Emily J Ozer

• Professor (Full) at University of California, Berkeley

In this review, we provide a conceptual and empirical overview of youth-led participatory action research (YPAR) across disciplines. We consider the historical and conceptual contexts for the diversity of YPAR approaches and ( a ) the rationales underlying the rapid growth of YPAR in practice and research; ( b ) the relevance of YPAR for the study...

Young people need opportunities that support their well-being while enabling them to take meaningful action. There has been strong interest in youth participatory action research (YPAR) as a form of sociopolitical action for marginalized youth seeking to address inequities that undermine individual and community well-being. The rapid growth of the...

Despite their documented benefits, the widespread adoption of community-engaged and participatory approaches among health researchers remains limited. Institutional practices and policies influence the uptake of community engagement and participatory approaches. We examine the role of financial arrangements between university researchers and commun...

Bullying is a persistent problem in schools today, with developmental and socioemotional consequences. Multi-tiered interventions, such as School-wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SW-PBIS), have been developed to decrease bullying by improving school climate. However, effects of SW-PBIS are stronger in elementary school than midd...

We provide an overview of diverse forms of youth participation, with a focus on youth participatory action research (YPAR) and its synergies with life course intervention research to promote healthier development for young people and across the life span. We analyze why YPAR matters for research, practice, and policies related to the systems and se...

The prevalence and impact of child maltreatment make the scientific investigation of this phenomenon a matter of vital importance. Prior research has examined associations between problematic patterns of parents' emotion reactivity and regulation and child maltreatment and maltreatment risk. However, the strength and specificity of these relationsh...

Background: A multitude of empirical evidence documents links between education and health, but this focuses primarily on educational attainment and not on characteristics of the school setting. Little is known about the extent to which aggregate characteristics of the school setting, such as student body demographics, are associated with adult he...

There is an array of youth participatory approaches relevant to health equity efforts in community psychology, adolescent health, youth development, and education. While they share some commonalities, they also reflect important distinctions regarding key processes and intended level of impact. Here, we consider the following: (a) youth‐led partici...

Purpose Rapid advances in technology create opportunities for adolescents to influence practice and policy in health and other domains. Technology can support the scaling of Youth-Led Participatory Action Research (YPAR), in which adolescents conduct research to improve issues that affect them. We present the first known published systematic review...

Youth‐Led Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is a social justice‐focused approach for promoting social change and positive youth development in which youth conduct systematic research and actions to improve their schools and communities. Although YPAR is oriented to generating research for action, with evidence‐based recommendations often aimed a...

The many adverse effects of child maltreatment make the scientific investigation of this phenomenon a matter of vital importance. Although the relationship between maltreatment and problematic emotion reactivity and regulation has been studied, the strength and specificity of these associations are not yet clear. We examine the magnitude of the mal...

In light of the increasing global population of young people, practitioners and policy makers face formidable challenges in promoting positive youth development and the successful transition to adulthood. Youth participatory research is one promising and rapidly growing approach for generating evidence to inform policy and intervention strategies t...

Background: Emotional maltreatment is the most pervasive but least studied form of abuse. Objective: In the present study, we examined the role of emotion reactivity and emotion regulation in emotional child maltreatment. Methods: We identified nine studies that compared levels of parental emotion reactivity and regulation in emotionally maltr...

Most adolescents face numerous obstacles to good sleep, which may undermine healthy development. In this study, we used latent class analysis and identified four categories of sleep barriers in a diverse sample of 553 urban youth (57% female). The majority profile, School/Screens Barriers, reported the most homework and extracurricular barriers, al...

Parenting quality—a child's milieu of warmth, responsiveness, and stimulation—promotes a young child's cognitive, social, and emotional development. An unanswered question, however, is about the relative contributions of parenting quality in infancy and in early childhood to disparities in child cognitive and socioemotional development by age five,...

Adolescent sleep deprivation is a pressing public health issue in the United States as well as other countries. The contexts of adolescents’ lives are changing rapidly, but little is known about the factors that adolescents themselves believe affect their sleep. This study uses a social-ecological framework to investigate multiple levels of perceiv...

Over 50% of mothers in rural Mexico have high depressive symptoms, and their children's health and development are likely to be negatively affected. A critical question is whether children vary in their vulnerability to the effects of high maternal depressive symptoms according to their indigenous ethnicity, maternal education, or household wealth....

Background The prevalence of obesity among Latino children is alarmingly high, when compared to non-Latino White children. Low-income Latino parents living in urban areas, even if they are well-educated, face obstacles that shape familial health behaviors. This study used qualitative methods to explore parents’ experiences in providing meals and op...

Mothers' feeding practices are associated with their children's weight status, but little is known about the associations between fathers' feeding practices and children's weight status. Moreover, there is a dearth of research on Latino fathers' feeding practices and children's weight status, even though Latino children suffer some of the highest o...

This meta-analysis of 20 studies (including a total of 26,302 children) examined effects of political violence exposure for Jewish Israeli, Arab Israeli and Palestinian youth from 12 years of research in the Middle East conflict. The meta-analysis found a small relation between exposure and all symptoms examined, namely posttraumatic, behavioral an...

In recent decades, there has been much important international attention to promoting the healthy development of young children and investing resources in human capital development programs focused on early childhood education and nutrition, especially among those families experiencing intergenerational poverty (Daelmans et al., 2015). While th...

Youth-led participatory action research (YPAR) is an approach to scientific inquiry and social change grounded in principles of equity that engages young people in identifying problems relevant to their own lives, conducting research to understand the problems, and advocating for changes based on research evidence. This chapter provides an introduc...

This paper presents the conceptual framework from a nationwide implementation of the Dream Teens project in the context of Portugal’s economic recession. This project used an innovative Positive Youth Development (PYD) approach that engaged Portuguese youth (11-18 years) through social media, and provided a framework for their voices to be heard wh...

A cutting-edge study showcases the emergence of contemporary youth activism in the United States, its benefits to young people, its role in strengthening society, and its powerful social justice implications. At a time when youth are too often dismissed as either empowered consumers or disempowered deviants, it is vital to understand how these youn...

The exploration of social networking sites (SNS) in promoting social change efforts offers great potential within the field of community psychology. Online communities on SNS provide opportunities for bridging across groups, thus fostering the exchange of novel ideas and practices. Currently, there have only been limited efforts to examine SNS with...

This article reviews three emergent measures of critical consciousness (CC), which refers to marginalized or oppressed people’s critical reflection on oppressive social, economic, or political conditions, the motivation to address perceived injustice, and action taken to counter such injustice in a liberatory manner (Freire, 1973; Watts, Diemer, &...

This article examines the experiences of 25 youth of color living in East Oakland, California. Building on empirical studies examining violence prevention efforts on the behalf of and among youth and using an ethnographic approach, this study samples young people, with varying levels of education, income, and motivation for involvement, attending t...

Administrators and teachers face changes prompted by the shift to Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) offers a promising approach to supporting students in mastering new content standards, while also offering experiences that promote their sociopolitical develop...

Afghanistan and Iraq veterans experienced traumas during deployment, and disrupted connections with friends and family. In this context, it is critical to understand the nature of veterans' transition to civilian life, the challenges navigated, and approaches to reconnection. We investigated these issues in a qualitative study, framed by homecoming...

This review provides a comprehensive investigation of the pattern and strength of findings in the literature regarding the environmental moderators of the relationship between exposure to community violence and mental health among children and adolescents. Twenty-nine studies met criteria for inclusion in our analysis of family, school, and communi...

Youth-led Participatory Action Research (YPAR)—in which young people conduct research aimed at improving problems in their schools and communities—is increasing in public health, youth development, and education. We report on the development and psychometric testing of the YPAR Process Template (YPT)—to assess the quality of key YPAR processes in a...

Decreasing access to competitive foods in schools has produced only modest effects on adolescents' eating patterns. This qualitative case study investigated persistent barriers to healthful eating among students attending an ethnically diverse middle school in a working-class urban neighborhood that had banned on campus competitive food sales. Part...

Context: Although a rights-based approach to sexuality education has been increasingly discussed in the past decade, documented consensus regarding the goals, concepts and underlying assumptions of this approach is lacking. Differences in the assumed meaning of a rights-based approach can limit discussions of its implementation and evaluation, and...

To present normative values of mean sleep duration from adolescence through young adulthood (ages 13-32 years), prevalence of short (<6 hours) and long (>10 hours) sleep durations, and differences in each by sex and race/ethnicity. Mean sleep duration and prevalence of extremely short and long sleep were estimated using data from the United States...

Young Latinos in the United States are at high risk for STDs and are less likely than other youth to use condoms. To our knowledge, no studies have examined the relationship between sexual values and condom negotiation strategies among young Latinos. Cross-sectional data collected in 2003-2006 from 571 Latino women and men aged 16-22 in the San Fra...

This study of 151 Mexican American adolescents ages 12 to 15 examined the relationship between parenting and adolescents’ self-reported level of depressive symptoms and substance use 6 months and 1 year later. Adolescents and their parents were recruited from a large health-maintenance organization and interviewed at three time points. Lower levels...

Background: Sleep plays an important role in cognitive and emotional function and is an essential determinant of health and well-being. Sleeping less is associated with higher levels of depressive symptoms (DS) during adolescence, but the causal direction of this association is not clear. It is also not clear whether the association of DS and sleep...

This multi-method study examines tensions in the practice of youth-led participatory research (YPAR) in urban high schools among 15 semester-cohorts. Student participants in the present study were 77 ethnically diverse youth from four high schools in a major metropolitan school district. Data were gathered using systematic classroom observations, i...

Although there is much practice of community-based participatory research in economically-developing countries and increasingly in North America, there has been little systematic assessment of empowerment effects. Youth-led participatory research holds particular promise for fostering positive development and civic participation among economically...

Prior research highlights the mismatch between adolescents' growing capacities for autonomy and the limited opportunities for influence in U.S. secondary schools. Youth-led participatory research (YPAR), an approach in which young people research and advocate for change on problems of concern to them, could increase students' autonomy in secondary...

This clinic- and community-based study of young women investigated the relationship between previous sexual abuse and early pregnancy, examining the effect of the developmental period in which sexual abuse occurred and type of sexual abuse, while also providing methodological advances in the assessment of distinctive sexual abuse and its sequelae....

Depression is a major cause of disability, particularly among women; poverty heightens the risk for depression. Beyond its direct effects, maternal depression can harm children's health and development. This study aimed to assess the effects of a large-scale anti-poverty programme in Mexico (Oportunidades) on maternal depressive symptoms. In 2003,...

Although there are an increasing number of youth development programs that aim to empower young people, there is a dearth of psychometrically sound measures that can be used to assess flexible youth-led organizing and participatory research approaches that tackle a wide range of social and community problems. This study developed and tested measure...

Late childhood and early adolescence represent a critical transition in the developmental and academic trajectory of youth, a time in which there is an upsurge in academic disengagement and psychopathology. PAR projects that can promote youth's sense of meaningful engagement in school and a sense of efficacy and mattering can be particularly powerf...

Understanding Latino youths' sexual values is key to informing HIV prevention efforts. Few studies have examined associations between culturally based sexual values and behaviors among Latinos. A sample of 839 sexually active Latinos aged 16-22 residing in San Francisco were interviewed in 2003-2006. Multiple regression and multinomial logistic reg...

The diffusion of school-based preventive interventions involves the balancing of high-fidelity implementation of empirically-supported programs with flexibility to permit local stakeholders to target the specific needs of their youth. There has been little systematic research that directly seeks to integrate research- and community-driven approache...

Governments are increasingly using conditional cash transfer programs to reduce the negative effects of poverty on children's development. These programs have demonstrated benefits for children's nutrition and physical development, but the effect of conditional cash transfers on children's behaviors has not been systematically evaluated. The object...

This study examines the shape of social class gradients for substance use among Mexican adolescents. Substance use and objective and subjective indicators of social class were assessed in house-to-house surveys conducted with 7614 Mexican adolescents in 2004. The sample was designed to be representative of the poorest urban communities in seven Mex...

We investigated the contributions of individual, family, and community-level factors for explaining anxiety symptoms among rural adolescents in Mexico. As part of a large-scale survey, 3,553 adolescents and their mothers from 333 poor, rural communities in seven Mexican states provided cross-sectional data on family level, socio-economic and psycho...

In the developing world, access to small, individual loans has been variously hailed as a poverty-alleviation tool - in the context of "microcredit" - but has also been criticized as "usury" and harmful to vulnerable borrowers. Prior studies have assessed effects of access to credit on traditional economic outcomes for poor borrowers, but effects o...

Supplemental Table 3. Mental Health Symptom Distribution at Follow-up within those Assigned to Treatment split by whether received loan or not.

We investigated the contributions of individual, family, and community-level factors for explaining alcohol use and smoking among rural Mexican adolescents. As part of a national survey, 3922 adolescents and their mothers from 333 poor, rural communities in seven Mexican states provided cross-sectional data on family-level, socioeconomic, and psych...

This study examined longitudinal associations between violence involvement, substance use, and sexual activity. A total of 302 urban Mexican-American and European-American adolescents were randomly selected and recruited from the membership lists of a large health maintenance organization. Data were obtained from interviews conducted when the mean...

To test the contribution of maternal depression during late infancy to physical activity in children 5 years later. Children (n = 168) from very low-income households in semiurban Mexico were assessed as toddlers (15 months, Time 1) and at pre-school age (4-6 years, Time 2). Child low activity level (<20 minutes of activity daily for <7 d/wk) at Ti...

This study tested whether violent victimization by peers was associated with alcohol and tobacco use among adolescents, and whether adaptive coping styles moderated associations. A total of 247 urban Mexican-American and European-American adolescents aged 16-20 years were interviewed. Independent of demographics and violent perpetration, adolescent...

A review of 2,647 studies of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) yielded 476 potential candidates for a meta-analysis of predictors of PTSD or of its symptoms. From these, 68 studies met criteria for inclusion in a meta-analysis of 7 predictors: (a) prior trauma, (b) prior psychological adjustment, (c) family history of psychopathology, (d) percei...

This article discusses the dissemination of a process of youth-led participatory research in urban secondary schools within the Interactive Systems Framework for Dissemination and Implementation (ISF) developed in collaboration with the CDC and its university partners (Wandersman et al. American Journal of Community Psychology, 41(3-4) 2008). The f...

Adolescents' perceived connection to school has been consistently associated with positive development across a range of domains, with strongest evidence for the quality of student-adult relationships in school as a core factor. Using a purposive sample of 32 high seniors from 9 urban schools who had participated in a quantitative study 5 years pri...

There are thousands of school gardens in the United States, and there is anecdotal evidence that school garden programs can enhance students' learning in academic, social, and health-related domains. There has been little rigorous research, however, on the effects of school gardens or on the factors that promote the sustainability of these programs...

This cross-sectional study examined exposure to violence as a predictor of mental health and perpetration of violence in a sample of 71 Chinese American young adolescents from nine urban middle schools. Separate hierarchical multiple regressions were used to predict self-reported symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), per...

This paper reviews the theoretical and practical importance of studying contextual factors in school-based violence prevention programs and provides a framework for evaluating factors at the classroom, school, and community/district level. Sixty-two published papers describing 38 different programs were reviewed; of these 16 were identified that re...

Findings from meta-analyses of predictors of PTSD suggest that using variables that are both more proximal to the event and more subjective than objective, such as peritraumatic dissociative experiences or subsequent social support, enhances prediction. Our examination of the knowledge base of predicting who develops PTSD appears to corroborate the...

This longitudinal school-based study examined school connection and family support as protective factors for adolescent mental health in the context of exposure to violence. After controlling for seventh grade functioning, recent exposure to violence uniquely predicted worsening of functioning from seventh to eighth grade across multiple self- and...

This paper describes a conceptual approach to understanding the impact of marital violence on preschoolers, examines the predictors and mediators of child behavioral problems in a clinical sample of multiethnic preschoolers who witnessed their mothers' battering by their father figure, and presents empirical evidence supporting the use of relations...

This study examined recent exposure to violence in the community and in other settings, protective factors, and current psychological functioning among 349 young adolescents from 9 urban middle schools. The majority (76%) of adolescents reported witnessing or being victimized by at least 1 violent event in the prior 6 months. Nearly half of adolesc...

Nearly half of U.S. adults experience at least one traumatic event in their lifetimes, yet only 10% of women and 5% of men develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Why this is so is among the most central questions in current PTSD research. This article reviews the current status of knowledge about who develops PTSD, discussing the strengths a...

To examine the co-occurrence and consistency over time of peer violence, sexual aggression, and dating violence among European American and Mexican-American adolescent boys and girls. One-hundred-twelve girls and 135 boys who were either European American or Mexican-American were recruited from a large health maintenance organization. They were int...

In most countries, adolescents' access to abortion is limited by restrictions on legal abortion. Abortion is legal in the United States, but many states require parental consent or notification. Legislation mandating parental consent has been justified by several assumptions, including high risk of psychological harm from abortion, adolescents' ina...

A review of 2,647 studies of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) yielded 476 potential candidates for a meta-analysis of predictors of PTSD or of its symptoms. From these, 68 studies met criteria for inclusion in a meta-analysis of 7 predictors: (a) prior trauma, (b) prior psychological adjustment, (c) family history of psychopathology, (d) percei...

This analysis synthesizes recent reports concerning future research on adolescent health and development; identifies broad-based trends in research priorities; describes gaps in the existing knowledge base; and suggests approaches for developing and implementing a national adolescent health research agenda. Priorities for research in four major con...

Peer-led, school-based interventions show promise for preventing AIDS among adolescents, but little is known about the processes underlying effective peer education or the conditions that promote its efficacy. This study examined the implementation in one school of an effective, peer-led AIDS prevention program for inner-city 7th-grade participants...

Peer‐led, school‐based interventions show promise for preventing AIDS among adolescents, but little is known about the processes underlying effective peer education or the conditions that promote its efficacy. This study examined the implementation in one school of an effective, peer‐led AIDS prevention program for inner‐city 7th‐grade participants...

This article explores traditional and contemporary sex roles of Indian women. It emphasizes the renewing power of the feminine—a creative, healing balance that arises as traditional and contemporary strengths are brought together. The survival of the extended family throughout two hundred years of governmental policy attests to Indian women's resil...