Youth as Peer Researchers
We know there is a lack of opportunities for youth to make decisions related to school health promotion. We also know that youth have valuable insight to share about their lives.
At UpLift, we have worked hard to shift the systems in school settings so that children and youth have more decision-making opportunities. Research demonstrates that a key ingredient in a successful Health Promoting Schools approach is the meaningful engagement of students.
Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is an approach that creates opportunities for children and youth to be a part of the research process. Youth can be found developing research questions, collecting and analyzing data, and sharing the research findings.
We’ve used a YPAR approach in our work through two Peer Researcher projects.
Youth as Peer Researchers 2021
In the summer of 2021, ten students from grades 9-10 were trained by UpLift team members as peer researchers in a two-day in person workshop. Peer researchers were responsible for recruiting participants, collecting consent forms and conducting interviews with their peers on what healthy school environments look like to them, and examples of their involvement in school engagement. They interviewed 23 students across grades 7 to 10. Youth were offered honoraria for their time, transportation and accommodation in Halifax while they underwent the training.
Findings indicated that unique perspectives from youth on Health Promoting Schools and school engagement highlighting that safe and supportive environments are key to student health, physical design and space in the school matters, ensuring youth voice is legitimized is important for engagement and it takes a whole-school approach for impactful engagement. The findings from this project were published in Health Promotional International: https://academic.oup.com/heapro/article/37/3/daac081/6648071?login=true
Youth as Peer Researchers 2022
Eleven more peer researchers, grades 7 – 10, were trained in July 2022, building research skills, confidence and connection, and to enable youth to interview their peers about their views on school well-being, and student engagement. This project was based off the learnings from the first round, with the addition of intentionally recruiting from a range of rural areas in Nova Scotia that we were working in, and specifically prioritizing youth who identify as African Nova Scotian, Black, or Indigenous. The days were co-facilitated by an external facilitator and members of the UpLift team. This time around, peer researchers interviewed 21 peers (grades 7 – 10).
Learnings implemented in this session included building in more time to get student input into interview questions, broadening the language to encompass the term well-being as well as health, and having them involved in interpretation of the data. Youth engagement in the data analysis process included data interpretation workshops held in Spring 2023. The first of two sessions included updates on the project status, re-connecting the peer researchers with one another online, and building capacity to learn the online tools required. The second session presented preliminary data for collective reflection and discussion on the themes.
The findings from this iteration largely outlined students wants and desires from their school community as it relates to well-being and student engagement including their aspirations for a healthy school, strategies that effectively promote well-being, and a school community that listens to and actions students’ ideas. These findings are published in the Canadian Journal for Action Research: https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/cjar/2024-v24-n3-cjar09570/1113695ar/abstract/
Click here to view an infographic summarizing process and findings from this cohort.
2023 Publication on Process of Youth as Peer Researchers
This methodological publication in Health Promotion International outlines the process of involving youth in the research project, which is often a missed opportunity in academia. It also outlines the perspectives of the peer researcher’s experience and what they learned.
