The longitudinal effect of the quality of participation experiences in a voluntary organization on youth psychological empowerment

Abstract

Research shows its limitations by not capturing the specificities of individual experiences, which result either from the participation of or interaction among different people in a given context across time. This study explores the effect that the quality of youth participation experiences in a Portuguese voluntary organization can have on the development of their psychological empowerment (PE). This study adopted a longitudinal, quantitative design where the same cohort of 481 participants (62.4% female; Mage = 17.26 years) was followed across three time points. Latent growth curve modeling was performed to examine the effect of the quality of participation experiences (QPE) on the developmental trajectories of PE components. Findings show that the QPE had the most powerful effect on developmental trajectories in PE. The study shows how youth perceptions of opportunities for reflection and action in interaction in a climate of openness to dialogue and the emergence of different ways of thinking and doing affect their PE.

Lowering the voting age to 16: Young people making a case for political education in fostering voting competencies

“…the elected young mayors and councillors, and advisers), and also on the surrounding educational community (i.e. students and teachers from public schools) (for more details about the impact evaluation of the YM project, see Rodrigues et al, 2019). To perform this evaluation, a mixed methodological design was adopted (Creswell, 2012), utilising data collection procedures of a quantitative and qualitative nature in order to achieve a more consistent impact analysis through the triangulation of the resulting information.…”

“…The data considered in this article were collected under the external evaluation of the impact of the Young Mayor (YM) project, implemented since 2014 by the municipality of Santa Maria da Feira, located in the north of Portugal. In short, this project is an educational initiative inspired by the Young Mayor of Lewisham, started in 2004 in the London Borough of Lewisham (https://lewisham.gov.uk/mayorandcouncil/youngmayor), where a selected group of young people play the role of spokespersons for their peers and are co-responsible for the management of an allocated budget, seeking to empower young people in terms of communication skills, interpersonal relationships, decision-making, negotiation, and leadership (see Rodrigues et al, 2019). The evaluation process of this project took place between 2016 and 2017, and entailed the exploration of young people's perceptions about the impact of the YM project on young participants and the surrounding educational community, but also about the topics of electronic voting and votes at 16 (Ferreira et al, 2018).…”