Racial Microaggressions in U.S. High Schools: An Illustration of the Full YPAR Process From the Youth Research Council

Abstract

In 2021, the Youth Research Council (“YRC”) was formed to bring together high school students in the Northern Virginia region of the United States to conduct research on topics important to those youth (“YRC Fellows”). In its inaugural year, YRC Fellows designed a multi-method study to explore the effects of racial microaggressions on the mental health of their peers and to better understand how young people resist racial microaggressions and their often-deleterious effects on mental health. This article details the YRC’s full process, from formation of research questions to sharing findings in critical and participatory ways, as a model of youth participatory action research (YPAR). In addition to describing the ways in which the YRC embodies a YPAR epistemology, we are also showing our methods. To do this, we have built the article around a transcribed conversation held in July 2023 with the intention of teasing out and sorting through the implications of the YRC’s findings based on our first two years of research. The authors of this article include YRC Fellows and university-based researchers who facilitate the YRC.