Children Using Innovative Methods for Evaluating Neighborhoods: Photovoice, Child Tours and GIS

Interest in acquiring children's opinions about their neighborhoods has surged as researchers connect the health benefits of neighborhood activity and the built environment, understand the psychological and social influences of community cohesion and networks and attempt to fulfill the international agreements The United Nations Convention on the Right's of the Child (1989) and the Child Friendly Cities Movement (2004).

Since the late 1970's, from pioneering work by Roger Hart and Kevin Lynch, we know that children are capable of evaluating their neighborhoods but how does that information get used or understood by community developers and planners? What methods can be used to provide a clear picture of "good", "bad", "scary" or "favorite" places? Relatedly, how can this information assist in determining how to modify neighborhoods so kids are more likely to play outside, walk or ride to school, connect with their neighbors or develop a sense of pride and ownership in their community?

A recent research study by Janet Loebach and Jason Gilliland (2010) in London, Ontario, provides an example of some of the innovative strategies being used today to engage children in community assessments. Working with grade 3 students from a local elementary school, they combined three strategies for child engagement and community assessment: child tours, photovoice and geographic information systems (GIS). The child-led walks were the main strategy employed by the research team. Pairs of children decided on a route to take that would highlight their favorite and least favorite community places and features. The students then led a researcher and city planner around their neighborhood and described its characteristics. As well as a verbal description, students took pictures with a digital camera. These pictures were part of the photovoice component of the project. Photovoice is a participatory method used to describe places, events and situations. Typically associated with social change initiatives, photovoice involves taking pictures and then describing them either in groups or individually in order to identify themes. Finally, at points of interest to the children, the adults tracked the location with a portable GPS unit. In total, 16 children participated in this exercise to describe their neighborhood. A week later, after the researchers conducted preliminary analyses on the data and narrowed down the number of pictures into potential themes, the adults and children met together as a group. Pictures were presented to the entire group of children and they were asked to discuss their importance. After this elicitation phase, all of the data were then analyzed, compared and contrasted.


Ten main themes emerged from the data: 1) community features that evoked a sense of ownership, belonging or pride; 2) sites associated with recreational activity; 3) features that reflected good community design or aesthetics; 4) how far and where children were comfortable venturing; 5) what installed fear, a sense of danger or annoyance; 6) sites of commercial interest to the children (or not); 7) community features associated with accessibility and mobility; 8) elements that reflected poor community design or aesthetics; 9) natural elements; and 10) features that reflected environmental or community advocacy. Quite a lot of information from grade 3 students! Watch for future posts about neighborhood likes and dislikes identified by these children and others.


Back to methods. The routes that the children took, their descriptions of what they liked and disliked, the photos they took, the group discussion about the photos and the use of maps (aerial and GIS generated) together provided information about mobility, neighborhood perceptions and use. A few highlights are worth mentioning. The maps of the routes chosen indicated that certain barriers existed that impeded the children's mobility such as train tracks and busy streets. Most of the children's favorite places were close to their homes, which makes sense for this age group. Available services and amenities were also easily identified when mapped, such as the school or local park as favorite places to play. The use of photovoice provided a visual aid in the group discussions and was a method identified as useful for less verbal children. As well, it served to illustrate the children's preferences and thus was important for information dissemination. The child-led tours were considered very successful for identifying important places in neighborhoods. Having pairs of children give tours provided additional information as their discussions about specific places added additional detail (although it also added difficulty to data capturing--authors suggest audio taping instead of writing down notes). The larger group discussions also added another layer of information and assisted in confirming or enhancing preliminary themes. The GPS units were not shown to be as effective as originally thought, resulting in inconsistent data, perhaps due to the technology used or satellite interference. The authors did however find the aerial photographs very useful for place and route tracking.


All in all, the children's neighborhood assessments provided valuable information and lessons for the researchers and city planners. As the authors indicate "The exercises were effective in demonstrating to both the researchers and the urban planners that children are capable of shrewd and sophisticated evaluations of their neighborhoods, in addition to providing an evocative profile of their neighborhood perspectives and priorities. Both methods were well-received by the planners, but the intimate nature of their dialogue with the children during the guided walks made a particularly favorable impression for the rich picture of experience that they evoked. The exchanges with the children also highlighted for the planners the more localized nature of the children's activities than those of adults, and the more personal and intimate relationships they have with their neighborhood spaces and places than is likely true for adult residents" (p 81).


Reference: Loebach, J., & Gilliland, J. (2010). Child-led tours to uncover children's perceptions and use of neighborhood environments. Children, Youth and Environments 20(1), 52-90.

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A Chain Reaction of Action: Community Service for Youth

A Real Example

It was hard to imagine that the clean cut young man at the podium had experienced so much in such a short time. Within four years, he went from a high school kid abusing drugs and in trouble with the law to one who accomplished an amazing physical feat to a youth ambassador and activist. I was fortunate to hear Jeffery Torres speak recently, as he talked about the impact of poverty on the children and families of Africa. As mentioned recently in Communities Helping Kids (The Globe Helping Children: The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child), children in Africa are dying needlessly from preventable childhood illnesses and dehydration, from starvation and HIV/AIDS. The amazing thing though is, even thousands of miles away, Jeffery is making a difference in the lives of these kids. By sharing his story, he affected me and I hope by my sharing it, you will pass it on. A chain reaction of action, so to speak.

Jeffery was getting into trouble in high school--taking and selling drugs and coming close to having a criminal record for the rest of his life. He knew that if he wanted to fulfill his dream of becoming a fire fighter, he had to change his path. He decided that he needed new goals and challenges; and through these challenges, he developed new competencies. With the daring can-do attitude of so many youth, he decided to train for an Ironman triathlon. While training for the 8-kilometre swim, 180-km bike ride and 42.2-km run, Jeffery decided to use the run to raise funds for a worthwhile cause. He chose World Vision, a child-based charity that fights poverty. When he speaks of finishing the race in 12 hours and 35 minutes as the youngest male competitor ever, he seems proud… but even more proud of the $10,000.00 he raised for children in Africa (photo from World Vision).

Jeffrey’s next opportunity for change came when he attended a World Vision youth leadership retreat, where he met Tanzanian teens in Canada on a World Vision/ Canadian International Development Agency exchange and then applied for and was accepted as one of 6 Canadian youth to visit Tanzania as part of the Youth Ambassador program. His photos of his time in Tanzania are gut wrenching--a hole filled with muddy drinking water, a house made of twigs, children overjoyed to receive a tennis ball. These children and their stories forever changed him and how he saw the world. He spoke of an 8 year old boy, who walked 10 km each way to school and then helped his mother in the fields. How little children watch over babies and grandmothers raise families in shacks. The talk also carried messages of hope. How education, microcredit programs, mosquito nets and basic supplies are making a huge difference.

The Research

It is clear that Jeffery’s efforts are making a difference for both himself and children in Africa. The question begs asking, is community service always a win-win situation?

The impact of community service on youth. Most of the research indicates that community service can have a positive effect on youth: increasing civic responsibility and caring (Billig, 2000; Kenny & Gallagher, 2003; Yates & Youniss 1998), increasing prosocial behavior (Billig, 2000; Eyler, 2000), raising academics (Follman, 1998; Parrini, 2002) and reducing behavioral problems (Youniss et al. 1999; Zeldin, 2004). However, there have been studies that have shown no effect (Eccles & Barber, 1999; Melchior, 1999). This discrepancy has been attributed to small or non representative samples, not controlling for background factors (e.g., SES and race) or not addressing differences in the type or length of service. Schmidt, Shumow and Krackar (2007) designed a study to address these issues. Using the data from the National Household Education Survey, an American cross-sectional survey of high school students and their parent (N=4,306), these researchers looked at how many kids were involved in community service, their backgrounds, the type of service they did and behavioral, academic and civic outcomes. The bottom line was that involvement in community service was positively associated with better grades, increased civic efficacy and knowledge and decreased behavioral problems.

To learn more about community service...
An Asset Builder's Guide to Service-Learning
A clear and informative strategy for schools, faith communities, and youth organizations to blend the best of effective service-learning programs with the philosophy of youth "asset building" and Healthy Communities.

Children as Volunteers
How to integrate volunteers under the age of 14 into an existing adult volunteer program: multi-age teams, designing work, preparing the agency, liaisoning with schools, and legal issues.

Raising Charitable Children
Warmly provides practical tips for adults to share the gifts of generosity, selflessness, and compassion with children of all ages and get past the "gimme-gimme" mind-set.

Working Shoulder to Shoulder: Stories and Strategies of Youth-Adult Partnerships That Succeed
Stories and strategies of youth-adult partnerships that succeed, with over 20 reproducible tools to help you engage youth participants to the greatest effect in your organization.

The impact of community service on communities. Unfortunately, less information is available on the impact that youth have on communities as a result of their community service. In 2008, the World Bank released a report entitled, Measuring the Impact of Youth Voluntary Service Programs, where the conclusions of an international group of experts discussed the paucity of well designed evaluations and recommended that clearer definitions and an evaluation framework be developed to measure the impact of youth service. One program that was highlighted was Student Partnership Worldwide (SPW), an organization that supports youth 18-28 years as Volunteer Peer Educators (VPEs). The VPEs live in rural communities for 6-12 months and lead health, environmental, and education programs in eight countries across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Currently, there are 1,000 VPEs expected to impact approximately 400,000 youth. The VPEs are trained to measure the impact of their outreach efforts using both quantitative and qualitative data. For example, to address the spread of HIV in Tanzania by out--of-school youth, SPW delivered sexual reproductive health and HIV/AIDS awareness information in concert with sports and music events. Of the 1200 young people who attended, 79 followed through with counseling and HIV testing.

Recommendations for evaluating youth development interventions (as described in the World Bank publication above, p. 15, Cunningham et. al. 2008) include: 1) A description of the intervention, including its planned activities, methods of delivery, duration and expected outcomes; 2) Clearly defined goals and indicators that directly reflect these goals (outcome indicators); 3) Clearly defined indicators of how well the program is being implemented (process indicators); 4) A baseline survey of the population being studied, both beneficiary and comparison (control) groups, which should be conducted before individuals are assigned to each group; 5) The identification of a comparison group that is as similar as possible to the treated group in all key observable characteristics (random assignment is preferable but is not always possible); 6) Periodic follow-up surveys both to monitor process and to evaluate outcomes; and, 7) A careful accounting of all the program’s costs (this is often overlooked, but is necessary to understand whether the program is successful in economic terms as well as in strictly outcome terms). Clearly, evaluating the impact of youth service on communities is an important and emerging area of research.

Learn more
The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning.
This volume explores the impact of service learning on a community, and considers the unequal relationship between the community and the academy. Using eye-opening interviews with community-organization staff members, The Unheard Voices challenges assumptions about the effectiveness of service learning.

Share your experience. Do you have examples of youth who have made a difference through community service or volunteering? Have you been involved in efforts to track and evaluate the impact of community service on communities? If so, please add comments below or contact Jayne Pivik at jpivik@aprioriresearch.com.

Watch for an upcoming entry on Communities Helping Kids for tips on facilitating community service learning in schools.

Resources

Canadian Alliance for Community Service-Learning. The Canadian Alliance for Community Service-Learning provides leadership and support for the development and enhancement of Community Service-Learning in Canada, connects with international networks, and promotes the benefits of this approach to universities, students, and community organizations. Site provides resources, tools and research.

Opportunity International provides small business loans, savings, insurance and training to people living in poverty in the developing world. Clients in over 25 countries use these financial services to start or expand a business, develop a steady income, provide for their families and create jobs for their neighbors.

One Hen, how one small loan made a big difference, the internationally acclaimed true story of micro crediting. Supporting site for those wishing to discuss and teach about micro crediting with children.

References

Billig, S.H. (2000) Research on K-12 school-based service learning: The evidence builds. Phi Delta Kappan, 81, 658–664.

Eccles, J.S. & Barber, B.L. (1999). Student council, volunteering, basketball, or marching band: What kind of extracurricular involvement matters? Journal of Adolescent Research, 14(1), 10–43.

Eyler, J.S. (2000). What do we most need to know about the impact of service-learning on student learning? The Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, Special Issue: Strategic Directions for Service-Learning Research. Retrieved April 16, 2010, from http://www.umich.edu/∼mjcsl/volumes/2000sample.html.

Follman, J. (1998). Florida learn and serve: 1997–98 outcomes and correlations with 1994–95, 1995–96, 1996–97. Florida State University, Center for Civic Education and Service, Tallahassee, FL.

Kenny, M.E. & Gallagher, L.A. (2003). Teenagers and community service: A guide to the issues. Praeger: Westport, CT.

Melchior, A. (1999). Summary report: National evaluation of learn and serve America school and community-based programs. Brandeis University Center for Human Resources: Waltham, MA.

Parrini, M. (2002). Law-related education and delinquency prevention. ERIC Digest ED466442. Bloomington, IN: ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies/Social Science Education.

Schmidt, J.A., Shumow, L., & Kackar, H. (2007). Adolescents’ participation in service activities and its impact on academic, behavioral and civic outcomes. Journal of Youth Adolescence, 36, 127-140.

World Bank, Human Development Network, Children and Youth Unit, HDNCY & Innovations in Civic Participation (2008). Measuring the impact of youth voluntary service programs. Summary and conclusions of the International experts’ meeting. See http://www.icicp.org/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/6722, Accessed May 11, 2010.

Yates, M. & Youniss, J. (1998) Community service and political identity development in adolescence. Journal of Social Issues, 54(3), 495–512.

Youniss, J., Yates, M., & Su, Y. (1997). Social integration: Community service and marijuana use in high school seniors. Journal of Adolescent Research, 12, 245–262.

Zeldin, S. (2004). Preventing youth violence through the promotion of community engagement and membership. Journal of Community Psychology, 32(5), 632–641.