Over the course of the summer, Violeta Rosario, FCRH ’24, a psychology and sociology double major, split her time between two different research projects. In one project, Rosario worked with Lindsay Hoyt, Ph.D., of Fordham’s psychology department in a youth participatory action research project in partnership with Fordham’s Science and Technology Entry Program (STEP).
For the second project, Rosario worked with a graduate student, Taina Quiles, to examine the experiences of Latinx, Afro-Caribbean and Black women with racism.
The first project she worked on, Rosario said that STEP has been in place for many years for students interested in STEM-related fields from underrepresented communities. One of the classes offered is participatory action research, which emphasizes participation and action by the members of the community affected by the research.
Hoyt has been teaching this class as part of STEP for a few years. The theme of the class changes year by year; this year, Rosario focused on issues of mental health within this youth community. Rosario co-instructed a class of about 20 high school-aged students.
“Our aim with participatory action research is that we’re trying to gauge their perspectives on multiple things within their community, because they are an underrepresented group, so we want to try and figure out how they see the world…what comes to mind when they think of mental health…it was more exploratory in the sense that we were trying to explore what these youth think of when they’re thinking of these questions,” Rosario said.
Rosario focused the class around three broad questions related to mental health: “What do I wish my teachers knew about youth mental health?,” “What does access to mental health research look like for youth?” and “What is mental health like in my community?” Students were instructed to answer either one or more of these questions and complete group work based on them.
At the end of the course, the students presented their findings and ideas with their classmates, as well as members of the Fordham community. Rosario noted how at the end of the course, she saw that when some students heard the words “mental health,” their minds instantly jumped towards negative connotations.
The kids in the class portrayed wide-ranging views about mental health in their final posters. One student focused on mental health through the lens of social media, while Rosario saw that many of the boys in the class chose to talk about how male students are often taught their mental health isn’t as important.
For the second research project regarding experiences of racism amongst Latinx, Afro-Caribbean and Black women, Rosario mostly worked on qualitative skills. Her obligations over the summer involved cleaning transcripts before the data was analyzed. She also looked at participant responses to questions about topics like the hopes they had for their community, themselves and activists who are trying to improve their experiences. Rosario also held meetings with these participants and used a coding software called Dedoose to identify and highlight themes within the data.
Rosario said each research project she worked on taught her different lessons and helped her learn more about different steps of the research process.
On the second project she worked on, Rosario said she learned about different perspectives and the ways we can best help these underrepresented communities, while also enhancing her qualitative skills, like coding, and learning how to collaborate with others. For her youth participatory action research class, Rosario said she had never co-instructed a class before and learned she enjoyed working with youth in general.
“With youth participatory action research, we don’t want to create an environment where we’re talking at them; we want to create an environment where they feel comfortable, we want them to feel like they can come to us with questions, and we want them to realize that we’re mutually learning, so the co-instructors are learning from the students and the students are learning from the co-instructors, and we are talking with each other. We want to have that conversation,” Rosario said.
Rosario also took away valuable lessons about the ways youth in the community view their own mental health.
“I think it’s beautiful that youth get to reflect on ‘what do I do to make me happy?’… but I found that there was a lack of focus on the positivity and taking care of one’s mental health and wellbeing.”
