About the project

The impact and scalability of the YEIP GLM-based policy measure will be assessed through a semi-experimental methodology that will seek to identify and evaluate the causality link between our measure and the change it aims to make for young people at risk of radicalisation and marginalisation.

Following a thorough literature review (WP1) and the collection of stakeholders’ views through youth-led research (WP2), we will construct the tools that will implement our policy measure (i.e. the YEIP Prevent model/ intervention and a toolkit). These tools will be used to capacity build professionals working in our selected environments. Subsequently, field trials (WP3) will be conducted in the eight participating countries. These will pilot and evaluate the tools implementing our policy measure and be observed through a mixture of qualitative methodologies. Impact measurement will be achieved through a before-after comparison. To triangulate the findings, a pan-European quantitative survey will be carried out (WP4). The research design and approach will be youth-led, following the principles of participatory, youth-led action research.

Our methodology draws from the field of participatory action research, which is experimental research that focuses on the effects of the researcher’s direct actions of practice within a participatory community with the goal of improving the performance quality of the community or an area of concern (Dick 2002). Within this realm, youth-led research is identified. Admittedly, the extant literature on youth-led research is scant and thus the risks considerable (Gavrielides, 2014; Gough, 2006). However, IARS has been a pioneer in this area having introduced some of the first youth led fieldwork in Europe and tested them for policy reform (see Youth in Action). Professor Gavrielides, IARS Director and YEIP’s PM, is the Editor of the only peer review journal that is exclusively dedicated to youth-led research (youthvoicejournal.com ).

In a paper published in this Journal, a young researcher, Cass, describes the underlying principles of youth-led research and policy as “(1) addressing power imbalances; (2) valuing lived experiences; (3) respecting choice in participation; and (4) empowerment”. The youth-led approach dictates that young people must be left to instigate potential solutions to a problem, one that they have indeed identified themselves, and take responsibility for developing and implementing a solution. Consequently, the youth-led method repositions young people as important stakeholders who can make unique decisions which impact on the quality of their lives, rather than simply accepting the position as passive subjects whose lives are guided by decisions made by adult ‘others’.

To this end, we will take the following steps when conducting youth-led research for YEIP:

• Step 1: Relinquish power and “remove hats”
• Step 2: Reach out widely and recruit diverse groups in partnership with others
• Step 3: Empower through ad hoc and tailored accredited training that is flexible and adjustable to young people’s needs as these are defined by their diverse lives
• Step 4: Facilitate discussions on current topics that need change
• Step 5: Coordinate their action research and support to write evidence based solutions through peer reviewed processes
• Step 6: Support the evaluation, monitoring, project management and control of all previous steps through youth-led tools and a standing Youth Advisory Board
• Step 7: Reward and accredit.

A combination of qualitative and quantitate research tools will be used. Qualitative research can “persuade through rich depiction and strategic comparison across cases, overcoming the abstraction inherent in quantitative studies” (Miles and Huberman 1994). The gaps inherent in qualitative research will be covered through the triangulation of our findings via the online quantitative survey.

The scientific work of YEIP comprises of five different building blocks that are represented via different WPs:

First building block (WP1): It aims to “build the foundations” by analysing the current state of the art. To this end, existing knowledge in the 8 selected case study countries will be assessed both in terms of policy, research and practice. A comparative analysis between the case studies and a cross European review will also be conducted alongside a stakeholder mapping. Following this, our experimentation protocol will be finalised.

Second building block (WP2): This will have two aims. First, to test the underlying hypothesis of the GLM-based YEIP policy measure. Second, to construct the tools that will implement YEIP’s policy measure (i.e. the YEIP PREVENT model/ intervention and toolkit). Both goals will be achieved by carrying out youth-led primary research in four environments: schools, universities, Youth Offending Institutions and online.

Third building block (WP3): This will have two aims. First, to test the YEIP GLM-based policy intervention by conducting field trials following capacity building of professionals using the tools constructed under building blocks 1 and 2. They will be conducted in the 8 country case studies withing the four selected environments. Second, to identify and evaluate a causality link between YEIP’s policy measure and tools, and the change that has occurred in our target groups within selected environments. The findings will determine the logic behind the change (counterfactual analysis). A quasi-experimental method will be used by relying on assumptions that will help us justify the claim that the comparison group is similar to the treatment group. To this end, we will carry out before-after comparisons using the same population which undertook the YEIP intervention within a 6-month period.

Fourth Building block (WP4): This will aim to triangulate our findings through a quantitative methodology that will counteract the weaknesses found in qualitative methods. Two online surveys will be designed and disseminated across Europe throughout the lifetime of WP2 and 3.

YEIP was created in response to a current social need to have more effective youth policies that can enhance young people’s social inclusion and minimize the risk of radicalization with greater ‘buy in’ from youth themselves.

To this end, YEIP will construct and test an innovative policy intervention that will generate a set of actions that will help address this need at the local, national and European levels. This measure is founded upon restorative justice and the Good Lives Model (GLM), which assumes that we are goal-influenced and all seek certain ‘goods’ in our lives, not ‘material’, but qualitative, all likely to increase or improve our psychological well-being (Ward, Mann and Gannon 2007).

Through the use of multi-disciplinary tools, we will construct tools that will test and implement this measure at the local, national and EU wide level. The ultimate objective is for the project to help address the KA3 PT7 aligned with the EU Youth Strategy’s objective of preventing the factors that can lead to young people’s social exclusion and radicalisation. Existing approaches are constructed within the Risk Need Responsivity (RNR) model for prevention. Developed in the 1980s by Andrews, Bonta and Hope (1990), RNR’s focus is on reducing and managing risk as well as on studying the process of relapse. Pathology-focused research and intervention have consequently been developed as tools for RNR based approaches to rehabilitation.

According to Maruna (2006) and Gavrielides and Piers (2013; 2015), RNR is now challenged at practical, policy and financial levels. They argued that concentrating on criminogenic needs to reduce risk factors are not a sufficient condition when it comes to young people. McAdams (1994; 2006) argues that integration and relatedness for young people are crucial in encouraging desistance from violence and radicalisation. Politicians and the public also seem to agree with the extant literature. For instance, the UK Justice Secretary said that prison often turns out to be “a costly and ineffectual approach that fails to turn criminals into law-abiding citizens” (Travis 2010).

YEIP will turn the RNR approach on its head. Instead of “managing” young people as “risks”, our policy measure will focus on promoting the talents and strengths of vulnerable young people and through this approach help develop positive identities. The extant literature has defined these as being “the internal organisation of a coherent sense of self” (Dean 2014). The GLM operates in both a holistic and constructive manner in considering how young people t risk might identify and work towards a way of living that is likely to involve the goods we seek in life, as well as a positive way of living that does not involve or need crime (Scottish Prison Service 2011). In this process, the argument is that the model works towards a positive, growth-oriented change in life where an offender works on the development of the values, skills and resources towards life based on human goods that is a necessary counter-balance of managing risk alone (Ward, Mann and Gannon 2007: 92), i.e. risk is managed as well as seeking to develop positive life alternatives.

This approach is aligned with the underlying philosophy of 2014 EC report on youth workers, which asks for a more coordinated effort in supporting young people with fewer opportunities by tapping into their talents and not by further marginalising them.