Centering Youth Voice across the Program Lifecycle: Using Youth Participatory Action Research In Design and Evaluation

Meaningful youth engagement has become a widely endorsed value in social work research and practice, yet too often it is limited to advisory roles or one-time feedback rather than sustained partnership. This workshop focuses on what it looks like to genuinely engage young people with lived experience across the full continuum of a program’s lifecycle, from initial design to implementation and evaluation, using Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) as a guiding framework.

Grounded in a multi-year initiative supporting youth experiencing homelessness, this session will walk participants through how youth were engaged not only as participants, but as co-creators and co-researchers. We will share how young people helped shape program models, informed service delivery strategies, and played an active role in developing evaluation questions and interpreting findings. This approach challenged traditional hierarchies in research and required a shift in how we think about expertise, rigor, and accountability.

The workshop will provide concrete examples of how YPAR principles were operationalized in practice. This includes how youth researchers were recruited, trained, and supported; how data collection processes were adapted to be more accessible and relevant; and how youth voice influenced both qualitative and quantitative components of the evaluation. We will also discuss how this approach strengthened the validity and usefulness of findings by grounding them in lived experience, ultimately leading to more responsive and effective programming.

At the same time, this work is not without challenges. We will openly discuss common pitfalls, including navigating power dynamics between adult researchers and youth partners, managing institutional requirements such as IRB processes, and balancing participatory approaches with the expectations of traditional research designs. Participants will gain practical strategies for addressing these challenges while maintaining a commitment to both equity and methodological rigor.

A unique feature of this session is that it will be co-led by a young person who served as a youth researcher within the project. Their perspective will offer an unfiltered look at what meaningful engagement feels like from the youth side, what worked, what did not, and what adults often miss. This co-facilitation model reflects the core values of the work itself and demonstrates how shared leadership can enhance both the research process and its outcomes.

This workshop directly aligns with the conference theme, “Social Work Research at the Service of Democracy,” by illustrating how participatory approaches can democratize knowledge production, elevate voices that are often excluded, and strengthen the relevance and impact of research. By engaging young people as partners, we not only improve programs but also contribute to a broader vision of social work research that is inclusive, equitable, and responsive to the communities it seeks to serve.

Participants will leave with practical tools, real-world examples, and a clearer understanding of how to integrate youth voice into their own research and practice in meaningful and sustainable ways.