Actualizing child and adolescent empowerment in participatory action research for health promotion: a six-element framework

ABSTRACT

Child and adolescent participation for health promotion can be realized through participatory action research (PAR). However, there is a lack of understanding regarding the concrete steps needed to actualize empowerment within PAR. We propose a framework that outlines six elements that need to be considered when designing a PAR study that strives to actualize child and adolescent empowerment. These are 1) Safeguarding the necessary resources; 2) Having high quality adult facilitation; 3) Enabling sense-making activities and 4) Investing in capacity building. These four elements make up an environment that may nourish children and adolescents’ social, emotional and cognitive development that may potentially lead to 5) Positive child and adolescent development and 6) Participatory competence. The proposed framework adopts a holistic approach by considering the lived reality of children and adolescents and their capabilities and characteristics. Future research is needed to assess the practical utility of the framework.

KEYWORDS:

• Empowerment
• Health promotion
• Participatory Action Research (PAR)
• Positive youth development
• Framework
• School-aged

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

RC and TA designed the study. RC, MA and TA contributed to the qualitative analysis of the included articles. RC drafted the final framework. All co-authors provided critical input during the framework development. RC wrote the manuscript. TA, BC and DP contributed to revising the manuscript. All authors approved the final version.

Data availability statement

The articles included in the analysis are presented in Table 3 of the manuscript. The analysis are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Ethics approval

This study did not require ethics approval.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Abbreviations: PAR, Participatory Action Research; YPAR, Youth-led Participatory Action Research.

Additional information

Funding

The contributions of RC, MA and TA were funded by a grant from the Netherlands Cardiovascular Research Initiative: an initiative with support of the Dutch Heart Foundation (ZonMw) [CVON2016-07 LIKE]. The contribution of RC was further funded by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (Health CASCADE), funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement [n° 956501].