This article describes the pedagogical and facilitation approach of a yearlong youth empowerment program that engaged a group of adolescents who were racially and socioeconomically diverse in participatory action research. Nine adolescents from inner-city neighborhoods and suburban communities across the metropolitan Detroit, Michigan, region completed a Photovoice project. As part of the project, the youth documented racial segregation to inform community-based advocacy efforts. Pedagogical principles from intergroup dialogues were used to help facilitate participants’ understanding of differences across race and socioeconomic status. The article outlines the four-stage curricular design used to organize group activities. Those stages are (1) group formation, (2) exploration of differences and commonalities, (3) discussion of controversial issues, and (4) action planning. This article illustrates how facilitation of a diverse group in participatory action research may require a dialogic approach that addresses cross-cultural differences and builds positive intergroup collaboration skills.
Youth ReACT for Social Change: A Method for Youth Participatory Action Research
2010, American Journal of Community Psychology
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Am J Community Psychol (2010) 46:67–83
DOI 10.1007/s10464-010-9316-y
ORIGINAL PAPER
Youth ReACT for Social Change: A Method for Youth
Participatory Action Research
Pennie G. Foster-Fishman • Kristen M. Law
Lauren F. Lichty • Christina Aoun
•
Published online: 21 July 2010
Society for Community Research and Action 2010
Abstract Although participatory action research has
become an increasingly popular method with youth,
involving them in problem identification, analysis, intervention, and/or feedback, few PAR projects tend to involve
youth in all of these phases—particularly the data analysis
phase. Yet involvement in the data analysis phase of a
research effort can help to promote critical awareness of
the targeted issues, potentially increasing the effectiveness
of subsequent PAR stages. In addition, although many
YPAR projects aim to promote the critical consciousness
of their youth participants, some projects struggle to promote this awareness, often because the methods used are
not well matched to the developmental needs of their
participants. In this paper we present the ReACT Method, a
PAR approach specifically designed to promote local
knowledge production and critical consciousness by
engaging youth in the problem identification, data analysis,
and feedback stages of research. Given the lack of attention
in the literature to the methods used for engaging youth in
these processes, we provide detailed descriptions of the
methods we developed to engage youth in problem identification and qualitative data analysis.
Keywords Photovoice Participatory action research
Youth engagement Qualitative data analysis
Community building
Youth participatory action research (YPAR) has become
an increasingly popular tool for jumpstarting youth
P. G. Foster-Fishman (&) K. M. Law L. F. Lichty C. Aoun
Michigan State University, 125 D Psychology Building,
East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
e-mail: fosterfi@msu.edu
engagement, giving voice to youth’s concerns, and
launching programs and activities that meet the needs of
local youth within a community. YPAR projects vary
considerably in their design, particularly in the extent to
which they involve youth in the continuum of research
activities. For example, YPAR projects have typically
involved youth in identifying critical needs (e.g., Strack
et al. 2004), designing interventions that meet their concerns (e.g., Gosin et al. 2003; Wilson et al. 2007), or
providing feedback to promote dialogue and action within
a community (e.g., Figueroa et al. 2000; Wang and Pies
2004). However, it has been less common for YPAR projects to engage youth in all stages of this research continuum, particularly in data analysis processes (See Sabo 2003
for exceptions to this statement).
Attention to which research stages are included in a
YPAR project is critical, given that different components
of a research project provide significantly different experiences and outcomes for participants. According to Gaventa and Cornwall (2001), YPAR projects can provide
participants with opportunities to: (a) expand their knowledge and contribute to local knowledge production processes; (b) develop their critical thinking and experience
consciousness raising; and (c) inspire and/or pursue action.
In many ways, these participatory processes emerge during
different stages of the research continuum. For example,
the problem identification and feedback stages are the most
likely to promote knowledge development because these
research processes involve youth in opportunities to learn
about issues within their community and to share these
concerns with other community stakeholders. Meanwhile
critical consciousness raising may be most likely to emerge
during problem identification and data analysis stages,
when participants are given opportunities to critically
reflect upon the conditions of their lives and broader
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contexts (Fear et al. 2006; Foster-Fishman et al. 2005).
Overall, this suggests that researchers and practitioners
designing YPAR projects should pay particular attention to
the processes and outcomes they hope to foster and design
their projects accordingly. This paper describes a YPAR
project that the authors designed to engage youth in
problem identification, data analysis, and feedback.
Lessons learned in a recent YPAR effort called the YES!
Project (Wilson et al. 2006, 2007) highlight the importance
of YPAR design, particularly how the selection of research
phases to include and how one engages youth in these
efforts can ultimately bound the success of a YPAR project. In this project, middle school students were involved
in a YPAR effort that was designed to trigger collective
youth action-oriented projects targeting problems in
youth’s school environments. Photovoice was selected as
the YPAR method because it incorporates a creative
medium (photography) with the goal of social change and
critical dialogue (Wilson et al. 2007).
Overall, YES! Project leaders felt that the action element of this project was less effective than desired, primarily because youth’s analyses of the targeted issues were
often incomplete. The project leaders blamed this outcome,
in part, on the challenges youth faced when critically
analyzing their photographs through the Photovoice freewrite process. In the freewrite process, youth were asked to
describe each of their photos by writing answers to five
questions (called the SHOWed questioning method; see
Wang 2003 for a description of this method and questions).
Because many youth did not have prior experience with
this type of critical thinking task, and some found the
writing task overwhelming, the Photovoice process did not
yield the critical thinking and awareness that it was
designed to accomplish. Thus, youth did not expand their
understanding of the issues they were targeting, and in turn
did not have the insights needed to create collective action
projects designed to resolve the targeted problems (Wilson
et al. 2007). Instead, youth tended to create projects that
targeted immediate solutions instead of the root causes of
the issues they cared about. This constrained understanding
also limited the youth’s ability to expand other stakeholders’ (e.g., principals, other students) understanding of the
local problems, and in turn restricted the youth’s impact on
local knowledge production.
The story of the YES! Project has several important
lessons. First, it highlights the importance of designing
YPAR projects in ways that fit targeted goals. As the YES!
Project designers discovered, when YPAR methods fail to
generate critical understandings within participating youth,
the impact on local knowledge is reduced and action efforts
are less effective. Second, this project highlights the
importance of engaging youth in developmentally appropriate processes designed to foster their critical thinking. It
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Am J Community Psychol (2010) 46:67–83
is our position that youth are capable of critical thinking;
unfortunately the methods used in the YES! Project—
particularly the freewrite process—were not well positioned to develop or capture this ability within youth.
When we were asked by a community partner to engage
youth in a PAR effort, we drew upon these lessons and
aimed to design a YPAR project that effectively promoted
local knowledge development and critical consciousness by
engaging youth in problem identification, data analysis, and
feedback processes. We emphasized these research phases
in our YPAR effort because they met the needs of our
partnering community and the objectives we were assigned.
First, the community we partnered with was primarily
interested in hearing ideas from youth about how to best
promote youth engagement within the community. Thus,
our PAR method needed to provide youth with opportunities to identify, openly discuss, and share their needs and
concerns. The problem identification and feedback phases
within a PAR project are best suited to meet these requests.
Second, our partnering community was in the midst of a
broad scale community initiative that aimed to reduce
structural inequities around educational and economic
outcomes. A core component of this initiative was to promote local residents’ awareness of the structural inequities
that existed within their community. To support this goal,
we wanted to provide youth participants with opportunities
to develop their critical consciousness about their lives and
broader community conditions. Because critical consciousness emerges through reflection and dialogue (Freire
1973) and when one has the opportunity to discover patterns
and asymmetries in daily life and the community (Watts
et al. 2003), our YPAR project needed to promote youth’s
reflective and inductive skills. Problem identification and
data analysis processes are best suited to meet these needs.
This paper provides an in-depth description of an
innovative YPAR project that engaged 19 middle schoolaged youth in problem identification, data analysis, and
feedback. Because few examples exist in the YPAR literature that include the full involvement of youth in data
analysis, it is our hope that the methods detailed below will
provide future researchers with the tools and guidance
needed to engage youth in this critical research phase.
Project Overview
This YPAR project was launched within a small Midwestern
city that was in the midst of a broad scale community
building initiative. Critical to this effort was the promotion of
adult and youth engagement in local decision-making and
change strategies. Historically, youth were notably absent
from most decision-making and action efforts within the
community. When decision-making structures were created,
Am J Community Psychol (2010) 46:67–83
they typically excluded youth from the poorest of neighborhoods. Moreover, local youth development organizations
were mostly disengaged from other community organizations and the community change effort. Thus, although youth
engagement was an explicit value of this initiative, neither
the existing community infrastructure nor the processes
established through the community building effort had yet
been able to engage youth in the ways desired. To address
these concerns, we were asked by local organizational
leaders and funders to design a strategy that would simultaneously heighten youth’s awareness of their value within
the community and of the issues facing their community as
well as promote local organizations’ understanding of how to
best promote youth engagement. For the past 12 years we
had been working in this community, most recently as the
evaluators of the community change initiative.
With those goals in mind, we designed a new PAR
method that we call Youth ReACT (Research Actualizing
Critical Thought). This participatory action research
approach includes three phases: (1) problem identification
and initial feedback using Photovoice; (2) data analysis of
youth’s narratives; and (3) feedback and community dialogue. Photovoice is a participatory research method that
puts cameras in the hands of individuals often excluded from
decision-making processes in order to capture their voices
and visions of their lives and their community (Wang et al.
1996). To date, Photovoice has been used with a variety of
marginalized groups including homeless adults (Hodgetts
et al. 2007; Wang et al. 2000), Bosnian refugee youth
(Berman et al. 2001), persons with disabilities (Bowers
1999; Jurkowski 2008), immigrant workers (Gallo 2002),
impoverished people living with HIV/Aids (Rhodes et al.
2008) and youth and adults living in concentrated poverty
(e.g., Foster-Fishman et al. 2005; Nowell et al. 2006).
Although Photovoice is a powerful PAR tool, it can be used
in ways that bound the extent to which participants engage in
data analytic processes, thus reducing the opportunities for
critical consciousness raising. Therefore, we followed the
Photovoice phase of our project with a summer-long data
analysis process that was designed to identify key messages
youth wanted to include in a report on their Photovoice project. This report, a component of the feedback phase, was
published in fall 2007 and was intended to jumpstart a community dialogue about youth engagement and other youth
concerns. We describe each phase of this project below.
Phase 1: Problem Identification via Photovoice
In the spring of 2007, 30 middle school students were invited
to participate in the Photovoice Project. All of these students
were participating in a college preparation and scholarship
program and were identified by local school counselors and
69
scholarship program staff as having untapped leadership
potential. Twenty prospective participants and families
attended an orientation session. All chose to participate in
the first phase of the project, though one youth eventually
dropped from the project due to personal circumstances.
Participating youth represented four middle schools and
included two sixth graders and 17 seventh graders, ranging
in age from 12 to 13 (mean age = 12.37). Sixty-eight
percent of participants were female; 47% were African
American, 32% were Caucasian, 10.5% were American
Indian, 5% were Hispanic, 5% selected ‘‘other,’’ and one
participant did not report race/ethnicity.
Preparing Youth for Photovoice
Youth engaged in several training exercises to ensure they
had the skills needed to fully participate in the Photovoice
activities: taking photographs, using photographs to answer
questions, and engaging in dialogue with peers. Youth
received training from professional photographers on how
to use a camera, frame a photo, and take pictures safely and
ethically. They also engaged in a Photovoice simulation
exercise where they practiced all of the activities involved
in a Photovoice session.
Framing the Project
The purpose of the Photovoice project was to learn from
youth about how young people can become involved in their
neighborhoods, schools, and community and how the community can support their future goals. We used the following
framing questions to focus the youth’s photographs: (a)
‘‘What are your dreams for your future?,’’ (b) ‘‘What are your
educational and career goals?,’’ (c) ‘‘How are you and your
friends involved?,’’ (d) ‘‘What could you and your friends do
to help make your neighborhood, school, and city a better
place to live?,’’ and (e) ‘‘What are some of the ways that local
organizations and adults can help you make this happen?.’’
Youth took photographs in response to the first two framing
questions during weeks one and two; the remaining questions were used during weeks three and four. Below we
provide examples of the photos and stories that emerged.
Small Group Structure
In weekly 2-hour facilitated group sessions, youth shared
their photographs, and as a group, reflected upon and discussed the photos’ meanings. Groups were mixed-gender
and included three to eight youth from the same school.
Groups were organized around school membership because
the four targeted schools represented vastly different
neighborhood and economic contexts. We felt that students
from different schools may have unique perspectives on their
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Am J Community Psychol (2010) 46:67–83
Photovoice projects have used a variety of techniques to
elicit photographers’ meanings about their photos. We
selected strategies that supported our dual goals of giving
voice to youth photographers and fostering critical reflection
through an evolving group dialogue. The first strategy
involved a modified ‘‘freewrite process.’’ We wanted youth
to reflect on their photographs prior to group discussion
yet also wanted to minimize the writing expectations. Students were given the option to write brief answers to three
reflective questions (e.g., ‘‘I wanted to share this photo
because…’’ ‘‘What is important for people to understand
about this photo?’’) on three photos they selected to share.
The second and perhaps more important strategy involved
a facilitated group dialogue. Some Photovoice projects view
group conversation about another’s photo as potentially
‘‘compromising’’ the voice of the photographer. On the
contrary, we believe, and have demonstrated in a previous
Photovoice project (Foster-Fishman et al. 2005; Nowell et al.
2006), that it is possible to design a group process that preserves the voice of the individual photographer while also
promoting larger group reflection and critical dialogue. Such
dialogue is essential if one aims to promote a deeper analysis
of targeted issues and a critical consciousness (e.g., Fear et al.
2006). Thus, we structured our group discussion processes to
first elicit the photographer’s original thinking and then
followed these presentations with a group dialogue.
For example, in one session, a young woman showed
her photo of a Drug Free School sign and talked about the
drug problem in her school and community (See Fig. 1 for
Voice of Photographer:
I took a picture of the drug-free school zone sign because I think it’s
important that drugs stay out of school. I’m talking about illegal
drugs. I know a lot of kids at my school do illegal drugs and it’s sad
because they shouldn’t. I don’t think anybody should because it kills
brain cells and once you kill brain cells, you can’t get ‘em back. I
have a friend she smokes weed and I try to encourage her not to, but
she thinks that since her cousins do it that it’s OK for her to do it. She
knows if her Mom found out she would be in so much trouble and I
don’t see why she does it if she knows she would get in trouble.
What’s done in the darkness comes to light
There’s a crackhead over in the hood and she just walks around and
stuff and she’s like, crazy and stuff people [should see] her living
in places that aren’t that good. That’s what you get for doing that
kinda stuff like getting addicted to those kinda drugs. In middle
school maybe you get a lot of popularity [doing drugs but] a lot of
time you get the real world and stuff. You’re not gonna have anything
Last year me and my Mommy were walking around [and] this lady
just came up to my [Mom and asked] ‘‘Gotta smoke?’’ That just
scared me half to death the way she just came up to her. And I was
like Mommy is she a crack-head and she said yeah and that just scared
me half to death
Voices of Other Small Group Participants:
A lot of kids in our town do it [drugs] and kids do it ‘cause they
think it’s cool. They hear [a rapper] and like him and [say] ‘I’m
gonna to do what he do’’. But in the real world they [rappers in
videos] really live in big houses and they don’t even dress like the
way they dress in the videos and they act way different and have
proper language
When your parents do it, it’s just a bad role model for you. Then your
friends get you involved in that kind of stuff. Sometimes people feel
left out and that’s the only [way in]. Some people think it will calm
you down, but it really doesn’t
[We could show other kids the truth by] showing them somebody who
is doing it [using drugs] and they could see how they react and act
stupid. To show them what they do to their bodies, take that young
person to somebody that’s been doin’ it their whole life. Show them
[young person] what they don’t have and what they could have if they
didn’t do [drugs]. They couldn’t have anything because you waste
your money trying to get drugs
We could encourage people not to [do drugs]. Like talk them out of it
or tell their parents so that their parents could talk to ‘em about it or
have them confess and stop doing it. It could save their lives and help
them
community and that a homogenous small group experience
may foster deeper examination of students’ shared context.
Photo Reflection Sessions
Fig. 1 Drug free zone photo and discussion excerpt from photo exhibit
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Am J Community Psychol (2010) 46:67–83
the photo and narrative included in the exhibit). When the
group dialogue began, the facilitator raised questions that
would help the youth think about the causes of drug
problems within their community. Here is a brief excerpt
from that conversation:
Initial Photographer Description:
I took a picture of the drug-free school zone sign at
front of my school because I think it’s important that
drugs stay out of school… I know a lot of kids at my
school do illegal drugs and it’s sad because they
shouldn’t. I don’t think anybody should because it
kills your brain cells….
During the Group Dialogue:
Facilitator 1: I’m wondering- what do you guys think
makes people want to do drugs?
Group Member 1: Influences
Facilitator 1: Influences, what kinds of influences?
Group Member 1: They hang around their cousins a lot.
Group Member 2: Maybe their parents are bad role
models and they just got it from their parents.
Photographer: People don’t always get it from their
parents…
Group Member 2: Just when your parents do it, it’s just
a bad role model for you and then your friends get you
involved in that kind of stuff. And then sometimes people
just feel left out.
This excerpt is representative of the dialogic process that
occurred in most Photovoice sessions. Through exploration
with peers or directed probes asked by the facilitator, the
group process allowed for deeper reflection of the topics
raised by the photographer and promoted a critical analysis
of current community conditions (Foster-Fishman et al.
2005). Overall, the facilitated group dialogue appeared to
promote this deeper understanding by: (1) eliciting an
understanding of root causes of targeted issues; and/or (2)
expanding youth’s analyses of targeted issues beyond
individual-level explanations to include contextual conditions. We illustrate both of these processes below.
Discovering Causal Explanations
An important goal of most YPAR projects—including the
present study—is to engage youth in local knowledge
development. Towards that end, it is important that youth
share what they know and explore these understandings to
fully contribute to this process. Sackmann (1992) highlights that knowledge within a community comes in multiple forms and that each knowledge type contributes
something unique to one’s understanding of community
conditions. For example, in the initial presentation of
their photos, youth typically emphasized two types of
71
knowledge. Some emphasized what Sackmann refers to as
‘‘dictionary knowledge’’ (Sackmann 1992)—knowledge
that describes the ‘‘what’’ of a community (e.g., what is
considered a problem, what is important to community
members, what actions are taken by residents). Others
emphasized directory knowledge—knowledge that
describes what should be done (e.g., It is important to go to
college.). Below are excerpts that illustrate this emphasis
on descriptive and directory knowledge:
Photographer 1 (Photo of two youth picking trash up off
of the floor):
Initial Reflection: This is a picture of two of my friends.
They are standing around and one of them decides to
pick up a tissue on the floor and I thought that was pretty
cool. Because they are just standing around talking to
each other and saw the tissue and one was looking at it
like ‘I’m not picking that up’ and the other one just
decides to pick it up. …This photo shows how kids do
actually help out in the community and in their schools.
Photographer 2: (Photo of a woman surrounded by
police officers in a park)
Initial Reflection: This is a picture of a drunk lady
passed out in the park. I think this is important for
people to understand. If you work hard and stuff like that
you won’t have to embarrass yourself in front of other
people. You just have to get a good job and stuff like
that. Obviously she was on some drugs or alcohol. You
shouldn’t put that into your body. You shouldn’t damage
your body. You should be healthy so you can get a job
and then you don’t have to do stuff like sell drugs to get
money.
Although these initial reflections provide important
contributions to the community’s understandings of youth
concerns, they do not shed light on why community problems exist, how they affect residents, or how a community
can transform itself. To gather those levels of understandings, it is necessary to reveal what Sackmann refers to
as axiomatic (i.e., Why is it like this) or recipe (i.e., How
can this be resolved) knowledge. To access those knowledge types in our Photovoice sessions, group facilitators
asked questions that were specifically designed to reveal
this deeper level of understanding, including: ‘‘Why is this
a problem?,’’ ‘‘Why is this important?,’’ and ‘‘How might
that help solve the problem?’’ This level of probing helped
youth move beyond a simple description of a problem or
current community condition and consider the underlying
meaning of an issue, its root causes and potential solutions.
This next excerpt well illustrates how the facilitator’s
questions helped youth discover some deeper explanations
for the presented problem. The conversation was initially
linked to the framing question targeted that week (‘‘How
are you and your friends involved?’’) with the youth
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photographer highlighting the importance of public transportation and her desire for her community to embrace
alternative transportation. But as the group discussion
unfolded, youth revealed why alternative transportation
(e.g., buses, bikes, and walking) was not a viable solution
in their community: violence and crime in their neighborhoods kept residents off the streets.
Photo 2: (Photo of the Chicago City Skyline, See Fig. 2)
Photographer’s Reflection: I took a picture of this
because this city helps the community by walking, taking
bikes, boats and stuff. They have waterways to get
through here…Some people find other ways to get
around the city by doing stuff that can help you physically like walking and taking bikes and stuff. This helps
the community because it doesn’t put a lot of pollution in
the air. But here, in our city…there’s not many people
that ride their bikes and there’s not a lot of buses or taxis
here because it’s not a big city.
Photo 2: Group Reflection
Facilitator: What about, bikes? Do most people have bikes?
Fig. 2 Cityscape photograph and discussion excerpt from photo
exhibit. The Voice of the Photographer: I took this picture because
this city kind of helps the community with walking and taking bikes
and stuff. There’re a lot of cars in this city and it’s crowded a lot. But
some people find other ways to get around by doing stuff that can help
them physically like walking and taking bikes and stuff that doesn’t
put a lot of pollution in the air. In the summer there’s a lot of people
who ride bikes to parks and around [Battle Creek] to their friends’
houses. But otherwise there’re not many people who ride their bikes.
My mom [said] in the summer time that we’re gonna start to ride our
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Group Member 1: I had my bike last year but somebody
stole it and my mom’s bike. So everything’s just being
stolen now and a lot of people I know who had bikes… I
don’t see them riding around now.
Facilitator: Do you think a lot of people steal bikes here?
Photographer: I think a lot of people in the hood like to
steal bikes a lot because if they don’t have enough
money to get a bike they just see one and they just take it.
Or other times they just take it so they can just ride
around on it and when they get tired of it they just lay it
down so anybody can take it.
And then later in the conversation…
Faciliator: If you have to walk at night, is it pretty safe?
All Students: No [very adamant]
Group Member 1: Not even where I live.
Photographer: Not even in the daytime. I live in the hood
though.
Facilitator: What are the things that make it unsafe to
walk around or ride your bike at night?
Group Member 1: Like the other day, they were over
there shooting by my house and by my grandma’s house
and it’s just unsafe because it doesn’t matter where you
are. It’s like shootings are everywhere now. A bullet
bikes more, like family bike rides around the city. Instead of driving
our cars a couple of blocks, we can start riding our bikes more
because of the gas prices and stuff. Voices of Other Small Group
Participants: [It’s not safe to walk at night] Not where I live. The
other day there was a shooting by my house. It’s just unsafe because it
doesn’t matter where you are. There’re shootings everywhere now.
They can just be shooting at one person and the bullet can just go
somewhere else and shoot another person and they don’t even know
who they’re killing
Am J Community Psychol (2010) 46:67–83
doesn’t have a name, like they can just be shooting at
this one person and the bullet can just go somewhere
else or shoot another person and they don’t even know
who they’re killing. Like Thursday, two people who got
shot weren’t the people meant to be shot. The bullets
were shot at somebody else, but it shot two other people.
As this excerpt illustrates, the group dialogue process helped
youth uncover the broader social concerns—and some of the
root causes—that impacted the use of alternative transportation sources within their community. If the Photovoice
process had only included the photographer’s reflection and
used only that data to inform action steps, potentially ineffective actions may have emerged that simply targeted
engaging more youth in the use of alternative transportation.
As this example highlights, the group dialogue significantly
expanded the youth’s perspective about the issue and even
shifted the youth’s attention to more elemental concerns.
Discovering Contextual Explanations
In their initial presentations or discussions, youth also often
attributed problems within their community to individuallevel factors, such as a student’s ‘‘laziness’’ or ‘‘a lack of
concern.’’ Through the facilitated dialogue, youth were
often asked to identify other reasons why these problems
might exist within their community. Sometimes, this process helped youth to recognize larger, contextual factors
that might influence someone’s behavior, to identify their
own privileged position within the community, or even to
recognize some structural inequities. For example, in
response to the framing question ‘‘What are your career or
educational goals?’’ many youth talked about the importance of working hard in school, receiving a good education, and attending college. Many noted that these
behaviors were necessary if one wanted to ‘‘have a good
life’’ and avoid ‘‘living on the street.’’ In these conversations students often referred to other youth who did not
finish high school as ‘‘lazy.’’ However, when facilitators
asked them to explore other reasons why some individuals
do not graduate or attend college, they began to identify
family or other situational conditions that could influence a
youth’s success at school. The following excerpt is illustrative of many of the conversations that emerged:
Photographer’s Reflection: This is a picture of a college
sweatshirt. I wanted to share this picture because I
really want to go to college. It is important for people to
understand how important college is and that not
everyone goes to college. Some just don’t graduate from
high school. They just don’t think about it. College is
really important to me though. I don’t think I would
make it in the world without going to college.
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Facilitator: You mentioned that some people don’t finish
high school. Why do you think some people don’t finish
high school?
Photographer: They are just lazy. Or they goof off and
don’t get a chance to finish.
And then later in the conversation…
Facilitator: Do you think everybody here in Battle Creek
has an opportunity to go to college?
Group Member 1: At our school they keep telling you that
everybody has a chance to go to college because you can
get financial aid. But I still don’t think some kids believe it.
Facilitator: Why do you think some kids don’t believe it?
Photographer: Well, a ton of parents don’t go to college
or finish high school. And that means that they think they
can’t do it either. Like you can’t choose the family you
are born into. Some kid’s parents might not have enough
money to afford going to college.
As this conversation continued to unfold, the students
began to talk about other options for underprivileged students, including financial aid and affirmative action
scholarship programs. The latter idea triggered many
comments, eventually leading the students to an examination of racism in America. For example, after a White
student talked about how scholarships should ‘‘only be
awarded on academic merit,’’ a Latino student shared his
experience as a minority and how he ‘‘often has little say’’
because of this status. Another White student began to talk
about what she had learned in school about the history of
racism in America, sharing how White’s had ‘‘once controlled everything’’ in America. Students then talked about
segregation and equal opportunity, and they agreed on the
need for everyone to have opportunities and be treated
fairly when applying to college.
Overall, this excerpt well illustrates how the group dialogue process helped youth discover the multi-level influences on educational success in their community. From a
consideration of individual characteristics, to family support
and resources, to the social/political conditions in America,
the conversation helped youth move beyond their initial view
that education was simply an opportunity equally available
to all. This development towards a more critical understanding of community problems was mirrored in many
other Photovoice group conversations as youth explored the
systemic conditions related to a range of other concerns.
A Summary of the Visions and Voices of Youth
Across the content of the photos and group dialogues,
five overarching conceptual issues/concerns emerged that
were verified by the youth: (1) importance of education,
(2) examples of and strategies for promoting youth engagement, (3) youth’s concern about the environment, (4) the need
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for youth-based programs and activities, and (5) the need for
safe and drug-free neighborhoods. The first theme emerged in
response to the framing questions about youths’ dreams for
their future and educational/career goals. The next three
themes (2–4) emerged in response to the framing questions that
examined youth involvement within the community. The final
theme, which included the largest number of photos and stories, emerged in all 4 weeks of this project. Table 1 provides
example photo and narrative content for each thematic bin.
Given the framing questions, we expected references to
the importance of education and discussions of youth
engagement; however, the participants’ emphasis on the
need for safe and drug-free neighborhoods, concern for the
environment, and need for youth-based programs and
activities were unexpected. The emergence of these
unexpected themes speaks to the value of the open-ended
nature of Photovoice and the facilitated group processes we
employed. Using their cameras as communication tools,
the participants shifted the conversation from an emphasis
on education and youth engagement to a focus on their
urgent needs for a clean, safe community that offers them
opportunities to engage in healthy activities. The facilitated
dialogue then helped participants explore the root conditions of the issues that emerged.
The Community Photo Exhibit
Similar to other Photovoice projects, a photo exhibit was
used to promote knowledge sharing and enhance critical
consciousness among other community residents. To
Table 1 Summaries and examples of each thematic photovoice bin
Thematic bin
Example narrative content included in this bin
Example photos
Youth want safe and drug free
neighborhoods
Youth told stories about the crime, violence, and drug use in their
Drug free school sign
neighborhoods. They described their neighborhoods as dangerous places to Inebriated woman
live and to go to school. They described how the police do not help their
getting arrested in a
neighborhoods. They talked about how neighbors are less likely to take
park
action to stop neighborhood problems
Youth wanted adults and organizations to talk to them more openly about the
consequences of drugs and violence and to realize that young people watch
them and model their behavior
The youth felt that young people should take advantage of opportunities such
as getting involved in an after-school activity. However, they also felt that
more activities needed to be offered and that they needed to be offered in
safer places accessible to everyone
Education is important for future
goals
Youth emphasized that they need to get an education to achieve their goals
Youth are concerned about the
environment
Youth emphasized how they are concerned about the environment and what it Cars
means to their future or the earth
Youth picking up trash
Youth think that it is everyone’s responsibility to protect the environment.
City parks
They want the residents in their community to help protect the environment
(e.g., walking versus driving their cars). They want their community to
provide more opportunities to keep their city clean (provide service learning
courses)
Front of local college
Youth see other youth unable to get a good education because of the barriers College sweatshirt
they face. They talked about how family problems and peer pressure get in Professional office
the way of getting good grades
building
Youth want adults to be more supportive of youths’ educational goals
They were also concerned about the appearance of their hometown and how
the actions of some people can make their city look bad. For example, they
talked about the trash that people throw
More programs for youth are needed Youth do not think there is enough after-school or summer activities available Youth playing
to them. They described many of their friends as ‘‘bored’’ and think that, with basketball
more youth-based activities, there would be less crime in their city and fewer A piano
youth looking for ‘‘bad things to do’’
Youth wanted summer and after-school programs to be accessible to everyone
(e.g., transportation and cost concerns taken care of) and widely advertised
Youth want to be involved in making Youth said they get involved when they care about the issues. They get
their city a great place to live
involved when they know that they can make a difference
Youth volunteering at a
nursing home
To foster youth involvement, the youth said that adults and their friends should Youth sorting Girl scout
encourage them, and organizations should offer a variety of fun activities.
cookies
Incentives should also be offered
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ensure that the exhibit reflected the youth’s priorities, youth
nominated one photo for each participant to include in the
exhibit. Each photograph was accompanied by excerpts
from the photographer’s original description of the photo
and from the group dialogue (see Figs. 1, 2). To ensure that
these stories reflected the intentions of the photographer,
youth edited and approved the final text associated with
their photo.
The exhibit launched a weekend planning and networking retreat for local organizations and residents
involved with the broader community building initiative.
The exhibit opened with a brief presentation by the youth.
Youth then stood by their exhibit pieces, which allowed
attendees to ask them about their photos and meanings
behind them.
Reports from the youth participants, our community
partners, and local organizational representatives provided
strong evidence that the Photovoice project had a significant
impact on youth and the broader community. For example,
youth noted in their post-project debriefings that they
became more critically aware of their community; organizations and adult residents commented that the exhibit
highlighted the assets of the youth in the community.
However, given the initial intent of this project—to give
voice to youth’s concerns and promote critical awareness of
community issues—we felt that additional opportunities for
engaging the youth and the broader community around the
data collected in Phase 1 were needed. We designed two
additional phases towards that end: a data analysis component and a feedback process that would include the creation of a book designed around the Photovoice project.
Phase 2: Fostering Critical Consciousness through Data
Analysis
We posit that engaging youth in meaning extraction
through data analysis is an essential, though often forgotten, step in YPAR. The way in which data is interpreted is
significantly influenced by the perspective of the parties
conducting the analyses. In other words, even data collected or reported by youth can be misrepresented if youth,
themselves, are not involved in defining the meaning
behind their data. In addition, examination of first and
second order thematic meanings can trigger critical consciousness because this analytic process requires individuals to critically examine assumptions and patterns
underlying their data (Patton 2001). It is this stance of
criticality that engenders awareness of current conditions
and an understanding of the root causes of local conditions and problems (Fear et al. 2006). When PAR projects
exclude youth from this analysis step, they inadvertently limit participants’ ability to expand their critical
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consciousness. Finally, through an examination of the
layers of meaning within their data and the root causes of
targeted concerns, youth are better prepared to design
actions that address the underlying causes of these
problems.
Attention to the layers of meaning within a data set is
particularly important when using a Photovoice process.
Photovoice data have multiple levels of meaning that can
be explored, including: (1) the visual meaning of the
photos themselves; (2) the meaning behind the photographer’s story about the photo; and (3) the multiple meanings
within this story and photo that are explored in the group
discussion. The story and photo captured in Fig. 2 well
exemplify these multiple layers of meaning.
Unfortunately, within the context of a photo exhibit, it
can be difficult, if not impossible to capture all of the
critical reflections and meanings that emerged from the
photos. For example, for the photo displayed in Fig. 1,
additional themes emerged in the group dialogue that were
not displayed—given space constraints—in the exhibit. For
example, one-seventh grade female discussed how the
current drug problems also affected neighborhood safety:
My aunt lives right across the street from some
apartments. One of the girls that lives there is a
crackhead. This girl owed this guy some money for
some drugs. Well that guy thought my aunt was the
one who owed him the money and he chased her with
his truck right up to my aunt’s porch!. Because that
girl was selling some drugs and owing somebody
some money she almost got my aunt killed.
In addition, given the amount of data that emerged in
Phase 1, not all photos and text could be displayed in the
exhibit. Over 50 photos with group narrative emerged from
the Photovoice process, but only 19 of these photos could
be included in the exhibit. Thus, we felt it was imperative
to have the youth and the broader community become more
engaged with the full material. For these reasons, we
designed a process that would engage youth in identifying
and analyzing the multiple meanings in the Photovoice
data.
The ReACT Data Analysis Method
In order to engage youth in data analysis and foster critical
thinking, we developed an approach we call the ReACT
Data Analysis Method. We developed our own method
because few descriptive examples of how to effectively
engage youth in qualitative data analyses processes existed
in the literature.
Our method had to balance three competing desires and
constraints. First, we needed to engage youth in formal
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qualitative data analysis, including first and second order
thematic analysis, in order to preserve scientific rigor and
the voice of youth during the analysis phase. Second, our
method needed to appeal to middle school students during
the summer. Thus, we had to balance the fact that data
analysis would likely require the youth to think and act in
new ways with the knowledge that they wanted to be
involved in a fun summer camp experience. Drawing from
lessons learned in the YES! Project (Wilson et al. 2007),
we knew we needed to design a data analysis process that
included interactive and novel activities to avoid a homework-like feel. Third, we were faced with an externally
imposed time-constraint; our data analysis method needed
to be accomplished in five-three hour sessions.
To address these constraints, the ReACT method of data
analysis uses a sequence of ‘‘messaging games’’ that expose
youth to three critical phases of a qualitative data analysis
(Miles and Huberman 1994): (1) data reduction, (2) data
organization to promote conclusion drawing and action, and
(3) conclusion drawing and verification. These games were
designed to promote critical thinking by engaging youth in
open-coding, content analysis, first- and second-order thematic clustering, thematic coding, and dialectical discussions. Because most of these processes were likely to be
new experiences for some of the students, we created
messaging games that mirrored other popular children’s
games (e.g., a scavenger hunt, a memory game, Simon
Says) to create a familiar context for this learning to occur.
The ReACT Messaging Games
Four data analysis messaging games were created. The
game used in session one focused on training youth in
content analysis and thematic integration. During sessions
two and three, two different games had youth find first and
second order themes. In the final two sessions, youth
interpreted the meaning of their findings and identified
recommendations for the community. Each data analysis
session focused on a unique thematic bin or bins to: (1)
keep the data manageable, (2) promote synthesis and thematic integration; and (3) promote deep thinking about the
root causes of specific problems.
Session 1: An Introduction to Thematic Analysis: The
Candy Sorting Game
This game was adapted from Preskill and Russ-Eft (2005).
The purpose of this game was to introduce participants to
the process of sorting data and organizing themes into
higher-order categories. This was accomplished by asking
youth to work together in groups of three to four people to
sort various types of candy into piles (first-order analysis),
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to reorganize these piles into fewer groups (second-order
analysis), and provide names to these piles (theming). To
help youth see the similarities between this process and
qualitative data analysis, facilitators identified the connections between the youths’ actions and language to the
upcoming analysis task (e.g., ‘‘Type of candy’ and ‘brand
of candy’ are things candy pieces might have in common
with each other. In this project, you will sort sentences into
piles, just like you did the candy. Another word for these
piles is categories.’’)
Sessions 2 and 3: Finding Similarities across Data
Sources: The Message Scavenger Hunt and Memory
Matching Games
Overview
The primary purpose of these games was for the youth to
engage in active qualitative data analysis by identifying
important messages in the Photovoice data and organizing
these messages into thematic groups. Through individual
reflection and group dialogue, these games helped participants think critically about the data, sort and organize
narrative into first- and second-order themes, and generate
and apply labels to thematic clusters.
Step 1: Identifying Key Messages
The first step focused on data reduction. Participants were
divided into groups of three to four people and each group
worked with a different set of Photovoice data (photos and
narrative)—though all data was linked to the same conceptual bin. Each participant in a group read through the
same set of data and identified messages that were (a)
salient to him/her and (b) important for the community to
hear. Facilitators recommended that they ‘‘Think of
themselves as newspaper editors and imagine that this copy
has just been submitted to them to include in their newspaper. Their job is to identify messages that best represent
these stories and to give that message a title.’’ For example
a participant read the quote below from the Chicago skyline photo (Fig. 2) and identified one important message to
share with the community: ‘‘Violence is destroying our
neighborhoods.’’
Every time there’s a shooting’ around my house, I get
scared. I didn’t even know what to do. I just took me
and my sisters, and we just went under the bed and
stuff. Like I didn’t know what to do, it just came to
me naturally. [Police] should just get put in our
position because my sister, she was crying and stuff.
We didn’t know what happened or anything. We
didn’t know if our parents were okay.
Am J Community Psychol (2010) 46:67–83
To help them visualize the connection between the data
and the messages they identified, youth were instructed to
indicate, with a highlighter, the section in the data linked to
each message. This process also helped them to easily
identify what narrative was left for analysis when searching
for remaining messages. To ensure that the messages were
grounded in the data, facilitators asked questions such as,
‘‘Where did you find that message?’’ and ‘‘Is there a sentence that made you think of this message?’’ To prepare for
the process of sharing their messages with their peers,
participants wrote each message on a large sticky note.
Step 2: Sorting Data
Step two focused on data organization. Once the participants had identified key messages, they shared them with
their group members and worked together to cluster their
titles into similar categories. Facilitators used a variety of
processes to get youth to share and sort their themes. For
example, in one approach a youth was invited to select one
title from his/her pile and place that title on the table for all
to see. The facilitator then asked whether or not anyone had
a title that was similar to the one shared. As youth placed
their titles on the table, other group members were asked to
identify if the titles were similar. If disagreements
emerged, youth were asked to reconfigure the clusters. To
further promote critical dialogue, facilitators challenged
the youth by asking questions such as, ‘‘Why do you think
that message is important?’’ and ‘‘What does it mean to
you?’’ Once all messages were shared, the facilitator asked
the youth to read the text they did not yet highlight to see if
there were any remaining messages to consider. Additional
messages were sorted into the existing clusters accordingly.
Finally, youth labeled the groups, and these labels (i.e.,
themes) were then used by the youth in the next part of the
game.
For example, the message identified in the section above
was clustered by the participants with four other messages:
‘‘Keep yourself and [our city]1 safe;’’ ‘‘In a crime, people’s
actions hurt and kill people;’’ ‘‘Shooting and killings never
solve anything;’’ and ‘‘Everyone should be able to feel safe
in their own home, but because of people who do bad
things, you can’t and that’s not fair.’’ The youth decided
that the title of this cluster should be ‘‘Keep yourself and
[our city] safe.’’
Step 3: Thematic Matching
Step three emphasized data organization and integration.
The goal of this step was for all participants to work
1
To protect the anonymity of our community partners we have
removed the name of the city.
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collaboratively to cluster themes. For the Message Scavenger Hunt, each participant started with several cluster
titles that their group developed in step two (e.g., ‘‘Keep
yourself and [our city] Safe’’). The participants were given
one minute to talk to members of the other groups to (a)
share their messages and (b) find themes that matched.
When participants found thematic matches, they were
instructed to go to the ‘‘message wall’’ and present their
match to a facilitator. If youth convinced the facilitator of
the validity of this match, the participants placed their
matches on the message wall. If the facilitator disagreed, the
youth needed to find another theme in the room to match or
‘‘make the case’’ for starting a new thematic cluster. This
game continued until all messages were placed on the wall.
The team that sorted all of their matches first won a small
prize (e.g., candy, pens, or pencils).
In week three, a different clustering game—called
Memory Match—was used. Facilitators asked the youth to
select one message from each thematic group (at the end of
step 2), number the back of the message, and place it face
down on the message wall. The youth were divided into two
teams that took turns selecting messages (i.e., by calling out
the messages’ respective numbers) and deciding collectively
whether the messages shared a higher order meaning. As
before, participants had to convince the facilitators that
messages matched. Facilitators encouraged critical thinking
by asking questions such as, ‘‘Why do these match?’’ and
‘‘What would a title be for these messages?’’
For example, the message titled ‘‘Keep yourself and [our
city] safe’’ was grouped on the message wall with the
following messages from other groups: ‘‘Shooting and
killings never solve anything;’’ ‘‘It’s stupid to be involved
in gang violence because you just end up caught;’’ ‘‘There
shouldn’t be just one part of town that is good, the whole
city should be nice and have no violence.’’
Step 4: Identifying Themes
Step four completed the data organization/integration
process. Youth worked together to label the clusters on the
wall with second-order themes. Participants were asked to
label each thematic group with a title that best defined the
linked messages. For example, the youth decided that the
title for the thematic group discussed above should be
‘‘Keep yourself and [our city] safe.’’
Sessions 4 and 5: Transforming Data into Action:
Simon the City Council Member Says Game
Overview
The purpose of this game was to facilitate the conclusion
drawing phase of data analysis by having youth reflect on
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the meaning of the data in order to generate recommendations that could be implemented within their community.
Step 1: Identifying Recommendations
We instructed participants to identify important messages
in the narratives and integrate them into recommendations
about what other youth, adults, and local organizations
could do to address the identified issues. They did this by
completing recommendation stems provided by the facilitators. For narratives that pertained to needed programs and
activities in their community, stems included: (1) Youth
could, (2) Youth should, (3) Adults could, (4) Adults
should, (5) Local organizations could, and (6) Local
organizations should. For data regarding youth engagement, participants finished the following stems: (1) Youth
are involved when, (2) What helps youth get involved is,
and (3) Youth get involved because. They were instructed
to write their recommendations on large sticky note pads
for future group sharing.
In order to assist the participants with summarizing and
condensing large portions of data into recommendations,
we developed a game that consisted of a mock City
Council meeting in which the participants were invited to
attend and provide the City Council with their recommendations about what can be done to improve their city
and promote youth engagement. Facilitators told the participants that, ‘‘Simon the City Council Member attended
the Photovoice exhibit and thought it was so impressive
and inspiring that the City Council would like to help
young people become more involved in the community and
in things that matter to youth!’’ The facilitator then placed
the recommendation stems in the center of the table and
instructed the participants to use them to help think about
their recommendations.
Step 2: Sorting Data
Participants shared their written recommendations with
their group members and worked together to organize them
into thematically similar groups. This step followed the
same procedure as the above games. Each group of recommendations was divided equally among the youth participants to share at the mock City Council Meeting. Some
example recommendations that the youth identified from
the Youth Engagement bin were: ‘‘Youth get involved when
they know they are going to make a difference in someone’s
life’’ and ‘‘Adults should encourage youth to be involved.’’
Step 3: Thematic Matching
The purpose of the mock council meeting was for the
groups to share and condense their recommendations. The
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main project facilitator served as Council Chair (Councilmember Simon) and ran the meeting as a City Council
session. Participants shared their relevant recommendations to the Council, posted them on the message wall, and
worked to cluster them into meaningful groups.
Step 4: Identifying Themes
After all recommendations were clustered on the message
wall, participants worked together to label the new thematic groups with a title (in the form of a recommendation)
that best defined the group. This task allowed for the
integration of data into specific recommendations about
future action and intervention.
Promoting Knowledge Development and Critical
Awareness through Data Analysis
Overall, it appears that involvement in data analysis provided youth with a structured process for discovering the
often obscured patterns and inequities in their community
(Watts et al. 2003). As a result, participating youth
developed a heightened awareness of their surroundings
and significantly altered their understanding of some basic
community problems. By exploring content from multiple
school group discussions, youth became conscious of
issues and experiences that were both shared and unique
across the four schools. Posting the clustered themes on a
wall also provided tangible evidence of the criticality of
some key concerns. For example, it was impossible to
ignore the prevalence of drug problems and concerns for
personal safety when the themes related to these issues
practically covered one wall.
In their analysis efforts, youth discovered several
important patterns and inequities that were concealed in the
group discussions. For example, during the Photovoice
group dialogues, several individual youth talked about the
inability of local organizations to meet their after school
needs. However, it was not until youth identified this theme
across multiple narratives and school groups and then
discussed the meaning of this problem within their community that a disturbing pattern—and inequity—was
revealed to the youth: Neighborhoods varied significantly
in their access to quality youth development opportunities
and this variability was linked, in part, to economic status.
Youth developed an explicit recommendation in response
to this insight: Programs should be made available in all
neighborhood school areas. Youth were also disturbed by
the fact that some of their peers could not afford the options
that were available in their neighborhoods, which led to a
second recommendation: More scholarships need to be
made available for low income youth to participate in after
school activities.
Am J Community Psychol (2010) 46:67–83
Youth discovered several other important patterns
through the analysis process: youth from all of the schools
desired educational success; police response varied significantly across neighborhoods; youth were more involved
in the community than adults gave them credit for. Overall,
the discovery of these patterns informed the development
of the guide book (see below) and also became prioritized
in larger community conversations about how local organizations could become more responsive to youth needs.
79
invited to serve on an expert panel where they discussed
the issue of youth engagement and local youth concerns.
The conversations that emerged during the events served as
a catalyst for future organization-to-youth dialogues. The
youth participants will meet with various local organizational leaders to engage in more purposeful planning
around youth engagement. A traveling Photovoice Exhibit
will accompany youth as they meet with local organizations. This exhibit will also be housed in schools, youth
organizations, and community spaces this winter.
Phase 3: Feedback—A Guide to Youth Voices
Discussion
Phase two culminated with the creation of a booklet titled
‘‘A Guide to Youth Voices.’’ This guide included the recommendations generated by youth about how youth, adults
and local organizations can work to make their city a better
place to live and help youth achieve their dreams. Youth
wrote, designed, and edited this book. In addition to
exploring the full content included in the Photovoice phase
of this effort, this guide also aimed to further promote
awareness of youth’s concerns and jumpstart dialogue
between local organizations, residents, and the youth. The
booklet was organized around the five thematic Photovoice
bins. Here is an excerpt from the section discussing Safe
and Drug Free Neighborhoods2:
We care about our city and want it to be safe and drug
free for everyone.
Here’s what we said:
Today there is a lot of violence and crime that people do
and they just don’t care. I want people to understand
that if people keep doing these crimes, our city as a
whole will look bad, it just won’t look right.
We recommend that other youth…
Make the right choices and take advantage of existing
programs and activities.
Youth can do an after school activity like sports or do
something to help out their school.
And we want organizations to…
Offer us activities where it is safe and drug free.
There is an organization that I don’t go to because of
security issues. Over by where it is there are a lot of
shootings.
The dissemination and use of the Guide as a tool for
promoting dialogue and change is in progress. Thus far, the
Guide has been broadly distributed to service delivery
organizations across the community, and the issue of youth
engagement has become the focal point of two recent
community events. In both events, youth participants were
2
To protect the anonymity of the youth and their city, we do not
include the report in our references.
In this paper we described one participatory action research
project that was designed to give voice to youth concerns
and promote critical awareness among youth and the larger
community. With a focus on creating opportunities for the
youth to think critically about their lives and their communities—and sharing these insights with others—we
engaged youth in a Photovoice project, qualitative data
analysis, and the writing and production of a feedback
report. From a substantive perspective, this project highlights the importance of creating opportunities for youth to
voice their concerns. This project emerged from the desire
of a local funder to identify ways to promote youth
engagement within the community. Importantly, however,
the youth significantly shifted the focus of this dialogue,
placing greater priority on the creation of neighborhoods
and a community that was safe and provided positive
programs for youth. As a result of this focus, local organizations are working to identify ways to promote more
youth programs and neighborhood safety.
From a methodological vantage point, this project
highlights the importance of designing YPAR methods that
can effectively tap into the wisdom of participating youth
and promote their critical consciousness. Unlike some
other YPAR projects, we were able to generate an in-depth
analysis of current community conditions and substantive
recommendations for action from the youth. We attribute
this success to the methods we used. First, we engaged
youth in critical group dialogue during the Photovoice
phase of this project. Although other Photovoice
researchers have had other participants ask the photographer questions to elicit the story behind a photo, it is not so
common to engage the full group of participants in a dialogue about each photo. Yet, as this and other projects
(Foster-Fishman et al. 2005; Nowell et al. 2006) have
revealed, group dialogue is an effective venue for promoting awareness and raising critical consciousness
because it provides participants with opportunities to cogenerate understanding and analyze their collective experiences. Second, we engaged the youth in data-analysis,
123
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Am J Community Psychol (2010) 46:67–83
which allowed them to reflect even more about their
experiences by identifying patterns and inconsistencies
across their stories.
Although our project did not include an intervention or
action phase, as found in some other YPAR efforts, preliminary evidence does suggest that participating youth
became more empowered through their participation, and
the community is now more intentionally considering how
to further engage youth. We posit that this success is due,
in part, to our intentional design of a YPAR project that
promoted knowledge generation and critical consciousness
through problem identification, data analysis, and feedback. Participatory power can only emerge when YPAR
participants have the ability to enhance local knowledge
and expand both their own and the community’s critical
consciousness (Gaventa and Cornwall 2001). As other
YPAR projects have demonstrated, when youth are given
opportunities to explore their voice and communicate their
concerns, they can develop the participatory competencies
often linked to empowering, participatory outcomes
(Checkoway and Richards-Shuster 2003; Strack et al.
2004). For example, throughout our project, including a
wrap-up youth focus group, we heard numerous stories
about how participating in this project helped the youth to
‘‘better understand the issues in their community,’’ ‘‘think
more critically,’’ and ‘‘identify more ways to become
involved.’’
Importantly, youth noted that each of the three distinct
phases of this effort made an important and unique impact.
Youth described how the Photovoice process provided
opportunities for them to see things they had never noticed
before and to understand the perspectives of other youth in
the community; the data analysis stage provided them with
opportunities to ‘‘think in ways they had never thought
before;’’ the Guide gave them an opportunity to have a
‘‘united voice’’ and collective impact on the community.
As some of the youth noted:
After taking pictures of people doing drugs and stuff
like that I thought about how drugs can really affect
you. I thought drugs were bad before the project, but I
didn’t know it was that bad until I saw the pictures.
For me to actually express some of my opinions
through pictures is really great. It’s almost like I have
all these opinions stuck in this little pop bottle that
keeps getting bigger. With this book it’s almost like
your opening up the bottle and you’re taking some of
my opinions out. If everyone heard and considered
everyone else’s opinions, no matter what age, I think
the world would be better.
If I was by myself I doubt adults and organizations
would value my opinions. A group of people or this
123
booklet that we’re doing makes a bit of a difference.
People will actually listen.
I have never had to think like this before. I love it.
In other words, our efforts appear to have promoted
youth’s critical awareness and substantive understanding of
their community, their place in it and their collective
power—all important processes and outcomes valued by
participatory action researchers (Minkler and Wallerstein
2003).
There is also growing evidence to suggest that the project has triggered a heightened awareness about the
importance of youth engagement within the community.
For example, the local nonprofit intermediary support
organization is now working to integrate youth into organizational learning communities throughout the city. Youth
engagement has become a central goal of several change
projects in the community, and youth from low income
neighborhoods were recently added to an advisory group
created by a local funder. Given the short duration of the
project to date, this amount of change in a community that
has rarely engaged youth from poor neighborhoods is
notable.
Challenges and Limitations
There are many challenges when engaging in any PAR
project. Below are some important considerations and
strategies to keep in mind when doing this type of work.
Challenges and Strategies to the ReACT Method
The largest challenge we faced was how to manage the
large quantity of data that emerged from the Photovoice
project and the ensuing data analysis processes. We had to
consider two issues in regards to this data quantity. First,
we were concerned that youth may become disengaged if
the data analysis process were too prolonged. Second, we
faced an external deadline that significantly bounded how
much time we had available to process this data. We
adopted several strategies with the dual goal of creating a
process that was youth-driven while at the same time could
be completed within the given time frame and not overly
burden the youth. Overall, this required some initial filtering of the data by the adult research team, which reduced
the quantity of data that the youth needed to process.
Although we had member checks in place, it is possible
that youth may have generated different themes and recommendations had they seen different passages. Below are
the strategies we adopted given our constraints.
Am J Community Psychol (2010) 46:67–83
Data Reduction Processes
Before each data analysis session, we edited the verbatim
transcripts from the Photovoice phase of the project. Data
reduction was a necessary step. First, it was important to
reduce the amount of narrative in order to maintain participants’ interest and enthusiasm. A single group’s
Photovoice session transcript could include up to 250
paragraphs (and we had transcripts from 20 sessions).
Second, the youth became distracted by extraneous information and the vernacular in which they spoke. Therefore,
the first step in data reduction included eliminating all
paragraphs that did not directly pertain to the project (e.g.,
discussions about using the restrooms) and cleaning the
vernacular to make the narratives more comprehensible
(e.g., we removed ‘‘ums’’ ‘‘likes’’ and ‘‘aint’s’’). The second step included eliminating data redundancies. Using the
emergent themes identified by youth in a previous session,
graduate students coded the remaining text and eliminated
paragraphs that contained messages that were completely
redundant with the themes already identified by the youth.
On average, about 60–70% of the paragraphs were eliminated through this process allowing for a more manageable
amount of data for the youth to analyze in each session.
Given our concerns that we were violating some important assumptions behind YPAR with this reduction process,
namely ensuring that the voices of the youth and their
interpretations were being heard, we asked a youth expert
(i.e., a youth who participated in phase one but not in phase
two) to independently code twenty-percent of all removed
paragraphs from each case summary. We were primarily
interested in whether or not the youth would determine if
these paragraphs contained messages that were similar to the
themes identified in the paragraphs that were coded during
phase two. Overall, the vast majority of themes the youth
expert identified matched those developed by the youth in
phase two, suggesting that our reduction process did not
threaten the authenticity of the analysis process.
Time Constraints
Any PAR project is likely to face time constraints, and at
times, these constraints can impede the researcher’s ability
to maintain the PAR values of participant voice and
engagement. For example, in our project the Photovoice
exhibit date was predetermined to coincide with a weekend
retreat for local organizations. Although this opportunity
was fortuitous, this deadline constrained the amount of
time we could engage youth in critical reflections and the
extent to which we could engage youth in all decisions
surrounding the local exhibit. Because critical reflection
emerges over time (e.g., Fear et al. 2006), it is possible that
an extended process may have further promoted the overall
81
knowledge generation and critical consciousness of the
participants. In addition, YPAR projects vary in the extent
to which they engage youth in different research phases
and in the decision-making processes related to a project
(Checkoway 2003; Minkler and Wallerstein 2003). Certainly, a pure PAR process that is fully directed by youth
would be desirable for many reasons, and the extent to
which this project did not achieve this ideal potentially
limited its impact. Although this project did not provide the
latitude or the time for such involvement, youth were the
most fully engaged around those decisions that were most
directly connected to how their voice would be represented
to the community (e.g., determining what photos and stories to share; identifying themes and recommendations to
highlight in the feedback report).
Maintaining Youth Involvement throughout the Project
In addition to challenges due to the time frame of the
project, the timing of our project posed additional problems. During the data analysis phase, we faced competing
demands on youth’s time, including camps and family
vacations. Because of these commitments, we had inconsistent attendance across all sessions. Ultimately, this
meant that we did not have the same individuals consistently examining the data and integrating what had been
previously discussed with what was emerging during a
given session. To counter this lack of consistency, we
incorporated numerous member checks throughout the
process. For example, participants reviewed the themes and
recommendations developed during their absence.
Although these strategies helped to offset the costs associated with a shifting data analyst base, we recommend that
groups considering YPAR projects first assess the time
commitments of their prospective participants and use this
information to inform the timing of the project.
Managing Adolescent Group Dynamics
Wilson et al. (2007) described encountering challenges
managing group dynamics among middle school youth
during the YES Project, such as social immaturity and
youth jockeying for higher social status through ostracism
and putdowns. Similar forms of disrespect and flirtation
occurred in our mixed-gender groups. This required strong
facilitation skills, attention to the undertones of conversations, and patience.
Capacity of the Local Organizations and Community
Although YPAR projects may build youth capacity, they
do not necessarily build the community’s ability to work
123
82
with or respond to youth or an organization’s operational
capacity. Yet, YPAR projects often require communities
and local organizations to behave in new ways toward
youth, to implement unfamiliar activities, and/or to work
with others in new ways. It is critical to assess youthfocused organizations’ and the broader communities’
readiness to support a YPAR process. Other researchers
have found that YPAR projects are most likely to be
embraced and fully supported when youth-focused organizations already value evaluation, have internal capacity
to conduct evaluation themselves, have resources to support youth PAR participants, and have prior experience
responding to youth voices (Lau et al. 2003). We found that
local organizations were better prepared to support YPAR
when they embraced a positive youth development focus
and when they had adequate staff resources to provide the
logistic support that was needed (e.g., picking up students’
film). In some ways, this YPAR method could be used
within a service learning context to help foster organizational capacity. In addition to providing youth with
opportunities to foster their knowledge development and
critical awareness, this YPAR process could also engage
organizational leaders and staff to think critically about
their ability to support youth’s voice and continue to promote their participatory power.
Conclusions
Youth Participatory Action Research is an exemplary tool
for providing youth with opportunities to shape the dialogue within their communities. When the YPAR process
creates opportunities for youth to demonstrate their
capacities and concerns to the broader community and
think deeply about the meaning of the data they gather, the
critical consciousness of the youth and the broader community is enhanced. As Project ReACT demonstrated,
youth are both able and eager to think critically about their
community and the data generated in a PAR process.
Through the design and use of developmentally appropriate, interactive, and fun ‘‘messaging games,’’ youth were
successfully engaged in data analysis processes. Future
YPAR efforts should continue to explore ways to meaningfully engage youth in all phases of the research continuum, particularly in activities that promote meaning
extraction and critical analysis.
Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank all of the youth
who participated in this project and the following graduate students in
their assistance with the Photovoice component of this project:
Giannina Cabral, Erin Droege, Nidal Karim, Aimee Knight, Heather
Sprague, and Cynthia Vagnetti. This project was funded, in part, by
the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
123
Am J Community Psychol (2010) 46:67–83
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