Participatory Action Research with Youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Young People’s Experiences in Youth-Led Participatory Action Research for Hiv/Aids Prevention

“…The importance of youth participation in interventions that address issues that affect them is increasingly recognized, as is the idea that youth peer educators are important change agents (Powers & Tiffany, 2006;Maglajlic & Tiffany, 2006). In this study we sought to examine the effects on youth who were at risk of exposure to HIV/AIDS of being involved in a youth-led participatory action research project.…”

“…These are cases where their involvement was limited to brief episodes, rather than providing longer-term opportunities to develop their capabilities and sense of voice (Prilleltensky, Nelson, & Peirson, 2001). To the best of our knowledge, RTK is one of the few projects that fostered youth-led PAR training and one of the few contexts in which the dynamics of youth-led PAR involving other youth have been examined (Maglajlic & Tiffany, 2006).…”

“…PAR is also employed to transform practitioners' theories and practices in particular local settings (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000). Research projects that involve interventions directed to young people increasingly promote youth participation in order to more effectively learn about and address issues that affect the lives and health of youth (Powers & Tiffany, 2006;Maglajlic & Tiffany, 2006). This paper examines a specific aspect of participatory action research with youth, namely, the perceptions of the marginalized and at-risk youth participants who were reached through being involved in a youth-led project.…”

Academic Researchers’ Role in Participatory Action Research, Theory Development and the Improvement of Community-based health Projects

“…Therefore, the program needs to be comprehensive in order to provide the opportunity for synergistic effects throughout the collective effort. Furthermore, because individual health behaviors are deeply embedded within social and cultural contexts, didactic and generic templates for health interventions may have limited impact on behavior change (Maglajlic and Tiffany 2006;Johnson et al 2008) and there is a need for cultural adaptation of participatory health interventions. Further empirical studies are needed to examine the effects of different types of participatory youth projects on health related outcomes in different cultural contexts.…”

“…To date, the typology of different participatory approaches has not been well theorized and understood. Furthermore, although the evaluation of PAR has been documented in some studies (Bagamoyo College of Arts et al, 2002;Sy-ar, 2004;Maglajlic and Tiffany, 2006), relatively little academic research has been conducted for the explicit purpose of contributing to theory building in participatory approaches for health. This paper examines the typology of participatory approaches used in a participatory project designed to inform HIV prevention efforts among youth.…”