The proposed 5-year project, called the Minority Youth Action Research Training Institute, includes a 7-week intensively summer mental health and social/behavioral science research training program with year-long follow-up activities for 20 academically underserved, high achieving urban youth for each of 3 years, with follow-up evaluation of youth participants for an additional 2 years after program completion. The core of the program will be a mental health, substance abuse, and AIDS-related group research project in which participants develop research methods with adult research support, collect information from a designated target population (usually their peers), learn how to manage and analyze the data, and produce study results, policy recommendations, and educational products to be used in their communities and schools. The program will place a high degree of emphasis on the use of """"""""ethno-epidemiology,"""""""" the integration of anthropological and survey research methods in behavioral research. In addition to these core activities, the proposed program will utilize research mentorships, mental health role models, college and university exposure, and community and ethnic/cultural experiences designed to enhance cultural knowledge, inter-cultural competence, and an increased sense of the utility of research and the viability of a mental health research career, leading to an increased motivation for college entry, graduate study, and later recruitment into a mental health research positions.
The aims of the proposed Training Institute are to: 1) refine an existing applied health and mental health ethnography and behavioral sciences research curriculum focused on HIV/AIDS for use with high school-aged urban youth; 2) conduct and evaluate an annual 8-week National Teen Action Research Center-run Youth Action Research Institute with related year-round follow-up, dissemination and support activities each year for 3 years, with a total of 60 ethnically diverse high school students (20 each year) from inner-city communities in the Capital Region in Connecticut; 3) create and evaluate a mobility structure for minority youth to ensure continuity of exposure to mental health research during the high school years and access to higher education; 4) involve youth researchers in evaluating the influence of the proposed program on the lives and decisions of participating youth over a 5 year period; 5) document, evaluate and disseminate this national recruitment and training model and research results through the National Teen Action Research Center (NTARC) Website (by youth) and at national and international meetings of mental health and behavioral research scientists. Collaboration with the University Connecticut Center for International Community Health Studies, affiliation with the Yale-based Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA), and collaboration with Central Connecticut State University and several other institutions of higher learning, public, and private organizations provides the base for learning and links with other scientists.
| Coman, Emil N; Iordache, Eugen; Dierker, Lisa et al. (2014) Statistical Power of Alternative Structural Models for Comparative Effectiveness Research: Advantages of Modeling Unreliability. J Mod Appl Stat Methods 13:71-90 |
