{"id":4263,"date":"2003-08-12T12:24:28","date_gmt":"2003-08-12T12:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4263"},"modified":"2003-08-12T12:24:28","modified_gmt":"2003-08-12T12:24:28","slug":"involving-kids-in-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4263","title":{"rendered":"involving kids in research"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m busy trying to raise money for the Prince<\/p>\n

George’s Information Commons<\/a>, our project that helps local kids<\/p>\n

use the Internet for civic purposes. There’s one specific grant opportunity<\/p>\n

that I want to go after, and it has a Sept. 2 deadline.<\/p>\n

Given the terms of the grant opportunity ("research in active<\/p>\n

living"), I can imagine us doing these three things:<\/p>\n

1. We could help kids to map the walkable streets, parks, and healthy<\/p>\n

food sources of the r community, so that we can investigate whether<\/p>\n

that kind of research makes adolescents more aware of health issues,<\/p>\n

more prone to healthy behavior, and more civically engaged. Our method<\/p>\n

would be to give them (and a control group) questionnaires both before<\/p>\n

and after the course, and measure the change.<\/p>\n

2. We could help kids to produce public documents—such as maps,<\/p>\n

brochures, website materials—that advertise the health assets<\/p>\n

in the community, and investigate whether these materials lead to positive<\/p>\n

health outcomes in the school or community. Our method would be to give<\/p>\n

students in a set of classes a questionnaire, then expose them to the<\/p>\n

materials that our kids create, and then survey them again.<\/p>\n

3. We could use the data that the kids collect to generate genuine<\/p>\n

research findings of value to other communities.<\/p>\n

I’m convinced that the funder actually wants #3, and it’s the hardest<\/p>\n

item for me to conceive. We could say that we will collect baseline<\/p>\n

data on walkability, nutritional quality, and crime, and use these data<\/p>\n

for research purposes—but I doubt that that’s specific enough.<\/p>\n

We could say that we will investigate whether proximity to healthy assets<\/p>\n

correlates with good health, controlling for lots of stuff, but I’m<\/p>\n

not sure that kind of correlational research is rigorous enough. We<\/p>\n

could say that we will resurvey the neighborhood periodically to establish<\/p>\n

how much change occurs in walkability and other health variables. But<\/p>\n

I’m not sure how interesting the mere rate of change would be. Or we<\/p>\n

could say that we will use specific changes in the community as "natural<\/p>\n

experiments." But then I think we need to describe one likely change<\/p>\n

that we will be able to investigate. I haven’t thought of one yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m busy trying to raise money for the Prince George’s Information Commons, our project that helps local kids use the Internet for civic purposes. There’s one specific grant opportunity that I want to go after, and it has a Sept. 2 deadline. Given the terms of the grant opportunity ("research in active living"), I can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-high-school-civics-class"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4263\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}