INNOVATE Research: Impact of a workshop to develop researcher capacity to engage youth in research

Abstract Background Engaging youth in research provides substantial benefits to research about youth‐related needs, concerns and interventions. However, researchers require training and capacity development to work in this manner. Methods A capacity‐building intervention, INNOVATE Research, was co‐designed with youth and adult researchers and delivered to researchers in three major academic research institutions across Canada. Fifty‐seven attendees participated in this research project evaluating youth engagement practices, attitudes, perceived barriers, and perceived capacity development needs before attending the intervention and six months later. Results The intervention attracted researchers across various career levels, roles and disciplines. Participants were highly satisfied with the workshop activities. Follow‐up assessments revealed significant increases in self‐efficacy six months after the workshop (P = .035). Among possible barriers to youth engagement, four barriers significantly declined at follow‐up. The barriers that decreased were largely related to practical knowledge about how to engage youth in research. Significantly more participants had integrated youth engagement into their teaching activities six months after the workshop compared to those who were doing so before the workshop (P = .007). A large proportion (71.9%) of participants expressed the need for a strengthened network of youth‐engaged researchers; other future capacity‐building approaches were also endorsed. Conclusions The INNOVATE Research project provided improvements in youth engagement attitudes and practices among researchers, while lifting barriers. Future capacity‐building work should continue to enhance the capacity of researchers to engage youth in research. Researchers notably pointed to the need to establish a network of youth‐engaged researchers to provide ongoing, sustainable gains in youth engagement.


| BACKG ROU N D
Engaging individuals with lived experience in research projects related to their experiences and needs increases the quality of the research and the relevance to the target population. [1][2][3][4]  Indeed, engaging vulnerable community members in research is an ethical imperative. Literature has discussed the ethical considerations in working with vulnerable populations 8,9 in the context of historical inequities and the importance of building trusting relationships in research to avoid research-related harms; engaging the target population supports the researchers in conducting research ethically and respectfully in a way that recognizes the population's needs, vulnerabilities and strengths. 10,11 Youth engagement in research is particularly important, given changing realities this emerging generation is facing and possible disconnection between young people and researchers. While youth have traditionally been research participants, youth engagement practices call for youth to be engaged in the research process as full partners. 3 Youth engagement is valuable in any area of research regarding youth, ranging from mental health and substance use, [12][13][14] health promotion 15 and social inequity, 16 to organizational change 17 and educational reform. 18 By engaging young people in all stages of a research project, from design and development through to knowledge translation, researchers can help ensure that the research they are conducting is relevant to the realities facing young people today. 3,19 Involving youth in research has benefits for the individual youth engaged, including knowledge acquisition and broad-based development including leadership skills. 12,20 Youth engagement also has positive impacts on researchers as they gain opportunities for reciprocal learning. 12,20 Despite the benefits, many researchers working on youth-relevant issues do not necessarily know how to engage youth thoroughly in their research activities, and capacity development efforts are therefore required. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of training available specifically targeting youth engagement education for Canadian researchers in academic settings. Researchers may look to the literature on patient engagement in research across the disciplines. [21][22][23] They may also look to literature on the importance and value of youth engagement in research. 2,24 Literature describing examples of projects in which youth were engaged 14,17 and some general guidelines 25 are also available. More systematic training opportunities are required, demonstrating how to engage youth in developmentally appropriate ways in complex research projects.
With a lack of training and experience, researchers beginning to engage youth may inadvertently tokenize or fail to engage them in authentic, meaningful manners, or omit youth engagement from some or all of the stages of their projects. In doing so, they may lose out on the considerable contributions that youth can make to research, while discouraging youth from becoming future ambassadors of research.
To increase the capacity of Canadian researchers to engage youth in their work, our team developed a training programme in youth engagement designed for researchers. The project is known as INNOVATE Research. It was developed by a pan-Canadian team of researchers, youth, and engagement specialists from hospitals, universities and community organizations. Barriers and capacity development needs expressed prior to the workshop are presented in a companion manuscript. 26 That paper shows that while interest in and attitudes towards youth-engaged research were strong, skill development and practical training opportunities were found to be an important capacity development need.

| Objective
This paper describes and examines the impact of the INNOVATE Research training on attendees' youth engagement practices and attitudes, as well as their expressed barriers and further needs for capacity development. The training is expected to reduce perceived barriers and increase the application of youth engagement in research among participants.

| Participants
The sample consists of N = 57 researchers who attended one of three INNOVATE Research workshops and completed questionnaires capacity-building work should continue to enhance the capacity of researchers to engage youth in research. Researchers notably pointed to the need to establish a network of youth-engaged researchers to provide ongoing, sustainable gains in youth engagement.

K E Y W O R D S
capacity development, mental health, patient engagement, patient-oriented research, youth, youth-adult partnerships, youth engagement before the workshop and six months later. Out of 84 participants who completed the pre-workshop survey, 71 attended the workshops and were invited to complete the follow-up survey, of whom 57 completed (82.3%).

| Procedure
Recruitment for the workshop and the study was conducted via pas-

| Intervention
The The core component of the intervention was a low-barrier one-day training activity, designed to be accessible to researchers with a range of experience in youth engagement, ranging from those just beginning to consider this type of work to those with concrete experience. The aim was to provide well-rounded information on youth engagement, covering the importance and impact of youth engagement, how to prepare and plan for youth engagement in a research team, how to recruit youth to join a team and work with them as research partners, and how to evaluate and present the youth engagement activities. The workshops were co-facilitated by youth and adult researchers. Delivery included presentations, concrete examples of youth-engaged research projects, break-out session discussions and practical activities focusing on building engagement into attendees research projects. The intervention also included a thorough curriculum that was developed and delivered, including a 76-page guidebook 27 (freely available by contacting the research team) and supplementary readings in the form of peer-reviewed manuscripts on the topic. 14,20,25 Following the workshops, attendees were invited to join two mentorship/coaching sessions delivered via webinar at approximately two-month intervals to enhance and sustain their learnings. A one-hour condensed version of the workshop was also provided for those who were not able to attend, in the form of a national webinar; the impacts of the national webinar on attitudes and practice change are not available.

| Measures
The measurement set was developed by the research team with pan-Canadian feedback through our professional networks. It was administered prior to the workshop and six months later, and included demographic and professional characteristics, questions regarding youth engagement practices, and a range of barriers and capacity development needs. The Service Provider Adopter and Innovation Characteristics Questionnaire (SPAICQ) 28,29 was also administered before the workshop and six months later. The SPAICQ is a 21-item measure used in implementation studies to measure the degree of implementation of an innovation. With standardized stems, items were adapted to query about the implementation of youth engagement in research. Subscales include concern for youth engagement, self-efficacy regarding youth engagement, the perceived complexity of engagement, the compatibility of engagement with one's way of working, and the relative advantage of engagement, calculated using average scores. All measures were administrated via the REDCap online data capture system. 30 A pencil-and-paper post-workshop evaluation form was also administered onsite immediately following the workshop to assess satisfaction. For categorical data, percentage scores represent the percentage of the total number of respondents to that item. Alpha values of < 0.05 were interpreted as significant. SPSS 25 was used. 31 Effect sizes were calculated using G*Power. 32

| RE SULTS
Participant characteristics are described in Table 1. Participants represented a broad range of disciplines and career levels. The majority were female and relatively early in their careers.
The research and engagement profiles of participants are presented in Table 2. Results show that researchers considered themselves significantly more familiar with youth engagement six months after the workshop. In a six-month period, there was no change in the numbers engaging youth in practice or planning for youth engagement in grants. However, participants were significantly more likely to be including youth engagement in their teaching activities. There was also an increase in the number of participants reporting that they were engaging youth in the form of co-presenting findings at conferences. Table 3 presents the attitudes of participants regarding youth engagement before and six months after the workshop. Results show a significant increase in their sense of self-efficacy with regard to implementing youth engagement. There was no significant change in any of the other attitudes regarding youth engagement.
Barriers to youth engagement experienced by participants are presented in Table 4. Significant decreases were found on four of 11 barriers six months after the workshop. The barriers that were most highly endorsed prior to the workshop significantly declined: fewer participants reported that they did not know how to engage youth, how to get a representative group of youth together, or how to prepare youth to engage research. Uncertainty about ethical considerations also declined. One barrier was reported significantly more frequently at the six month follow-up assessment: not having the time or human resources to support youth engagement.
The capacity development needs of participants before the workshop and six months later are presented in Table 5. One of the most frequently identified needs prior to the workshop, specifically, additional training, was significantly reduced six months later. The remaining capacity development needs did not change significantly.
At follow-up, the most highly endorsed capacity development needs were a strengthened network of youth-engaged researchers, greater funder appreciation of youth engagement and greater institutional appreciation of youth engagement.

| WORKSHOP SATISFACTION
Workshop evaluation results are presented in Table 6. Workshop evaluations were available for 51 participants (89.5%). Results show that, on a 1-5 scale, participants were highly satisfied with the presenters, the workshops' achievement of the learning objectives and the workshops overall. There were no significant differences between satisfaction based on level of education (p range 0. 19

| Use of additional intervention components
The two coaching sessions held after the workshop were attended   Building skills, self-efficacy and sustainability through mentorship, while reducing barriers are important building blocks of capacity in research. 35

| LI M ITATI O N S
This study was conducted in three urban centres in Canada associated with major academic research institutions. Results may not be generalizable to other jurisdictions and smaller academic research institutions; further scaling and evaluation initiatives are therefore required. In addition, this study did not evaluate the impact of the training on the youth ultimately engaged in the research conducted by the intervention participants. The participants were researchers with an interest in youth engagement, and many had experience in youth engagement; effects might be different among researchers without this interest and experience, or in fields in which youth engagement is less prevalent.
The majority of participants were also female. Larger, more diverse samples are required in future research and evaluation activities to understand differential impacts for population subgroups. Future work should also focus on engagement training for the youth the teams engage. Despite these limitations, this study had some unique strengths.
The intervention was co-developed, co-delivered and documented in the form of an implementation workbook, 27

| CON CLUS IONS
Given the substantial benefits associated with engaging youth in research about youth-related health needs, concerns and interventions, it is important to increase the capacity of researchers to work in this manner. The INNOVATE Research project is a highly appreciated youth-engaged capacity-building initiative that provides gains in this area by building knowledge and reducing barriers. Future work and scaling of capacity development initiatives are needed to continue to enhance capacity, to establish a network of youth-engaged researchers and to provide ongoing, sustainable gains in youth engagement among researchers.

ACK N OWLED G EM ENTS
We would like to thank all of the members of the INNOVATE Research team for their contributions. We further thank Sarah Oates for her support of data analysis.

CO N FLI C T O F I NTE R E S T
None.

AUTH O R CO NTR I B UTI O N S
LH supported the design and execution of the study, analysed the data, interpreted the results and drafted the manuscript. KD, MB, SI, MKM, JR, SB, LL, SM, TH, SK and SS supported the design and execution of the study, co-interpreted the results and reviewed the manuscript. JH led the project, supported the design and execution of the study, co-interpreted the results and reviewed the manuscript.

DATA AVA I L A B I L I T Y S TAT E M E N T
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.