Navigating Complexity: Ethical and Methodological Insights from a Trauma-Informed Participatory Action Research Study with Young People in Sport for Development

Abstract

Participatory action research (PAR) has been increasingly used in sport for development research due to its potential to challenge hegemonic forms of knowledge production within sport contexts. Drawing on the youth and feminist action literature, we explore the methodological and ethical challenges of conducting participatory research as young academic researchers collaborating with young coaches as community collaborators. This article calls for greater transparency in how researchers conduct YPAR, whether it is youth-centred or youth-led, and underscores the utility of a feminist lens and trauma- and violence-informed framework in grounding critical reflexivity throughout the research process. These contributions aim to advance ethically grounded, trauma-informed action research projects with young people in sport and physical activity settings.

1. Introduction

Research–practice partnerships facilitate knowledge praxis by enabling communities to articulate their own needs and priorities, while also enhancing the relevance and usability of research findings for those most impacted by them. Hence, research–practice partnerships that centre the voices of children and young people are essential for mobilizing social change within these communities (Johnson, 2017). There has been increased uptake in participatory approaches to sport and physical activity research (Rich et al., 2024), alongside increased engagement in participatory research with youth in sport for development (SFD) (i.e., Luguetti et al., 2022). Youth sport for development—the use of sport to promote social change among young people—has been a recognized ‘movement’; that, in recent years, has gained increased momentum through the rise of new initiatives, organizations, funding opportunities and scholarly attention (Whitley et al., 2017). A commonly recognized definition of SFD is “the use of sport to exert a positive influence on public health, the socialization of children, youths and adults, the social inclusion of the disadvantaged, the economic development of regions and states, and on fostering intercultural exchange and conflict resolution” (Lyras & Welty Peachey, 2011, p. 311).

In the past decade, researchers have suggested that SFD initiatives have the potential to challenge or perpetuate key global issues, depending on their approach, and have called on researchers to integrate participatory methodologies to ensure local community knowledge is represented (Chawansky et al., 2019). One prominent participatory approach in SFD research is participatory action research (PAR), which integrates action-oriented methodologies to address pressing social issues while fostering solidarity with impacted communities (Rich et al., 2024). SFD scholars have taken up several different iterations of PAR, including decolonial feminist digital PAR (Hayhurst, in press) and youth PAR (Luguetti et al., 2022), as a means of co-creating knowledge and including participants within the research process (Smith et al., 2020). Despite these significant strides, romanticized claims of PAR projects “are often shaped by power dynamics and fraught with tensions” (Smith et al., 2024, p. 18), and a limited number of studies examine the complexities associated with the dual role youth researchers occupy when conducting research with youth through a PAR approach. This dual role involves critical reflexivity, as young people navigate their positions as researchers and members of the youth community.

There are various definitions to describe the child and youth age group, dependent on culture and context. In recent years, Canada has expanded their youth bracket to persons up to age 29, with many research studies following suit with their definitions of youth (i.e., Manson & Fast, 2024; Ramsay et al., 2023). This may be due to the large percentage of youth who are living at home longer, thus extending their transition from youth to adulthood and independence (Finn, 2016). Henceforth, this paper adopts the definition of youth outlined by the Government of Canada, as “those in the stage of life from adolescence to early adulthood. […] between the ages of 15 to 29” (Government of Canada, 2021, para. 1).

This research is grounded in feminist and youth PAR, guided by “an embodied commitment to mutuality, negotiation, and struggling for relational collectivity” (Goessling, 2024, p. 50). Youth participatory action research (YPAR) has been a widely used approach within SFD contexts to adhere to the practices (i.e., social inclusion and development) mentioned in the definition of SFD (Lyras & Welty Peachey, 2011). Feminist approaches to PAR offer critical insight into the gendered dynamics shaping participants’ experiences in SFD programs (Hayhurst et al., 2021). However, and while researchers strive to use PAR to implement equitable research practices within SFD contexts, ethical and methodological complexities between researchers and participants often go unacknowledged in the literature, despite emerging contributions that address these challenges (Giles et al., 2024; Nachman et al., 2024). This paper offers an in-depth exploration of the complexities of conducting feminist oriented YPAR with young men in SFD and offers pathways for infusing trauma-informed practices into participatory research.

Research on the integration of feminist approaches within YPAR in sport contexts remains limited; however, scholars suggest that using feminist orientations in YPAR can serve as a valuable tool to unpack the lived realities of youth (Goessling, 2024), particularly racialized girls and young women (Crenshaw & Evans-Winters, 2024). For instance, Payne (2023) suggests when using a Black/Hip Hop feminist lens, YPAR methodologies can enable Black girls and women to draw on feminist theories and practices rooted in their own experiences to examine issues affecting their social realities. Similarly, we suggest that drawing on feminist orientations of PAR may highlight the diverse complexities involved in conducting YPAR with young men in SFD, and elucidate the gendered nuances that influenced these complexities. Uniquely, this may be the first qualitative study drawing from feminist YPAR to collaborate with young adult coaches who identify as men, introducing distinct relational positionalities and complexities that we navigated using a trauma- and violence-informed care (TVIC) framework. TVIC emphasizes understanding and raising awareness of systemic, structural, and interpersonal forms of violence and trauma, while centring on the intersectional dimensions of violence as they relate to gender and other social identities (Vertommen et al., 2024; Wathen & Varcoe, 2019, 2021). To elaborate and provide anecdotal contributions to this topic in the literature, this article highlights the potential of a feminist lens applied to YPAR with young men in SFD while underscoring the ethical and methodological complexities of fostering equitable, trauma-informed research partnerships with youth.

To unfold this complex topic, we have structured this paper as follows. First, we review the application of PAR in SFD, with a focus on how two iterations—YPAR and FPAR—have been integrated into the sport and physical activity literature. Then, we briefly outline how TVIC served as both a guiding principle and an applied framework throughout our research. This is followed by an overview of the research context of our PAR study and an introduction to our roles as researchers and volunteers within an SFD program primarily run by young adults and serving children in Ontario, Canada. To maintain anonymity, the organization will be referred to as GameChangers. Subsequently, we outline our approach to critical reflexivity in PAR, guided by a trauma- and violence-informed care (TVIC) framework (Vertommen et al., 2024), and discuss the ethical and methodological complexities we experienced while employing a feminist-oriented (Reid & Frisby, 2008), youth-centred PAR approach (Rodriguez & Brown, 2009). Finally, we discuss the implications of our methodological framework and propose future directions for researchers utilizing PAR with young people in sport and physical activity contexts.

2. Participatory Action Research in Sport for Development

PAR projects redefine traditional notions of expertise by positioning research participants as co-researchers (Fine & Torre, 2019). This approach encourages collaboration and embraces disagreements between research teams, “where very differently positioned co-researchers come together to grapple with a common concern” (Fine & Torre, 2019, pp. 434–435). Academics in the field of SFD have underscored the importance of employing participatory research methodologies to contest conventional portrayals of program participants and actively include them as co-researchers to share their knowledge and lived experiences (Hayhurst et al., 2015; Hayhurst, 2020; McGarry et al., 2023; McSweeney, 2023; Nachman et al., 2024).

The field of PAR has advanced significantly over the past few years and has extended to recognize knowledge production centring on the perspectives of children and youth as co-researchers, an approach known as youth participatory action research (YPAR) (Goessling, 2024). When YPAR is coupled with feminist theory, researchers are compelled to draw attention to power relations and structures of oppression that young individuals can be impacted by (Goessling, 2024). This section discusses these two iterations of PAR—YPAR and feminist-oriented (F)PAR—and briefly describes the application of these methodologies to the study of sport, physical activity, and SFD.

2.1. Feminist-Oriented PAR

A variety of studies have applied feminist critiques to PAR as a methodology within sport and physical activity contexts (i.e., Chakma, 2016; Hayhurst et al., 2021; Reid et al., 2006). Feminist approaches to PAR studies centre on gender and women’s diverse experiences by challenging forms of patriarchy (Reid & Frisby, 2008). Gender and women’s experiences are central to FPAR “in giving explicit attention to how women and men, and those who do not identify with either of these gender binary categories, benefit from action-oriented research (or not)” (Reid & Frisby, 2008, p. 97).

Researchers have applied feminist critiques to PAR in SFD to challenge unequal power relations and disrupt heteropatriarchal legacies in SFD (Hayhurst et al., 2021). Postcolonial FPAR research approaches have been taken up in SFD research to recognize the colonial underpinnings of SFD and challenge traditional hierarchies (Hayhurst et al., 2021). SFD programs are often led by Global North practitioners and scholars and implemented in Global South countries (Hayhurst et al., 2021). A postcolonial FPAR approach thus aims to confront Eurocentric discourses, decentre hegemonic forms of knowledge production, and acknowledge “the nuances, messiness, and complexities of Global North-South research collaborations and funding relations with the goal of producing new sport for development and peace scholars, practitioners, and policymakers” (Hayhurst et al., 2021, p. 47). Furthermore, FPAR can allow researchers to understand how knowledge is formed, relationship building with participants, and the benefits (or lack of) that research studies can have on those being researched (Smith et al., 2020). Feminist critiques to PAR heavily inform our research and collaborative partnerships, particularly because of our interest in centring on gender as a point of analysis in our work, and because we all identify as women and resonate with the diverse lived experiences of women. We used several interrelated dimensions of FPAR to inform this project, including the following: (1) centring on gender and women’s diverse experiences while challenging forms of patriarchy; (2) foregrounding an intersectional feminist lens; (3) honouring voice and difference through participatory research processes (for example, in collaboration with the Community Advisory Board); and (4) upholding reflexivity throughout the research process (Reid & Frisby, 2008). In the next section, we discuss YPAR, the approach our research methodology became, centring on the lived experiences of the youth coaches we collaborated with.

2.2. YPAR

Children and youth across the globe often face complex challenges including war and disasters, racial and social injustices, social isolation, mental and health disparities, etc. (Nash et al., 2024; Lee et al., 2022). As such, young people now more than ever need opportunities and resources that can support their well-being and allow them to exercise their agency to create meaningful change (Nash et al., 2024). Various critical youth scholars have integrated YPAR to engage with young individuals to understand their lives and to critically analyze the social and cultural factors that surround their communities (Cammarota & Fine, 2008; Luguetti et al., 2022). YPAR often involves young individuals (i.e., children and youth) to construct knowledge, navigate and address social issues by forming youth–adult relationships during the research process (Anyon et al., 2018). Additionally, YPAR can often be viewed as a decolonial methodology as it challenges structures of power and redefines who is ‘allowed’ to conduct and design research (Luguetti et al., 2022).

Various studies have highlighted the effectiveness and advantages of utilizing YPAR in studies involving youth from diverse contexts (i.e., Hopper & McHugh, 2020; McGarry et al., 2023; Smith et al., 2020). Specifically, SFD scholarship has advocated for a transformative approach to dismantle colonial ideologies of ‘assimilating’ individuals to follow Western culture and to challenge inequitable structures (Darnell & Millington, 2024; Hartmann & Kwauk, 2011; Luguetti et al., 2022). Indeed, working collaboratively with youth may lead to meaningful connections and significant insights into the lived experiences of youth in sport and recreation (Hopper & McHugh, 2020). However, the challenges that youth researchers face when conducting research collaboratively with other young people remains understudied. Particularly, limited research explores secondary traumatic stress experienced by youth researchers when engaging in PAR (Giles et al., 2024). We discuss how we mitigated secondary traumatic stress and research–participant power relations using a TVIC framework below.

3. Applying TVIC to PAR

To maintain a critically reflexive PAR approach and mitigate the stress and emotional labour associated with participatory research projects (Giles et al., 2024), we integrated a TVIC framework (Wathen & Varcoe, 2021). Similar to anti-racist methods (McGarry et al., 2023), a TVIC approach shifts away from deficit-based framing and embraces strengths-based and capacity-building strategies to enhance the design and delivery of interventions (Singh et al., 2020). In physical activity and sport settings, including SFD programs, TVIC accounts for systemic and structural forms of violence in the development and delivery of programs (Darroch et al., 2023; Ferreira Gomes et al., 2024). To effectively integrate TVIC into SFD contexts, researchers must engage in ongoing reflexivity regarding their positionalities and critically examine their positions of privilege and power, which can contribute to creating or sustaining oppressive and traumatic conditions (Teixeira & Kennedy, 2022).

Importantly, TVIC does not require the disclosure of an individual’s trauma (Darroch et al., 2022). As researchers, we recognize that programming and research design may exacerbate symptoms related to violence and trauma (Darroch et al., 2022). To address this, rather than insisting on youth participation, we allowed participants to sit out or take breaks when needed (Darroch et al., 2022). By doing this, we were able to better understand how different individual personalities and experiences shape young peoples’ engagement with SFD programming.

As youth researchers (Julia and Isra), we were attuned to the fact that young people might not always have the capacity to fully engage in research activities or programming. Our dual roles as youth and researchers afforded us relational opportunities to connect with youth coaches on a personal level, ensuring we were creating a space that would support feelings of safety and trust while young people engaged in the SFD programs and research activities.

While balancing the needs of youth collaborators–researchers, we sought to mitigate the stressors inherent in engaging with a PAR approach. Giles et al. (2024) highlight the phenomenon of secondary traumatic stress experienced by researchers when employing participatory approaches and emphasize the importance of developing “robust professional and personal self-care plans” (p. 79). As graduate students (Julia and Isra), self-care is often deprioritized, as we tend to focus on the concerns of our participants while juggling other professional responsibilities, such as academic and work commitments (Giles et al., 2024). However, what ultimately served as a self-care mechanism and alleviated some of our stress was peer-to-peer support. Our positive and collaborative relationship allowed for emotionally safe conversations about discomforting experiences, offering one another validation and support throughout the research process. In this section, we discuss the ethical and methodological complexities of conducting feminist-oriented PAR with young people and maintaining a critically reflexive, TVIC framework.

4. Research Context: Positioning Ourselves Within SFD

Over the summer of 2024, we conducted research with young adults coaching an SFD program for children in Ontario, Canada, which we will refer to as GameChangers. GameChangers is a life skill-focused SFD organization, primarily run and operated by youth, that offers separate soccer programs for self-identified girls and for all genders. This research project was part of a larger research study exploring the utility of TVIC in SFD to support youth survivors of sexual and gender-based violence across Canada. Informed consent was obtained from all research participants, including youth coaches and parents of child participants. The overarching project involved the recruitment of a community-based research assistant to engage in all steps of the research study; the creation of a community advisory board (including two coaches and two parents) to oversee the study’s creation, direction, design, analyses and usage of the research; and ongoing consultation with key stakeholders, particularly program participants and coaches. Herein, we focus our discussion on the embodied nature and gendered, relational complexities of power sharing and the co-production of knowledge with young male coaches. Our YPAR approach aimed to centre on the knowledge of community collaborators to develop TVIC training recommendations and better meet the needs of youth SFD coaches. We refer to the youth coaches who participated in community advisory board meetings and consultative dialogues that informed the study’s direction and contributed substantive knowledge to this PAR project as community collaborators rather than co-researchers. Co-researchers are defined as “people with lived experiences who are active agents in the co-production (co-design or co-creation) of new knowledge as a core characteristic of PAR” (Lenette, 2022, p. 2). As detailed later in the manuscript, the community-based researcher initially recruited for the project withdrew due to capacity constraints. Similarly, we were unable to formally recruit a coach as a co-researcher due to capacity constraints within the organization. Nonetheless, community collaborators played active and meaningful roles in shaping the research through dialogical engagement in the training process, analysis of coach interviews (n = 12), interpretation of findings, and development of organizational recommendations. We sought to address power imbalances through critical reflexivity and a trauma- and violence-informed care (TVIC) approach. This was enacted through monthly formal and weekly informal consultation meetings, where community advisory board meetings and program sessions acted as sites of knowledge production. We documented these meetings through reflexive field notes following each occurrence, and actively sought community collaborators’ perspectives, feedback, needs, and motivations regarding the use and impact of the research.

During our time volunteering at GameChangers conducting research, our aim was to build rapport with youth coaches and support their use of the trauma-informed sport practices they learned in the training. We supported youth coaches’ facilitation of the programs by volunteering and assisting with gameplay and organizational set-up. At this time, our relational experience as youth afforded us relatability and a degree of sameness with the coaches. Though Julia and Isra’s identities as youth afforded us relatability amongst the coaches, our shared identity did not denote complete sameness (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009). We were still operating within the space as academic researchers, and oftentimes were not active in our roles as volunteers facilitating SFD programs because we were preoccupied with our research responsibilities for the larger study at hand (i.e., getting consent from parents for their child athletes to participate in the study). Further, the extent to which we volunteered actively in the program took a sharp downturn once we started collecting data with the coaches and child athletes, which oftentimes entailed us interviewing community members on-site and during program sessions. Herein, the messiness of our experience trying to implement a PAR approach is outlined. Our aim was to fully support the programmatic elements of GameChangers and support the implementation of TVIC training while dually engaging in collaborative research. While we grounded our study in a PAR design, the realities of implementation revealed tensions between participatory intentions and the structural constraints of the project. Although we were not able to fully realize a co-research model, we did incorporate key elements of feminist and youth PAR—such as reflexivity, community engagement, a critical gender lens, and responsiveness to participant feedback—throughout the process. These elements shaped both our methodological choices and our evolving understanding of what meaningful participation could look like in this context. Ultimately, these experiences led us to more explicitly integrate TVIC—not only as a training framework—but also as a critical lens for examining our own research practices and positionalities. In the next section, we delve further into how our positionalities furthered the complexities and what is often referred to as the ‘messiness’ of applying a PAR approach.

5. Reflecting on Our Positionality

Oftentimes, reflexivity in writing comprises what is referred to as a “shopping list” of social identities of the authors that takes the form of “confessional positionality” (Johnson & Rose, 2024, p. 9). However, listing our subjectivities and positioning them solely in a one-paragraph-length section fails to wholly consider and interrogate how these social locations influence the entire research process, from conceptualization to final write-up (Johnson & Rose, 2024). Similarly, in our own work, we have come to wrestle with the extent to which we should centre our subjectivities while using a participatory-led approach. That said, many of our positionalities are important to foreground as they indeed shape and invoke nuance to our PAR approach. Indeed, “our positionalities are how our subjectivities relate to the research project at hand and are necessary for us to document and articulate” (Johnson & Rose, 2024, p. 7). Our aim for this section, then, is to situate ourselves within the research to provide contextual understanding to our readers. Then, we maintain a critical self-evaluation of our positionality (including, but not limited to, our experiences, ideas, mistakes, and reactions) in the remainder of this paper.

At this point in the article, we believe it is worth introducing ourselves, as researchers in Kinesiology and Health Sciences, and to state our involvement within this field of research. We have adapted the approach of Meir (2024), where our professional and personal reflections do not shape our arguments but rather illustrate how our participation in and knowledge of SFD have informed our reflections.

Julia is a doctoral candidate at York University with five years of experience in SFD research. Her work draws on PAR and TVIC frameworks, with a focus on community-engaged approaches to health and equity. Isra is completing her master’s degree and will soon begin doctoral studies, also at York University. With three years of SFD research experience, she has worked with youth-focused programs in both Global North and South contexts, applying FPAR and decolonial feminist approaches to examine policy development in child and youth sport. Lyndsay is a senior academic with extensive experience in feminist participatory and decolonial research methodologies. As supervisor to Julia and Isra, she has provided foundational guidance in shaping the theoretical and methodological foundations of this work. Together, we are grounded in a shared commitment to PAR as a means of fostering social change in collaboration with equity-deserving communities.

Collectively, we approach this research through a shared commitment to FPAR as a means of fostering social change in collaboration with equity-deserving communities.

Herein, we discuss the duality of Julia and Isra’s experience as youth conducting research with youth coaching SFD, with the support of a middle-aged participant who is a parent to four children (Lyndsay). Indeed, with some exceptions (Jardine & James, 2012), there are few studies that explore the experiences of youth researching youth within a participatory framework. However, Jardine and James (2012) asserted that in their study on tobacco use, “using youth to research other youth within a participatory research framework had many benefits for the quality of the research, the youth researchers and the community.” (p. 1). Jardine and James (2012) further cement the utility of a youth-researching-youth approach as reliable by stating “from a research perspective, more valid and credible results were obtained.” (p. 6). Indeed, both Julia and Isra are within the same age range as many of the youth coaches facilitating GameChangers. However, most of the youth coaches at GameChangers identified as men, and all of the youth coaches who acted as community collaborators in this project were men (n = 3). This shaped relational dynamics in ways that differed from our experiences of being socialized as women.

One incident that profoundly impacted Isra’s sense of safety and positionality occurred during data collection at the GameChangers program, when two male-presenting community members began deliberately hitting her parked car in what seemed to be an attempt to pressure her to move it from the tarmac. The tarmac, commonly used by parents and guardians attending programs, was where Isra had parked to facilitate the transport of research materials (e.g., table, chairs, paperwork). Despite calmly explaining this and noting that the parking was in accordance with city by-laws, the men became more hostile towards Isra. When Isra approached community collaborators for support, coaches remained passive. This moment underscored the complex and often unspoken gendered power dynamics that can surface in participatory research settings. While FPAR emphasizes the co-creation of knowledge and the disruption of hierarchical structures (Reid & Frisby, 2008; Tremblay & de Oliveira Jayme, 2015), this experience revealed the limitations of those ideals in practice. Rather than embodying the equitable ethos of PAR—where power and privilege are meant to be shared (Wood & McAteer, 2017)—this encounter exposed the persistence of patriarchal hierarchies that remained unaddressed within the field site. It served as a critical reminder that PAR is not inherently equitable, and that researchers must remain attentive to the ways in which structural inequalities can shape, constrain, or even undermine participatory intentions. In response, we became more intentional in how we approached safety, accountability, and care within our research relationships through a TVIC approach. This included building in more structured opportunities for reflection, seeking support from mentors and allies outside the immediate field site, and re-evaluating our assumptions about shared power. These adaptations did not resolve all tensions, but they allowed us to engage more ethically and reflexively with the communities we worked alongside, acknowledging that participation is always situated, and that equity must be actively negotiated rather than assumed.

6. Discussion: Applying TVIC to PAR with Young People

Similarly, researchers suggest that reflexivity is imperative to FPAR, and, as such, we reflected on our relational positionalities through reflexive field notes and engaged in ongoing dialogue with coaches about the research project in both formal settings, such as in community advisory board meetings, and informal settings, including during our time volunteering at GameChangers. What is important to note here is that the coaches in the community advisory board all identified as male. GameChangers had a strong male presence, as young adult males operated in head coach and director roles, whereas coaches who identified as women were significantly less involved in program planning, facilitation, and training.

Throughout our research and programming with GameChangers, we prioritized fostering safe, supportive and collaborative environments. We worked closely with the youth coaches to ensure that young participants could exercise their agency in choosing whether or not to participate in physical activity sessions (Darroch et al., 2024). Below, we discuss the ethical and methodological complexities of implementing a PAR approach as youth (Julia and Isra) collaborating with other young adults, alongside Lyndsay, our supervisor, and highlight the gendered nuances that shaped our interactions.

6.1. Ethical Complexities

Ethical issues often occur in YPAR due to unequal power dynamics between youth and adult researchers (Teixeira et al., 2021). One might assume that, as young, early-career researchers collaborating with youth, Julia and Isra may not face the same degree of challenges as older adult researchers working with youth. However, though they were sometimes afforded a degree of relational closeness to the youth participants by holding membership within that group, they were outsiders as academics, operating in “conjunction and disjunction” (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009, p. 60). It is important to highlight the various ethical complexities and unexpected turmoil we faced while engaging in YPAR with GameChangers, which this section will explore. Specifically, this section builds on and resonates with ethical complexities that have been identified by other researchers conducting YPAR in both similar and distinct contexts (i.e., Loveridge et al., 2024; Luguetti et al., 2022). However, our study is unique in that it brings together feminist, youth-centred, trauma-informed approaches within an SFD setting, while also critically reflecting on our positionalities as young adult researchers navigating gendered power dynamics.

Before delving into the ethical issues we navigated, it is critical that we foreground the approach we took to address these challenges. Using TVIC practices alongside reflexivity, we were able to adapt to participatory challenges while safeguarding the emotional, cultural, and physical safety of youth engaged in SFD (Ferreira Gomes et al., 2023). Aligning ourselves with this TVIC reflexive approach, we adapted the medical principle to ‘first, do not harm’ (Vertommen et al., 2024). This philosophy underscored our PAR approach, ensuring that the best interests of the youth coaches were prioritized, particularly during sensitive discussions around identity, safety, gender relations, and violence. Further, by implementing the principle ‘do no harm,’ guided our interviews with youth coaches and shaped our conversations with young participants, ensuring they were conducted with awareness and sensitivity to minimize the risk of (re)traumatization or harm.

A TVIC framework involves creating safe(r) and culturally sensitive environments when conducting research activities (Lalonde et al., 2022), ensuring participants and community collaborators feel emotionally safe and included when discussing complex issues. When addressing ethical issues, we strived to do so in a professional manner, acknowledging all voices and opinions while mitigating risks of harm or (re)traumatization of youth participants. Since the scope of this research explored how youth coaches could support youth survivors of sexual and gender-based violence participating in SFD, the principle ‘first, do no harm’ facilitated our understanding of related terminology and concepts, thereby enhancing our ability to navigate complex topics related to gender relations and violence among youth (Vertommen et al., 2024). Particularly when engaging with populations who have experienced sexual and gender-based violence and trauma, it is important to recognize that participant engagement and interaction may take diverse forms, necessitating additional flexibilities to ensure a sense of safety and autonomy (Vertommen et al., 2024).

Throughout this research project, we supported youth autonomy to engage or reject participation in research activities. For instance, while we encouraged all youth coaches to complete the TVI sport training, participate in the interviews, and engage in shareback meetings, some youth members chose not to participate in research activities. Furthermore, adhering to the principle ‘do no harm’ helped ensure participant autonomy and agency to withdraw from participation in the research project at any time (Vertommen et al., 2024). While this aligns with ethical principles of voluntary participation, it also meant that not all voices were equally represented in the co-construction of knowledge. As a result, our ability to fully embrace the collaborative and collective ethos of PAR was constrained. The uneven levels of engagement highlighted the challenges of fostering sustained participation in contexts where power, interest, and capacity to engage vary, particularly when working with youth navigating multiple responsibilities.

Before initiating this PAR project and starting data collection, the research team visited the programming site to build rapport with the youth participants. This approach aimed to establish strong relationships that would provide a solid foundation for the project, a practice supported by the literature advocating for trust-building and sustainable relationships with research participants (Horn et al., 2011). Given Julia and Isra’s close age proximity to many of the youth coaches at GameChangers, one might assume that building trust would be straightforward. However, paradoxically, as academics engaging with sport coaches, we struggled to ‘break the ice’, particularly since many of the youth coaches identified as men. While we, as self-identified women researchers and academics, occupied a distinct position within the group, gender and power relations likely influenced the challenges we faced in fostering research relationships with the youth. To navigate gendered dynamics, it was of the utmost importance for us to engage in reflexivity to understand how knowledge is contested and co-created particularly within male-dominated spaces (Smith et al., 2020).

Reflecting on our positionalities, we occupied a liminal space between ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009; Mohler & Rudman, 2022). From our perspectives, we operated in the ‘space between’ (Johnson & Rose, 2024), but to the youth coaches, we may have been perceived distinctly as outsiders attempting to impose our knowledge onto their program and community (Breen, 2007). This perception likely hindered the development of collaborative relationships with the youth coaches at the outset. Over time, we recognized that building rapport with this group would require patience, and making a consistent effort to support their work as coaches. Indeed, by the end of data collection, we had gradually developed strong rapport and connections with many youth coaches.

It became evident that youth coaches held divergent perspectives regarding the application of a TVIC lens to their coaching practices. Reflexivity created opportunities for us to capture the subjective experiences of the youth coaches and interrogate the methodological tensions with using a TVIC framework in SFD (Johnson & Rose, 2024). Applying TVIC tenets to our reflexive approach, we responded to divergent perspectives with supportive or empathic responses, acting as a stress buffer for critical dialogue (Woessner et al., 2023). For instance, head coaches would traditionally assign drills to groups of children, and supporting coaches would facilitate those drills with the children. Occasionally, children would protest their participation in drills, expressing “do we have to do that one?” Wearing our insider/outsider hats as volunteer coaches and researchers, we realized that the children were not being provided enough opportunities for choice and collaboration with the coaches, and, as such, we helped to facilitate these opportunities for the children participating in programs by debriefing with coaches about how we can provide more choice for the participants. We were first met with some opposition, with coaches saying that offering several different drills and activities for the children to choose from would be laboursome. Through collaborative dialogue, we explored how the training could support coaches in facilitating trauma-informed programs for children while also managing their workload. Drawing on relevant research, we co-developed strategies to promote peer support among children, along with coaching prompts to encourage looking out for one another and signaling to a coach when additional support is needed.

Additionally, and as Loveridge et al. (2024) highlight, obtaining ongoing consent from youth coach participants posed persistent difficulties. Consistent with other YPAR projects, consent in this study was an iterative process that required continuous monitoring to ensure that youth participating fully understood the nature and implications of their involvement (Loveridge et al., 2024). To facilitate this iterative process, consent forms were provided to youth participants a couple weeks prior to data collection, allowing for time to reflect on project details, ask questions, and provide feedback before engaging in data collection activities. However, retrieving completed physical consent forms proved to be a significant challenge, particularly when participants misplaced these documents. To mitigate this issue, we offered online consent forms to ensure we had digital copies as a secondary record. Drawing on our relational experiences, we were able to critically reflect on challenges youth participants faced in balancing their dual roles as youth coaches and collaborators–researchers. A TVIC framework recognizes that barriers to participation and access are often rooted in broader structural and social conditions (Vertommen et al., 2024). Adopting a TVIC framework served as a mechanism for gaining an expansive understanding of the barriers to participation that people face (Vertommen et al., 2024).

6.2. Methodological Complexities

Methodological complexities arose throughout the research process, particularly due to the interrelated roles that FPAR and YPAR played in our research and collaboration with youth coaches. In this section, we reflect on the guiding principles of YPAR (Rodriguez & Brown, 2009) and FPAR (Reid & Frisby, 2008), discussing how our work aligned with and diverged from these tenets.

Rodriguez and Brown (2009) conceptualize YPAR through three key principles. The first guiding principle is a commitment to inquiry-based research, wherein the knowledge produced reflects and addresses the needs and lived experiences of youth researchers (Rodriguez & Brown, 2009). Similarly, FPAR aims to directly serve social justice aims, empower marginalized groups, and affect social change (Johnson & Flynn, 2021). Indeed, our research was concerned with topics of inquiry that reflect broader trends at large in youth sport that point to the need for safeguarding child and youth athletes from violence (Mountjoy et al., 2015, 2020, 2022). Community collaborators’ participation and engagement in monthly CAB meetings, weekly program catch-ups, and consultative dialogue helped us to centre youth coach experiences, honour their perspectives, and address their needs. For instance, coaches expressed that they needed practical examples of how to respond to children’s disruptive behaviour and establish boundaries with child athletes. As such, we implemented community collaborator feedback so that the training could better meet the needs of all youth coaches at GameChangers.

The second principle of YPAR is to engage in meaningful participatory research. This involves developing critical questions throughout the research process to identify important themes and interpret data (Rodriguez & Brown, 2009). Similarly, feminist-oriented approaches to PAR call for participatory research designs that centre on participants’ lived experiences through collective dialogue (Reid & Frisby, 2008). Our PAR approach aligned with this commitment to participation through the creation of a CAB that oversaw the creation, development, implementation, and analysis of the research project. During the implementation stage, we provided opportunities for coaches to share feedback by holding “open hours” on Zoom, where coaches could drop in. We scheduled these open hours based on the coaches’ indicated availability. Despite these efforts, no coaches attended the two “open hours” Zoom sessions we held. During advisory board meetings, we posed discussion questions based on preliminary analysis, conducted consultation with coaches over augmentation of training, provided drafts of analysis, and held meetings specifically to gather feedback and shape findings. This approach aligns with other sport scholars’ uptake of YPAR in Canadian contexts (i.e., Hopper & McHugh, 2020; Smith et al., 2020).

The third principle of YPAR involves the proactive engagement and transformation of knowledge that improves the well-being of equity-owed youth (Rodriguez & Brown, 2009). This tenet proved challenging for us, particularly when our viewpoints did align with those of our community collaborators–researchers. For instance, many coaches struggled to resonate with the tenets of TVIC. While our goal of fostering supportive environments for all youth was shared, our approaches differed. Some of our collaborators struggled to see the utility of a TVI approach when responding to children’s disruptive outbursts. In an effort to “transform knowledge and practices” (Rodriguez & Brown, 2009, p. 30), we advocated for the utility of TVI by demonstrating practical ways to apply this approach to coaching. Our challenges in aligning our approach with community collaborators are consistent with research that describes several methodological challenges kinesiology students face when applying a YPAR approach, including power-sharing and mutual respect (Hopper & McHugh, 2020).

A YPAR approach suggests that people must be engaged in understanding how and why injustice exists and encourage youth to engage in critical analyses of the world (Rodriguez & Brown, 2009). Yet, it is not always clear whether researchers and scholars who employ YPAR are using a youth-led or youth-centred approach to PAR. We consider youth-centred PAR applications of YPAR to involve youth participants as collaborators–researchers in the construction of a PAR project (Fine & Torre, 2019). Youth-centred PAR may be regarded as research conducted in collaboration with children and youth rather than research conducted on children and youth (i.e., Chinapaw et al., 2024). However, this approach would not be regarded as youth-led, which would imply that youth designed the research and acted as lead researchers on the project (Hopper & McHugh, 2020; Johnson, 2017). We suggest that youth-centred PAR prioritizes youth perspectives, needs, and experiences, while labour-intensive tasks such as data coding, transcription, and preliminary analyses are led by academic researchers. We adopted a youth-centred approach, particularly due to the limited capacity of our community collaborators, who were already operating in a volunteer role. Before we commenced the research project, our academic research team hired a GameChangers youth coach as a community-based research assistant. However, shortly after programming and training implementation commenced, they had to relinquish their role as a research assistant due to competing commitments. At this point, we were starting data collection, and given time constraints and limited capacity as identified by the youth coaches, our research team could not hire a replacement. Rather, the three of us handled the labour-intensive activities associated with the research project—with Julia and Isra taking on the bulk of these tasks—including transcription, data coding, and preliminary analysis of qualitative findings. In turn, we solidified our findings based on insights and feedback provided by the CAB. We were able to provide compensation through gift cards for participation in advisory board meetings and participant involvement in data collection interviews.

While we took up a youth-centred PAR approach informed by feminist critiques, we did not incorporate all FPAR tenets, including centring on the voices of women (Reid & Frisby, 2008). Indeed, all of the youth coaches who acted as community collaborators identified as men. Gender and women’s experiences are central to FPAR, “giving explicit attention to how women and men, and those who do not identify with either of these gender binary categories, benefit from action-oriented research (or not)” (Reid & Frisby, 2008, p. 97). Despite not centring on these important voices, we engaged in critical dialogue with our community collaborators about youth experiences of sexual and gender-based violence, as well as complex trauma. By engaging in these difficult discussions and working collaboratively to consider practical changes to better respond to the needs of youth survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, we embraced arguably the most important tenet at the centre of all PAR projects: promoting social change (Brydon-Miller, 1997; Powers & Allaman, 2012; Reid & Frisby, 2008; Rodriguez & Brown, 2009).

7. Implications and Next Steps

A critical step forward is the need for greater transparency in how YPAR is applied within sport and physical activity research (Smith et al., 2024). Specifically, we suggest that researchers articulate whether their approach is youth-centred or youth-led. We suggest that being explicit in defining your approach embraces a critically reflexive practice– a cornerstone of PAR (Fine & Torre, 2019), strengthening the integrity of the research and providing transparency in the field of action research.

Additionally, we suggest that researchers foreground their privileges and positionalities iteratively throughout the research process to avoid adopting the hegemonic “shopping list” approach in reflexive statements (Johnson & Rose, 2024, p. 9). While researchers often conceptualize subjectivity in terms of fixed categories such as gender, race, and class, we argue for a more nuanced and context-specific approach (Johnson & Rose, 2024). By doing so, researchers reflect on subjectivities that are relevant to the study, such as their academic motivations, paradigmatic lens, and social identities to the extent of which they influence the research process (Johnson & Rose, 2024). For instance, we reflected on our identities as women and young people as it pertained to our PAR approach, in order to provide deeper insights into the power dynamics and epistemological assumptions underpinning the study.

Third, we argue that a TVIC framework can serve as a valuable guide for researchers engaging in critical reflexive practice within participatory research involving youth. Along with minimizing harm to participants and community collaborators–researchers engaged in PAR, a TVIC approach emphasizes the integration of self-care practices into the research process and among research teams (Vertommen et al., 2024). As Vertommen et al. (2024) note, “Self-care is an essential, yet often overlooked, aspect of the research process” (p. 6). These principles are particularly crucial for early-career scholars, who often face the dual pressures of achieving professional and academic milestones while managing stress and emotional labour (Giles et al., 2024).

For research teams involving youth, it is essential to reflect on whether team members are trained in TVIC to facilitate discussions about trauma and violence awareness (Vertommen et al., 2024). Such practices can foster supportive conversations amongst teams while minimizing the chance of re-traumatization (Vertommen et al., 2024). Furthermore, by fusing a youth lens to a feminist-oriented PAR approach underscores the intersections of trauma and violence, centring on gender as a critical lens for analyzing deeply entrenched beliefs about gender, sexism, heteronormativity, and systemic oppression (Reid & Frisby, 2008). In our research, this commitment manifested in critical dialogues among the research team around sexual and gender-based violence.

To better understand young people’s experiences of sexual and gender-based violence and to support their participation in SFD programs, we, as a research team, had to critically examine our own perspectives on gender relations—both in our own lives and within the context of our research (Johnson & Rose, 2024). Thus, it is important to acknowledge that opinions among research collaborators may diverge or converge. These conversations must be approached with an understanding of the profound impacts of trauma and violence on individuals’ lives to support self-reflection amongst one’s biases and perceptions (Vertommen et al., 2024). By fostering such awareness, research teams can create more ethically grounded PAR projects with young people.

In conclusion, this article illustrates the potential of PAR praxis that integrates feminist and youth-centred approaches with a trauma-informed lens, foregrounding the impact of trauma and violence on young people’s lives while fostering power-sharing with youth as co-producers of knowledge. Julia and Isra explored the complexities of conducting PAR as young academic researchers working alongside young coaches as community collaborators. We examined the methodological and ethical challenges of applying YPAR (Rodriguez & Brown, 2009) and FPAR (Reid & Frisby, 2008) in SFD, underscoring the utility of a TVIC framework in grounding our understanding and application of critical reflexivity throughout the research process (Vertommen et al., 2024). Additionally, we provided clear distinctions between youth-centred and youth-led participatory research, urging scholars to adopt more transparent language when describing their applications of YPAR. Finally, we proposed actionable steps for researchers using feminist-oriented PAR with youth populations in sport and physical activity (Giles et al., 2024). We discussed the implications of integrating a critically reflexive practice using a TVIC approach in PAR to mitigate stress amongst research teams (Giles et al., 2024). Taken together, these contributions aim to support transparent, ethically grounded PAR projects with young people in sport and physical activity contexts. We hope that this article will serve as a departure point for other youth researchers and academics to disseminate their experiences navigating YPAR projects across diverse contexts and interventions.