Adam M. Voight, Rosalinda Godinez, Xiaona Jin, Amirhassan Javadi, Marissa J. Panzarella and Katelyne J. Griffin-Todd
This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘The effects of youth participatory action research on education policy: a mixed methods study of three dozen high school projects‘, part of the Evidence & Policy Special Issue: The Role of Youth-Led Research in Policy Change.
Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) has long been celebrated for how deeply it engages young people in understanding – and acting on – the issues that shape their educational lives. But increasingly, practitioners and policymakers are recognising something larger: YPAR is not simply a youth development strategy or an engagement initiative. It is an emerging two-in-one approach that strengthens both young people and the institutions that serve them. When students conduct rigorous, locally grounded research and bring their findings to decision-makers, they simultaneously build the very ‘future-ready’ skills that educators value while generating evidence that can help schools improve.
Our study published in Evidence & Policy presents the strongest empirical demonstration of this school-level impact to date. Drawing on data from 36 discrete YPAR projects in high schools across the U.S. Midwest, it is – based on our review of the literature – the largest analysis ever conducted on the setting-level effects of YPAR. This scale matters. Much of what we previously knew about YPAR’s institutional influence came from one-off case studies or anecdotes about a particularly successful project. Those accounts are important, but they leave open a crucial question: under what conditions does youth-led research catalyse real change in schools?
By looking across dozens of projects rather than a handful, our study offers the first systematic evidence of the patterns, strategies and contexts that predict whether students’ research leads to changes in school policy, practice or culture.
What we learned from studying dozens of YPAR projects
One of the first things we noticed was the variation in project outcomes. Students were candid – some teams saw major changes in their schools, while others saw little movement. That variation allowed us to examine what distinguished high-impact projects from those that struggled to gain traction.
Several conditions stood out. First, the action strategies students pursued mattered. Teams that used their research to advocate for policy or programmatic change (rather than hosting events or raising awareness) were significantly more successful. Policy advocacy gave administrators something concrete to act on, helping youth evidence enter the channels schools use to make decisions.
Second, supportive administrators played a critical role, though not in the simplistic sense of ‘being encouraging’. What mattered was whether school and district leaders treated youth evidence as legitimate input into actual decision-making processes. When adults helped secure presentation time, brokered meetings or connected students to staff with implementation authority, projects moved. When support stayed at the level of praise, results were less substantial.
A third finding involved the interplay between youth leadership and adult allyship. Projects were most successful when adults stepped in selectively – particularly to help communicate with administrators and support data analysis – while youth remained in the lead on developing recommendations and preparing the data that underpinned them. This balance allowed students to steer the intellectual work of the project while benefiting from adults’ institutional knowledge.
Finally, the focus of students’ inquiries shaped their success. Projects addressing school safety or postsecondary readiness aligned with pressing administrative priorities and therefore gained more traction. Mental health projects, although deeply important to students, were harder for schools to act on quickly due to their complexity and reliance on external supports. These differences reveal less about young people’s capacities than about the structural constraints within which schools operate.
How these findings are shaping practice
Because the study draws on real YPAR work that our team has facilitated across Ohio for nearly a decade, these insights have already reshaped our practice. We are refining how we train teacher advisors, supporting teams in thinking strategically about issue selection, and designing more intentional structures for students to present evidence to decision-makers. Our hope is that other practitioners of YPAR and related student voice strategies find similar value in these lessons.
Perhaps the most important takeaway is that the evidence students produce through YPAR is real evidence. It is rigorous, locally informed and grounded in the lived realities of those most affected by school policy. It belongs in the rooms where decisions are made. YPAR is powerful precisely because it helps schools access meaningful evidence while cultivating in young people the competencies they need to lead in the future.
Image credit: Authors ‘own (used with permission).
Adam Voight
Director, Center for Urban Education
Associate Professor of Education and Counseling
Cleveland State University
Email: a.voight@csuohio.edu
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/adam-voight-ba52401b
Rosalinda Godínez
Postdoctoral Researcher
Center for Urban Education, Cleveland State University
Xiaona Jin
Research Associate
Center for Urban Education, Cleveland State University
Amirhassan Javadi
Research Assistant
Center for Urban Education, Cleveland State University
Marissa Panzarella
Research Assistant
Center for Urban Education, Cleveland State University
Katelyne Griffin-Todd
Research Assistant
Center for Urban Education, Cleveland State University
Read the original research in Evidence & Policy:
Voight, A. Godínez, R. Jin, X. Javadi, A. Panzarella, M. & Griffin-Todd K. (2026). The effects of youth participatory action research on education policy: a mixed methods study of three dozen high school projects. Evidence & Policy. DOI: 10.1332/17442648Y2025D000000074.
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