A Participatory Youth Empowerment Model and Qualitative Analysis of Student Voices on Power and Violence Prevention
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A PARTICIPATORY YOUTH EMPOWERMENT MODEL AND QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF STUDENT VOICES ON POWER AND VIOLENCE PREVENTION by Naima T. Wong A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Health Behavior and Health Education) in The University of Michigan 2008 Doctoral Committee: Professor Marc A. Zimmerman, Chair Professor Barry N. Checkoway Associate Professor Edith A. Parker Associate Professor Barbara J. Guthrie Naima T. Wong © 2008 All Rights Reserved DEDICATION For the young people whose voices have fallen on deaf ears. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Out of sheer ignorance and naïveté as a young doctoral student I once told another more advanced student that I thought academic pursuit could be accomplished alone. He balked at my statement. Now, I get it. While one can acquire knowledge, build skills, and engage in scholarship as a solo venture, true learning requires growing and that does not happen in a silo. I have grown in this process and am grateful to a long list of many. I hold deep gratitude for my chair and mentor, Marc Zimmerman, who believed in my ideas and me at times when I did not believe myself. His support never wavered. For that I am thankful. I am also blessed to have a committee of forward thinking scholars who push past the boundaries of hegemonic thought. They challenge us to continually consider the perspectives of community, gender, youth, and those peoples who are most marginalized. I am indebted to this work and the committed support from Barry Checkoway, Edith Parker, and Barbara Guthrie. To them I am thankful. This research was built upon the experiences and perspectives of young people in Flint, Michigan. I am grateful to have had access to their stories and hope that my analysis has done them justice. My research was also made possible by the generous support of Flint Youth Violence Prevention Center, YES Project, Lee Bell, Beverly Jacks, Toni Adams, Everett Roberts, Tony Cuttita, and Sarah Kretman. I would not have even been able to think about writing a word had it not been for the financial support and professional development I received from the W.K. Kellogg Fellowship in Health Policy Research, the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture and Health (CRECH), the ASPH/CDC/PRC Minority Fellowship, and the Rackham Merit iii Fellowship. I would like to specifically acknowledge the committed efforts of Harold “Woody” Neighbors, Barbara Krimgold, Susan Morrel-Samuels, Cleo Caldwell, Amy Schulz, Lynda Furstenau, Maria Briones, Barb Inwood, Mary Clark, and Annette Ramirez. Also, thank you to the staff at Georgia Health Policy Center, especially Chris Parker, for being accommodating and waiting patiently as I finished writing. I am also grateful for Lisa Pasbjerg, who reminded me of my strengths, served as my crutch, and coached me through the final stages. I also leaned on a group that, as individuals they inspired me and as a collective served as my community while in Michigan. I am continually grateful for the support and friendships that were built with Debbie Barrington, R. L’Heureux Lewis, Fadrah Crowe, Edna Viruell-Fuentes, Will Burnett and the Ford Family, Rosa Peralta, A. Kilolo Harris, Monica Sosa, Ayesha Hardison, Lydia Middleton, Paul Burns, Al Defreece, Jay Pearson, Rashid Njai, Yanique Redwood, and Lisa Lapeyrouse. My family played a formative role in shaping who I am today. I am appreciative to mom, Paula. Thank you for showing me how to be a strong woman. To my dad, York, who is one of the most fascinating people I know, thank you for being so damn original. My sisters Tara, Alison, and Chelsea, do not always know what I am up to, but their questioning, “What are you doing up there in Michigan anyway,” helped me focus and find an answer for myself. I am especially indebted to Alison for letting me bombard her with questions about my conceptual models, and for putting up with my dissertation haze. I am thankful for the understanding of my niece, Amelie, who has patiently waited for me to finish my homework. To Mariama Boone and Jill Richardson, who might as well also be my sisters, I am grateful for your lifelong friendship. I thank these people for loving me unconditionally. iv PREFACE They say kids should be seen and not heard. They say I am too young to have nerves. What do you know? You aren’t living it— walking in my shoes and seeing what I see. Young people’s voices should be heard. All adults have a generation, we will too, have to make it better, not worse. --Flint middle school students This research was inspired by my exposure to community-based participatory research (CBPR) as a graduate student in Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan. I have been trained under leading researchers who, have not only made substantial contributions to the CBPR field, but continually push for community participation in research, grapple with the what it takes to build an authentic partnership, and inspire other scholars to partner with community for the benefit of the public’s health. My particular interest is in the health of youth of color. I discovered, however, that the collaborative energy found in CBPR lies on the fringes in adolescent research. With the exception of a few cases, youth voices were absent in a discourse that was supposedly constructed to serve them. This dissertation strives to be part of an emerging tide of research that builds upon the same tenets of CBPR and values the role that young people can play in determining their own health. v TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION............................................................................................................. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................... iii PREFACE.....................................................................................................................v LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................... ix LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................x CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................1 Focus of this dissertation ...................................................................................1 The social construction of adolescence and the silencing of young people ......3 The origin and influence of western adolescent theory .....................................4 The silencing of youth .......................................................................................7 Recognition of youth voice................................................................................8 Organization of the dissertation.......................................................................12 References........................................................................................................14 2. THE TYPE PYRAMID: A TYPOLOGY OF YOUTH PARTICIPATION AND EMPOWERMENT FOR VIOLENCE PREVENTION ........................22 Introduction......................................................................................................22 Youth violence.................................................................................................25 vi Positive youth development: Promising theoretical frameworks for youth violence prevention..........................................................................................29 Youth participation ...........................................................................................36 The TYPE Pyramid: A typology of youth participation and empowerment ...44 Implications and conclusion ............................................................................59 References........................................................................................................62 3. THE POWER OF VIOLENCE: YOUTH-DRIVEN CONCEPTIONS OF POWER IN PEER-TO-PEER VIOLENCE .....................................................78 Background and theory....................................................................................80 Focus of this study ...........................................................................................88 Methods ...........................................................................................................89 Results and discussion ....................................................................................97 Conclusion: A pathway model of power and youth violence........................125 References......................................................................................................135 4. NEXT GENERATION EXPERTS: YOUTH RECOMMENDED STRATEGIES FOR YOUTH VIOLENCE PREVENTION.........................147 Introduction....................................................................................................147 Methods..........................................................................................................151 Results ...........................................................................................................158 Discussion......................................................................................................166 Limitations .....................................................................................................175 Implications....................................................................................................176 vii Conclusion