Addressing Tobacco-Related Disparities Among Youth Experiencing Homelessness by Engaging Youth Collaborators in Intervention Research: Protocol for a Multimethod, Community-Based Participatory Research Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Youth experiencing homelessness and housing instability exhibit disparities in tobacco use and co-use of tobacco and cannabis products compared to their stably housed peers. Interventions to address these disparities have had limited success to date. This may be related to a lack of fit between intervention approaches and the unique needs and preferences of this marginalized population. Leveraging strategies to facilitate authentic engagement of youth in intervention research, including collaborating with youth in the cocreation of intervention goals and strategies, presents an opportunity to overcome challenges of previous research to mitigate tobacco-related disparities among youth experiencing homelessness and housing instability. OBJECTIVE: This protocol aims to engage youth collaborators in intervention research to address tobacco-related disparities among youth experiencing homelessness and housing instability. It outlines strategies to recruit and partner with youth to cocreate a strengths-based, expressive arts intervention to reduce harms associated with tobacco use and tobacco/cannabis co-use and evaluate our youth engagement strategies. METHODS: The community and academic partners leading this intervention study developed a structure that allows for two levels of youth collaboration. This structure, developed through consultation with a youth action board, facilitates youth (aged between 14 and 26 years) involvement in intervention design, implementation, and pilot testing. At the higher collaboration level, youth will join the intervention research team as "co-researchers," engaging weekly with study-related tasks and contributing equitably to the research processes (eg, selecting intervention strategies and supporting data analysis) in alignment with their personal and professional goals. At the lower collaboration level, youth will engage with the research team as "advisors," providing targeted feedback at key points during intervention development. Brief surveys, field notes, ethnographic memos, focus group discussions, and semistructured interviews will be used to evaluate our process and impact among the engaged youth. RESULTS: To date, we have engaged 7 co-researchers who have participated in several capacity-building and professional development activities, including research ethics training and tobacco prevention advocacy training. Co-researchers have contributed to intervention development brainstorming sessions, evaluated available interventions to address youth tobacco use, and developed materials to expand the group of co-researchers and advisors. Preliminary data suggest sufficient youth engagement (study goal of engaging 10 co-researchers in a 2-year study period) and that engagement processes are highly acceptable to youth collaborators. Lessons learned to date have helped us to improve and refine our engagement processes (eg, technological barriers). CONCLUSIONS: This protocol describes a holistic approach to equitably and authentically engaging youth as collaborators in intervention research to address tobacco-related disparities among youth experiencing homelessness and housing instability. The approach may serve as a useful model that can be adapted for other youth-focused intervention research. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/69441.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.081 | 0.058 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.008 | 0.010 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.064 | 0.011 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".