Textbook Case Study Critical Reviews
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CaseStudy4.3.docxCase Study 4.3. Youth Participation in Community Research for Racial Justice Barry Checkoway and Katie Richards-Schuster
What are some strategies for involving young people in community research that simultaneously develops knowledge, contributes to their social development, and strengthens racial justice? How can young people gather information in ways that enable them to challenge discrimination and increase dialogue in metropolitan areas that are characterized by both segregation and diversity? What is a racially just approach to community-based research? These questions are significant for various reasons. While many metropolitan areas are increasing in their diversity, these areas remain highly segregated, with little interaction across racial and ethnic lines. These com-munities are being challenged to build capacity for solving problems, planning programs, and addressing issues arising as part of the process. Young people are ideally positioned to become engaged in this work. Most of them reside in segregated areas, attend segregated schools, and have expertise based on their own experiences. Some of them are aware of segregation and open to opportunities to communicate and collaborate with people who are different from themselves. Young people generally hold attitudes toward racial justice that are different from those of earlier generations and would take action against injustice if encouraged to do so. They are future leaders, to be sure, but they also are leaders today, and if some of them were to step forward and speak for themselves, it might prod their teachers and parents to do the same. This case study describes a program to involve young people in challenging segregation and creating change in metropolitan Detroit. The program features youth participation in community research as an instrumental element, and it is this that we emphasize here.
Youth Dialogues on Race and Ethnicity in Metropolitan Detroit Metropolitan Detroit is among the nation’s most segregated metropolitan area. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the city is 80% African American, while the suburbs are 85% White. For years, the city has been losing employment opportunities, residential development has been suburban, and disparities have been widening. Amid segregation, there also is diversity. While most suburbs are White European, the city is largely segregated in its African American population. However, some suburbs are undergoing changes as they experience increases in their population of African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latin American descent. Some communities boast of their racial and ethnic mosaic of students, their cultural roots in nations worldwide, and their numerous languages spoken at home as forerunners of emergent “micro melting pots” expected elsewhere. Young people in metropolitan Detroit are open to discussion of race and ethnicity, but they live in segregation, with few opportunities to communicate 171with people who are different from themselves. Studies show that young people often understand the limitations of segregation, appreciate the bene-fits of diversity, and want to interact with other young people across boundaries, again with few opportunities to do so (Checkoway, 2009).
Youth Dialogues on Race and Ethnicity in Metropolitan Detroit was established by the University of Michigan and the Skillman Foundation to increase dialogue and challenge discrimination in the metropolitan area. Since its launch, the program has involved young people in intergroup dia-logues, metropolitan tours, community action projects, residential retreats, and youth policy summits. Youth participation is central to all stages of the program. Young people are participants, program planners, policy leaders, community organizers, and also researchers and evaluators.
Youth Participation in Evaluation and Research
Youth participation in evaluation and research is a process of involving young people in knowledge development at the community level. In this approach, young people participate in defining the problem, gathering the information, and using the results. They serve as directors or partners in the work rather than as subjects in research in which adults take the lead. Youth participation in evaluation and research provides information for making better program decisions. It also strengthens the social development of the participants, enables them to exercise their political rights as citizens, and builds organizational and community capacity in ways that can contribute to community change. Evaluation is central to the Youth Dialogues on Race and Ethnicity in Metropolitan Detroit program and has a multilevel design that assumes that young people should assess the programs that affect them. On an annual basis, they and their adult allies form an evaluation team and employ quan-titative and qualitative methods to assess the program. They define the problems, gather information, and prepare reports with findings and recom-mendations for future practice.It should be emphasized that our approach to evaluation is community based rather than community oriented, intergenerational rather than adult led or youth led, and neither qualitative nor quantitative, but rather both qualitative and quantitative.As part of their qualitative work, young people document a bus tour, residential retreat, and other activities; interview participants about their experiences of growing up in segregation and their involvement in the dialogues; and conduct focus groups with youth and adult stakeholders. They use photovoice as a technique to take pictures of images of diversity and discrimination in schools and communities in which participants reside and to discuss how young people “see” race and ethnicity in their own communities (see Wang & Burris, 1997, for a description of photovoice).As part of their quantitative work, they help create a pre- and posttest questionnaire to assess attitudinal changes among participants using multiple scales, including Communications Scale, Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure, Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale, and Collective Self-Esteem Scale. They also create and administer a post-test questionnaire at the end of the program to rate their overall experience and to make recommendations for the program itself. A recent pre- and posttest questionnaire to 88 youth participants from 16 neighborhood groups, community agencies, and school districts resulted in a response rate of 92%. The findings showed that as a result of the program, young people increased their knowledge about their own racial and ethnic identity and that of others; increased their awareness and understanding of racism and racial privilege; and developed leadership skills and took actions to address issues of racism in their community.
Communications Outreach
Our evaluation team produces reports on an annual basis. Each report documents program activities and their various effects and features photo-graphs and stories from participants in their own words to amplify their voices. Annual reports are hard copy, but one took the additional form of a DVD conceived, photographed, and narrated by the youth themselves. The video has been presented in classrooms, workshops, and conferences.As an integral part of evaluation, we have collaborated with the Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit—a prominent youth theatre company whose members participated in the dialogues—in dissemination and outreach. Theatre members facilitated a special workshop with young people, gath-ered information from the participants, studied their journals, and prepared a script for public presentation. The outcome was Speak for Yourself, which has been performed in more than 100 school assemblies and community centers. Some of these performances have reached more than 1,000 young people. Following each performance is a “talk back” in which audience members shared thoughts about discrimination. Thus the evaluation has enabled young people to assess young people and for young people to per-form their stories to large audiences of young people across the metropolitan area.In addition, some participants took part in a special writing workshop and produced Our Dreams Are Not a Secret: Teenagers in Metropolitan Detroit Speak Out,1 a book written by young people about their experiences “growing up in segregated social worlds and living on the borders of change.” At this writing, television producers have come forward with an agreement for a series of programs devoted to the dialogues.
Outcomes
Because of the work, young people have been approached to employ community-based participatory research principles in other projects. In the field of health, for example, young people have conducted community health assessments, interviewed community members about health needs, facilitated community meetings to gather information about health resources, and shared their findings with public officials. They compiled their findings in Youth Participation in Neighborhood Planning for Community Health and presented them to community leaders, public officials, and Michigan’s surgeon general. In the field of education, they conducted focus groups with students in neighborhoods and suburbs and gathered information and ideas from students about their present and future schools in coordination with community meetings and group discussions. Students answered questions about the curriculum, teachers and principals, safety and discipline, pathways after school, facilities and environment, and diversity. The publication Voices of Youth: Metropolitan Detroit Students Speak Out on Their Schools documented problems and issues that concern students across metropolitan Detroit and summarized improvements they want in their schools.
Sharing With Others
Young people participate in community evaluation research, but this approach is itself young as a field of practice and subject of study (Checkoway & Richards-Schuster, 2003, 2004, n.d.; Delgado, 2006; Sabo Flores, 2007). We cannot make broad generalizations from one example, but observations are possible. Our observation is that young people are willing and able to participate in all stages of evaluation research, from defining the problem to gathering the information to sharing the results. They can join an evaluation research team and develop an evaluation plan. They can formulate questions and 1For more information about any of the projects or reports described in this section or to download a copy of My Dreams Are Not a Secret: Teenagers Speak Out in Metropolitan Detroit, please see http://www.youthandcommunity.org. gather information through various research methods. They can make sense of information, analyze patterns and themes, draw conclusions, and make recommendations for action. It is important to emphasize that this work is intergenerational rather than adult led or youth led, and, as such, youth and adults are partners in the process. They are not always equal in their influence, however, for there are stages and situations in which one or another might take the lead. For example, an adult evaluation team member might have primary responsibility for finding funds or providing transportation to and from an interview, whereas a youth member might take the lead in asking the questions and recording the answers. While young people are able to employ research methods that are standard among adults, they are also proficient with methods that are deemed more age-appropriate, such as using cell phones for photovoice, or conducting surveys on the Internet, or using youth-based media to communicate the findings. When young people pro-vide their peers with a youth-authored document or perform their stories in a school assembly or community center, their age gives them a special advantage. Young people can play various roles in the process. They can consult with their colleagues, provide them with guidance and feedback, and partner with them in questionnaire design, data collection, and report writing. Young people also are subjects of study in youth programs like these, but this is not their primary role as it normally is in evaluation research conducted by adults alone. At the same time, young people are not alone in this work. Adults are strong members of the evaluation team, and they collaborate with the young people at every stage of the process. There also are parents and teachers who support young people in their initiatives, of which evaluation research is only one. We observe that youth participation in evaluation research has effects on the youth who participate by strengthening their substantive knowledge, practical skills, and civic competencies. When young people ask their own questions rather than the ones given by adult authorities, gather their own information rather than uncritically accept that of others, and formulate their own strategy rather than stay with the status quo, it benefits them and the communities of which they are part. There is no evidence yet about the duration of its effects or about what happens when they return to schools and communities that hold standard views of the roles of youth in society. The notion that young people are willing and able to participate in evaluation research contrasts with portrayals of youth as problems in society who are withdrawn from participation or disengaged from democracy. Such portrayals are common in mass media, social science, and professional practice. When adults accept media portrayals of young people as disengaged, and youth accept these conceptions of themselves, this weakens expectations of their engagement.
Toward Racially Just Research
