Choosing a Focus Issue

CORE ACTIVITY: Choosing a Focus Issue (55 minutes)

Materials: Butcher paper, Identification of the Issue worksheet, Budget Activity worksheet, Score the Issue worksheet (if needed)

• Individual Brainstorm (5 minutes): Present the question “What are some health issues important to teens in __(our school/community)?” or “What is a health problem that you would like to improve in your school / community?” to the group, and have participants write down three answers individually on a piece of paper. It is important to keep the question as open as possible so that teens can come to an issue that is truly theirs to research, rather than adults telling them what the problem is. This is crucial to establishing youth ownership of the project and getting teens invested in the process of research.
  • Note that you can use data or school or community assessments to help the group identify priority issues. You can also use the list of issues generated through the community mapping session to help students brainstorm.
• Group Share (10 minutes): Ask the participants to share one of the topics identified on their list. Go around the room, listing each topic, exactly as they are said, on a flip chart, whiteboard, or chalkboard. Once you have gotten a contribution from everyone in the room, ask people to share any other topics that have not yet been listed. Next take a few minutes to try to combine any topics together. Ask for suggestions from the group and make sure that whoever thought of the initial suggestions agrees with the way it is being renamed or incorporated into a broader category, to ensure that no one’s thoughts or ideas are lost.
• Topic Narrowing: Money Game (15 minutes)
  • Each youth will pretend they are mayor of their community, and that, as mayor, they are deciding on the top priorities for the year by allocating money to different areas. Youth will vote on their preference by assigning funds to the topics they think are the most important.
  • Hand out the "Budget Activity" worksheet and give youth a few minutes to fill in their answers.
  • Have someone add up the totals for each category with a calculator. Someone else should record the total amounts for each topic on butcher paper. Circle the two topics or issues with the most support.
• Topic Debate (15 minutes): Youth will organize into two groups, one for each of the top two topics. Youth can choose the topic that is most relevant or interesting to them. Explain that we will be having a debate in which each team can advocate for their topic.
  • Each team should fill out the "Identification of the Issue" worksheet for their topic to prepare.
  • When teams are finished, assign a moderator and have each group take two to three minutes to present the case for their topic. Give the other group one minute to respond with a counter argument.
• Group Share (10 minutes): Have each team present their topic, explaining to the rest of the group why the team members think the issues they chose are the most important. Once a topic has been chosen, have any other team who chose it report on it as well, so that you can have a running record of each topic selected. Once all the groups have shared their selections, create a new listing of the topics chosen by teams.
• Negotiate (10 minutes): The final step is to negotiate and decide on a single topic for research. The facilitator should try to get the group to think about how easy or difficult it will be to research certain topics. It is recommended that each group work on one topic/problem even if it is difficult to get resolution or agreement within the group, because it builds group identity and makes it easier to develop learning and research activities.
  • If the group can’t come to agreement through discussion, other options to try are:
    • Voting - Hands up for one versus the other topic, or written secret vote
    • Scoring the issues numerically - have each student fill out a “Score the Issues” sheet and tally up the numeric score for each issue, then have students share their scores and see which issue has the highest score
    • Youth participants generally find it more important to work with their peers than to compete over topics and are satisfied with the resolution no matter what process is used to arrive at it. A useful way to deal with disagreement in the group is to show how a topic members want to include may be an important part of the research model as an independent rather than a dependent variable. In other words, it can be a cause of the problem rather than the problem itself. This means that to change the problem, the cause itself has to be changed or improved.
• Celebrate!: Once the group has come to a decision on the final research questions, congratulate everyone! Thank everyone for their openness, honesty and willingness to work together. They have just completed a very important step of their action research journey!