281: Youth Voice: Prioritizing Mutuality & Lived Experience through Youth-Engaged Participatory Action & Mixed Methods Research

When evaluating youth programs, prioritizing youth voice is crucial to uplift the local expertise youth have over the evaluators’ own contexts and experiences. Youth and near-peers play various roles in our project, including programmatic roles such as peer educators for implementation and youth leadership council members, and in evaluation of the program, such as the undergraduate research assistants and youth evaluation advisors. The IU Southeast Applied Research & Education Center (AREC) employs undergraduate research assistants that comprise the majority of the evaluation team. One undergraduate serves as primary ethnographer for the program evaluation, conducting observations as a near-peer participant-observer. The youth evaluation advisor role hires teens from the evaluated program to inform and participate in program evaluation. Empowering youth and near-peers through various leadership and information-sharing positions ensures that the program evaluation and implementation values, honors, and utilizes youth contributions in their various roles.