At the Table: Making the Case for Youth in Decision-Making

Default image, no image supplied by the user.This Resource presents highlights from a study on the impacts of youth on adults and organizations.

Methodology

- Personal Interviews:
Nineteen youth and 29 adults from 15 organizations, selected to achieve
geographic diversity across the country, participated in the study through
personal interviews.

- Focus Groups:
Two focus groups in San Francisco, CA, and Washington, DC, gaining data from youth,
staff, and board members from 16 additional organizations.

Through a number of avenues, researchers identified a group of organizations
that had a strong reputation for youth involvement in decision-making.
They sought to include organizations whose boards of directors included
youth, as well as organizations that engaged young people at other
levels of the organization. They looked for organizations that serve a range
of youth populations as well as organizations with a strong community,
policy, or advocacy emphasis. No one was paid for his or her participation.

Extended Case Method:
The extended case method was used as an analysis strategy, bolstering
empirical data with the researchers’ previous knowledge as well as knowledge
gleaned from existing literature. The strategy of informant checks
was used to analyze and verify data.

The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-
Madison and was commissioned by the Innovation Center for Community
and Youth Development and National 4-H Council, in partnership with the
Youth in Governance Taskforce of the National Association of Extension 4-H Agents.

 

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