Youth Participation in Research

At the end of May some thirty researchers came together to exchange knowledge and experience on youth participation in research.With representatives from both Dynamics of Youth at Utrecht University and the Healthy Start community, the event served as a platform for forging new connections, sharing insights, and raising questions.

Healthy Start Convergence Fellow Lysanne te Brinke and Young Board member Kayla Green led a workshop on the Do’s and Don’t of Youth Participation, drawing on the experience of the YoungXperts group. This helped participants reflect on the whole research process, including ways of engaging youth, the importance of providing a timely response to the input youth have given, and creative approaches to providing information to young people about the research. In a parallel program a group of researchers shared their dilemmas and successes, finding common challenges as well as inspiration in the experiences of others. 

By the end of the session participants had new tips, ideas and connections, as well as new questions and hopes for next steps. 

Some Tips

• Remember that youth and researchers work on different timelines, find creative ways for youth to have timely feedback on how their input is being used.
• Consider using videos as a means for conveying information that might usually be on a letter outlining the purpose of research.
• Be conscious about why you are involving youth, is it meaningful?
• Go to where youth are, don’t expect them to come to you

Some Questions

• How to make participation sustainable?
• How to navigate institutional barriers to youth participation?
• How to build trust so that young people are and feel safe to talk about sensitive topics?
• How to engage young children and their parents?

Some Aspirations

• Continuing knowledge and experience exchange sessions
• Establishing small intervision groups to facilitate in-depth discussions on pertinent issues.
• Developing an online platform to share valuable resources and experiences
• Collaborating in living-lab activities 

Looking Ahead

Given the strong interest in nurturing this network and continuing to learn from the rich and varied experience being generated, we are eagerly looking ahead to the next steps. If you have a passion for this topic and wish to stay updated or contribute your experiences, thoughts and ideas, please don’t hesitate to reach out!