Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR): increasing evidence use and policy impact through an online data...

To address research-practice gaps, scholars are investigating the conditions that strengthen and constrain the use of research evidence. Yet these studies primarily focus on evidence that adult researchers have generated. In Youth-Led Participatory Action Research (YPAR), youth learn to conduct systematic research to improve their schools and communities. However, youth researchers face challenges similar to those experienced by adult researchers around how their findings are disseminated and used.

This article illustrates active efforts of a research-practice partnership between San Francisco Unified School District and UC Berkeley to scale the impact and use of YPAR evidence. We detail the development and testing of a districtwide dashboard as a method for disseminating YPAR evidence to K-12 students and district leaders. We describe the origins and motivation for the dashboard concept, the development process, early impact and benefits, implementation challenges, and future directions.

Through the development and testing of the dashboard, ethical and political implications emerged. We describe tensions related to dashboard content, privacy and confidentiality, use, and impact.

The dashboard is one method designed to strengthen the use and impact of youth-generated evidence from YPAR. Implementation challenges that arose during the development phase required us to strategise about responsibly and effectively disseminating YPAR evidence. As of December 2025, we have moved into a beta testing phase for the dashboard. A forthcoming public launch will bring new insights to district leaders in San Francisco, with potential replication across the state and beyond.