Youth-led Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is an approach that engages young people and academic researchers as equitable partners in each phase of the research process. YPAR positions youth as experts and aims to increase the power of marginalized groups in advocating for change to address issues that youth want to change. Key principles for YPAR include that it is 1) inquiry-based and topics selected are relevant to youths’ lived experiences and concerns, 2) participatory, which means youth are collaborators across research phases and methods, and 3) transformative, which means the purpose of YPAR is to change knowledge and practices through social action to improve the lives of youth and their communities. Engaging youth in participatory research can help address gaps between adolescent developmental needs and traditional school environments, such as increasing self-efficacy, establishing a sense of purpose, and creating supportive social relationships with peers and trusted adults. The continued emergent growth of the YPAR literature provides insights about study methodology, YPAR project characteristics, and the potential for youth and environmental outcomes from participation in YPAR.In this body of work, I apply frameworks from the fields of psychological empowerment, transformative social and emotional learning, and the use of research evidence. In the first paper, I conduct a systematic review of the recent YPAR literature published between 2015 and 2022, and report findings related to study methodology, YPAR principles and project characteristics, and youth outcomes. I contribute a unique, theoretically-driven analysis of youth empowerment outcomes with respect to the intrapersonal, interactional, and behavioral components of psychological empowerment. In the second paper, I extend the systematic review by applying a unique, theoretically-driven analysis of transformative social and emotional learning outcomes with respect to the transformative focal constructs of agency, belonging, collaborative problem solving, curiosity, and identity. In the third paper, I describe two YPAR project focal cases in which youth-generated evidence and youth recommendations were utilized in the development and implementation of mental health policies and practices in school settings. Further, I report conditions that facilitate and limit use of YPAR evidence addressing mental health issues in school settings. These findings will be of interest to key stakeholders including school administrators, teachers, and mental health professionals given the importance of theoretical insights and recommendations into the use of YPAR as an approach for promoting positive youth mental health, psychological empowerment, and transformative social and emotional learning outcomes in community and school settings.
