UC Berkeley

Young people need opportunities that support their well-being while enabling them to take meaningful action. There has been strong interest in youth participatory action research (YPAR) as a form of sociopolitical action for marginalized youth seeking to address inequities that undermine individual and community well-being. The rapid growth of the YPAR literature in the last decade has involved studies analyzing the impact of YPAR on dimensions of youth empowerment, sociopolitical development (SPD), and well-being. The relatively new framework of Transformative Social Emotional Learning (tSEL) is potentially fruitful in identifying relevant constructs, skills, and strategies to support well-being during the YPAR process. This article seeks to advance our integrative conceptualization and analysis of the impact of YPAR by (1) considering the overlapping and unique dimensions of SPD and tSEL: agency, belonging, collaborative problem solving, curiosity, identity, societal involvement, and worldview and social analysis; and (2) applying this integrative lens to the analysis of novel data from an updated systematic review of U.S. and international YPAR studies (2015–2022). We summarize youth outcomes reported in 25 studies to assess the evidence for YPAR as an approach for promoting youth SPD and tSEL outcomes, identifying limitations and next steps for advancing our understanding of these impacts.