Project Description
Synopsis
Young adults have been called a “neglected age group” because although generally healthy, they often experiment with risky behaviours and do not seek help until in serious trouble. Young adults need support to make healthier choices, thus making campuses a favourable setting for interventions.
Student Voice Summary (310KB PDF)
Download this file to read the full 12-page Student Voice Study Summary, including references and glossary.
An international settings-based health promotion approach termed the Healthy Communities Movement offers a well-tested ecological model for improving the health of populations within communities. A recent spinoff movement - the health-promoting university/healthy campus movement - provides opportunities for students, faculty and staff to collaborate in building knowledge and skills that help students manage their own health and contribute to the health of others and the environment.
VOICE, a 17-month participatory action research (PAR) study at UBC Okanagan funded by the BC Medical Services Foundation, will increase understanding of healthy community development which includes students, faculty, and staff voicing their health interests and questions, forming partnerships, making plans, and taking action to create sustainable health promoting change.
Student researchers and project workers will join forces with the research team to engage the campus community, collect data, and assess change through:
- community dialogue processes including walk-about surveys
- environmental assessment methods such as photovoice and mapping
- policy assessments
In the VOICE study, healthy campus development will be explored and guided through the use of community-based PAR methods. The study will be conducted at UBC Okanagan and will involve students and organizational leaders working as researcher-project workers in collaboration with researchers (i.e., as co-researchers).
The research project design will permit exploration of individual and community issues and organizational practices and policies relevant to a range of health determinants (physical, social, environmental, and economic). The project design also supports investigation of actions taken to improve health and changes that occur at both individual and community levels. Also, by engaging students throughout the research process, we hope to increase their interest and skill in research and healthy community development.
The study will contribute to the literature on young adult health, student-organizational leader partnerships, and student participation (youth voice) in healthy campus/community development. Results will be used to guide further research. The project will conclude with reflection on what has been learned, dissemination of results, and decision making about the next phase of research.
Research objectives
- Increase knowledge about student experience and participation (youth voice) in healthy campus development when working with organizational leaders (faculty, administrators, staff, campus business-persons) to jointly design and evaluate actions to create health-promoting change for individuals and the campus community.
- Increase student and community capacity in health promotion/healthy community development and research.
- Assess change (process, outcome/individual, and community) relevant to student identified health priorities and actions (e.g., specific project work).
Research methods
Consistent with a community-based participatory action research (PAR) approach, students and organizational leaders (i.e., faculty, administrators, staff, and campus business persons) will be invited to become researcher-project workers (non-subjects) who will work in partnership with the PI and Co-Investigators to conduct the study. Researcher-project workers will be given an orientation package and fully informed about their roles (i.e., guidelines and responsibilities such as protection of confidentiality).
Firstly, students will be invited to become researcher-project workers, receive PAR training, and identify priority health issues and interests of the campus community through research-based community dialogue and assessment processes. Next, students will divide into healthy campus project groups to investigate specific health priorities and take action to support health. Organizational leaders will be invited to partner with students in project groups and participate in training, meetings, and other activities according to their expertise and interests (i.e., as organizational leader researcher-project workers). During specific healthy campus project group work, the process of engaging with the community (people and environment) will continue through community dialogue and environmental assessments.
Research activities will be engaged in throughout the PAR process to enable description of the overall study, support project work on specific issues, and ensure research objectives are adequately explored. Pilot work has laid the groundwork for the “researcher-project worker partnership” model and confirmed the feasibility of the design.
This PAR study will involve phases of engagement, community assessment, issues identification, planning, taking action, reflecting, renewing, and sustaining. Tools and data collection methods are described in this application, and, consistent with PAR methods, will be refined as the study progresses. For example, Walk-About Survey question content will be modified to explore specific health priorities (additional ethical review will be sought as required).
Human subjects are required for two parts of the study: the community dialogue processes, which will occur throughout the study, and the interviews of researcher-project workers, which will be conducted after they have completed their work.
Data collection methods involving human subjects include:
- community dialogue using two tools (some demographic questions about subjects are included in these tools):
- Community questionnaires distributed at info booths
- Walk-about surveys conducted via personal digital assistants (PDAs)
- minimally structured interviews involving researcher-project workers who volunteer following completion of their work on the study.
Data collection methods not involving human subjects include:
- environmental assessments using maps, Photovoice
- policy assessments via the UBC Okanagan website
- field notes and document analysis using materials created during research process (e.g., agendas and minutes)
- demographic data extraction from public institutional documents: to describe the campus population (e.g., total number of students; see the study summary for more details)
Research sample
Subjects for the community dialogue processes will be student and other community member volunteers. Everyone on campus will be invited to participate; there are no exclusion criteria for the community dialogue. Consistent with PAR, efforts will be made to include students and other campus community members from diverse sectors of the campus population, for example, academic programs, races, ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations, disability/ability, commuter/resident, international).
For the interviews, subjects must have been student or organizational researcher-project workers, as the interviews will focus on their experiences. All researcher-project workers will be invited to volunteer to be interviewed when they have completed their work with the study. Additional purposive sampling will be done if needed to adequately reflect diversity (e.g., of health projects) and to ensure data saturation.
Data analysis
Data will be collaboratively analyzed by the whole research team (PI, Co-Is, researcher-project workers, and Research Coordinator) and used to guide action throughout the project, except interview data which will be collected and analyzed only by the PI, Co-I Doctoral Student, and the Research Coordinator, to protect privacy and confidentiality of researcher-project workers. Names of interviewees will be protected by a code accessible only to the PI, Co-I Doctoral Student, and the Research Coordinator.
Quantitative data will be analyzed using descriptive statistics (SPSS). Qualitative data will be analyzed for themes with the support of NVivo.
Ethics
Ethics certificate: approved by BREB October 2007.
Last reviewed 
6/8/2010 2:10:58 PM
