Gauging mentoring program readiness for youth participatory action research through a practitioner resource and feedback session

Youth participatory action research (YPAR) is underutilized in youth mentoring programs. Understanding program readiness and support needed for YPAR can inform technical assistance efforts to integrate YPAR into mentoring organizations. The current paper presents findings from feedback sessions conducted with mentoring practitioners to understand their perceived usage and challenges to YPAR, and what support is needed. A publicly available resource synthesizing YPAR evidence for a practitioner audience was used to initiate the feedback sessions. Eight mentoring community members participated in a virtual feedback session. Thematic analysis of author field notes from the discussion sessions were used to construct three themes: (1) spectrum of program readiness for integrating YPAR, (2) challenges with buy-in for YPAR among program stakeholders, and (3) practitioners want ‘how-to’ resources with clear examples. Findings from this study have implications for informing the development of technical assistance for YPAR within mentoring programs.