, obtain their assent and permission from a parent/guardian.
- Youth Participants: Before collecting data, you must obtain consent (for those 18+) or assent and parent permission (for those under 18) from the youth participants who will be engaging in the study (e.g., taking the survey, participating in a focus group).
Privacy & Confidentiality
It is important to maintain privacy and confidentiality when collecting personally identifiable information about participants, especially when conducting research that touches on personal or vulnerable topics, such as feelings of belonging.
- Privacy concerns a person. It pertains to control over the extent, timing, and circumstances of sharing oneself (physically, behaviorally, or intellectually) with others.
- Confidentiality concerns information or data about a person. It pertains to the treatment of information that an individual discloses in a relationship of trust.
Research Process Overview
| Project Tasks | Details |
|---|---|
| Develop Research Plan |
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| Design Assessment Tools |
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| Collect Data |
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| Conduct Analysis |
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| Present Findings |
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| Self-Recorded Research Process (Optional) |
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Methodology
Surveys
- Purpose: gather quantitative data that can be compared across groups and with a larger number of participants
- Staff role: guide youth researchers in survey question development, encourage creativity and brainstorming, program the voting form to finalize the survey (where researchers vote on their favorite questions), program the final survey
Focus Groups
- Purpose: gather qualitative data to dive deeper into personal insights and perspectives, stories, etc.
- Staff role: guide youth researchers in developing focus group and interview questions and help coordinate focus groups and interviews
How to Use This YPAR Kit
Please note the following regarding this YPAR study kit.
| The YPAR study kit includes the following components: | |
|---|---|
| Session Curriculum | The kit contains a series of slide decks that can be used for various training sessions to guide your study. Scripts are also included in the “speaker notes”. |
| Developing Hypotheses & Questions Worksheet | This worksheet guides youth researchers into developing hypotheses and writing survey and focus group questions. |
| Assessment Tool Development Survey | This form can be turned into a survey hosted on a platform like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey to create an opportunity for youth researchers to vote for their favorite questions to make it into the finalized survey and focus group script. |
| Focus Group Facilitator’s Guide | This is a template guide to help youth researchers prepare for facilitating focus groups. |
| Focus Group Facilitator Memo Form | This memo form can also be turned into a survey as a structured way for youth researchers to reflect on focus groups immediately after conducting them. |
| Youth Researcher Reflection Form | This reflection form can also be programmed on a survey platform as a way for youth researchers to reflect on their experiences and journeys throughout the study. |
Methodology: Most of the kit was designed for methodologies involving surveys and focus groups, but you can use the template and adjust it for any type of methodology, including interviews.
Research Question: This kit also focuses on exploring a research question about belonging. However, the kit can be adjusted to explore any research question of interest.
You may note the areas that you may need to update (due to logistics, methodology, and research question) highlighted in yellow throughout the templates.
Most importantly, have fun! Youth Participatory Action Research is not only about results and findings; it’s also about bringing young people into the research process in a way that helps them ask meaningful questions, explore their experiences, and see that their ideas can contribute to change.
Research Roadmap
- Start with developing your research plan. The first step is to identify the topic that the research will explore. The topic and research question may be chosen by your organization’s staff, or by the youth researchers themselves. During this stage, you may also:
- Clarify the goals of the research & how findings may be used.
- Determine who should participate and which research methods are appropriate.
- Establish project roles and key activities.
- Develop a timeline to stay on track (this project can be undertaken in 3-5 months).
- Obtain informed consent and/or assent and parent permission from your youth researchers.
- Hold Session #1: Research Overview & Multimedia Storytelling: This is the first session with the youth researchers, where you introduce them to the study. This includes an overview about research and data, as well as guidance on creating video diaries, if you would like to include that in your process.
- Youth researchers will then join Session #2: Conducting Ethical Research: In this session, you will walk researchers through the importance of considering ethics in research, including reviewing key ethical principles, confidentiality and privacy, and informed consent. This session is critical for youth researchers to take this project and their roles seriously.
- Conduct Session #3: Assessment Tool Development Brainstorming Part 1: This is a more interactive session, where youth researchers will discuss their own experiences with belonging and use their conversations to brainstorm hypotheses, themes, and survey and focus group questions.
- Distribute the Developing Hypotheses & Questions Worksheet to youth researchers, which is designed to help them craft hypotheses and survey and focus group questions on their own.
- Host Session #4: Assessment Tool Development Brainstorming Part 2: In this session, you will review the responses from the youth researchers’ completed worksheets and discuss as a group. We recommend using a whiteboard, sticky notes, or a virtual whiteboard to write down variables, hypotheses, and questions.
- Consolidate the developed survey and focus group questions into the Assessment Tool Development Survey so that youth researchers can vote for their favorite questions to make it into the finalized survey and focus group script.
- After getting the results from the survey, create the final survey and focus group script. For focus group scripts, identify which parts of the script / questions will be said by Facilitator A and which will be said by Facilitator B.
- Conduct Session #5: Focus Group Prep Part 1 (Mock Focus Group): This is the first session for youth researchers to prepare for facilitating focus groups. You will run through the focus group script with them, and then select two youth researchers to run a mock focus group with the rest of the group.
- Hold Session #6: Focus Group Prep Part 2: In this second prep session for focus group facilitation, run through any additional logistics for focus groups (consider in-person vs. virtual settings). Then, review general tips and guidelines for conducting focus groups, as well as preparing to navigate potential challenges.
- Update the Focus Group Facilitator’s Guide and share it with the youth researchers to prepare them for the focus groups. Ensure that the youth researchers are aware of who is Facilitator A and who is Facilitator B in their pair.
- Launch and distribute the survey, and conduct focus groups.
- After each focus group, the youth researchers should fill out the Focus Group Facilitator Memo Form to help them reflect on the focus group and capture themes that came up while it’s still fresh in their memory.
- Run Session #7: Data Analysis: This session walks youth researchers through one method to analyze survey data, how to conduct a thematic analysis of focus group data, and then synthesize and map the data to create overarching findings.
- Once analysis has been completed and overarching findings are captured, make sure you run through the results with the youth researchers.
- Conduct Session #8: Presenting Data: This session provides guidelines for youth researchers in presenting research, including how to talk about methodology, making findings digestible and relevant, and visualizing data.
- End the project by sharing the Youth Researcher Reflection Form, so youth researchers can reflect on their journey.
Acknowledgments: The illustrations in this piece are by Palak Garg for The Greats.
