YEP: Plan to Share Findings

Webinar planning process 

The majority of the time we spent on sharing findings as a research group was in planning our webinar. While a webinar was selected at the project proposal stage, we did not prescribe the format or participants. We identified a few potential approaches to the planning process: working with a small group of interested research group members to plan and implement the webinar or involving the entire research group. We started our planning process with an activity asking research group members to brainstorm content for the webinar. Through that activity and the subsequent meeting focused on structure, it became obvious that the entire research group wanted to be part of the planning and implementation of the webinar. We ended up dedicating three full meetings, half of another meeting, plus a run-through to prepare for the webinar. The details of each of these meetings are below. 

Session 1: initial brainstorming 

In this session, we dedicated half of the time to an initial brainstorm of webinar content and structure. This helped us plan for the next meeting fully dedicated to webinar planning. 

Session 2: webinar agenda 

In this session, we focused on creating a webinar agenda by dividing into two small groups to plan their ideal 60-minute webinar. Then we came together as a large group to blend the two agendas and reach a consensus about how we would spend the hour. We also discussed how we wanted to proceed with webinar planning, as a full group or a smaller subgroup. The decision was to move forward with planning as a full group. 

Session 3: panel questions and speaking roles 

In this session, we had two goals. In the previous meeting, the research group decided part of the webinar should include a panel discussion, so we spent time gathering their ideas for questions the panelists could address to related to youth roles, the policy process, organizational practices, and outcomes. The second goal was to start identifying which research group members were interested in presenting or speaking during each of section of the webinar. After this meeting, Child Trends staff drafted a proposal of panel questions and speaking roles, which we shared with the research group for feedback and/or approval.  

Session 4: small group prep sessions 

Once research group members reviewed and approved the proposal for panel questions and roles, we were able to move forward with helping each of them prepare for their role! We held meetings with smaller groups to have more focused support. All in all, we hosted four prep meetings. One meeting was with three organizational staff research group members who were preparing their two-minute overviews on their organizational and policy wins. A second meeting included two of the four youth research group member panelists, while a third meeting supported a third youth panelist. The final meeting was with a staff and youth research group member from the same grantee organization. These sessions provided valuable time for research group members to take notes, brainstorm ideas, and begin practicing both in the session and on their own afterwards.  

Session 5: webinar run-through 

Our final meeting of the webinar planning process was to schedule a run-through a few days before the actual webinar. We went through all the slides and had everyone practice speaking their role. This helped answer any questions research group members had in real-time, troubleshoot some technology issues, and make sure we were as prepared as possible for the webinar.  

Reflections 

After the webinar, we held a final meeting with the research group to reflect on our work together as the project ended. In this meeting, we celebrated the completion of our webinar and shared kudos with the research group. We also asked for their reflections on what went well, what was challenging, and what we could be improved in future projects  

Next, we moved into broader reflections. We shared a timeline of all the research activities and work we completed together then asked them to share what they learned from this project, about both youth engagement and research. Child Trends staff also wanted to know more about their experience in the research group, so we asked a few questions to encourage their reflections.  

Although we planned to do an activity that encouraged research group members to think about the future and what we hoped this project would help accomplish in their communities and across the country, we ran out of time. Instead, we felt it was more important to share information about how research group members could talk about this work on their resumes and highlight all the publications their names were included on. Child Trends staff shared a resume template with this information to all research group members.