Participatory approaches are growing in importance across research and evaluation settings. Such approaches must be informed by existing evidence; designed in line with best practice, clearly strategised, and connected to potential outcomes. This review consolidates and translates the existing evidence into a framework that can be applied across research and evaluation settings. 

The review combined learnings from systematic reviews and practice guidance, documents and toolkits to establish clear recommendations on youth participation that can be implemented by research and evaluation organisations. The review focussed on how participatory approaches can promote the voice of young people who have been marginalised through systemic inequalities. 

Tt was found that researchers inconsistently implement youth participatory approaches and that more needs to be done to ensure that participatory approaches are clearly planned, monitored and evaluated for impact. Embedding the features of successful participatory approaches into research and evaluation projects is likely to realise higher quality approaches that are ethically responsive to the needs of marginalised young people.

Key recommendations

• Practitioners should use the learnings from this review to think about the extent to which they have implemented participatory research approaches and how this aligns with organisational ambition.
• The pre-existing academic models of youth participatory research should be used during design phases of research projects to promote a more transparent and intentional approach to participation approaches.
• Practitioners should reflect on how they can improve their participatory approaches by implementing the drivers of promising throughout the research journey.
• Practitioners should evaluate the ways in which their participatory approaches relate to outcomes for young people more widely.