Bowey & McGlaughlin (2006) and Ager et al. (2008)

The following two articles are the last of the interesting research I found through Scholar’s Portal (please see my search history in the Sept. 8th post Fleetwood Article). They are both analyses of youth video projects conducted in school or agency settings. Bowey & McGlaughlin look at a video-based intervention in youth crime and social exclusion at school. Ager et al. discuss the use of youth video to prevent substance abuse.

The Bowey & McGlaughlin article, “The Youth Crime Reduction Video Project,” looks at an intervention with English grade nine students who were labeled “at-risk” by their schools (criteria: “excluded or at risk of being excluded, and/or having offended or showing the potential for offending” [!!] (p. 271)). The intervention included a video produced by each the two groups of youth involved. It also included an outward bound weekend. The authors present a qualitative study of youth attitudes towards police, crime and their levels of self-esteem before and after the intervention. The participants appeared to have slight, temporary shifts in attitude after the intervention including higher self-esteem (which the authors, somewhat presumptuously, believe will lower their future criminal behaviour). However, this study is more or less irrelevant to our project’s focus, as it has no information about the content of the video work itself. Our interest lies in how youth represent themselves, not in the potential therapeutic influence of this representation (or, for that matter, its conforming influence—why should teens like police, necessarily?). In fact, it seems as though the video was scripted and directed by the agencies involved, not by the youth. The post-study interviews with the participants showed significant discomfort with this top-down narrative, which is understandable. It might be an interesting element of our current project to investigate how much control youth are given over their videos/films from agency to agency, as well as if a therapeutic/educational agency approach detracts from the creative freedom of the participants.

Ager et al.’s “The Youth Video Project: An Innovative Program for Substance Abuse Prevention” focuses on substance abuse videos produced by African-American children (10-12 y.o.) in New Orleans. Unfortunately, this project was, again, a description of the therapeutic uses of youth-made video. Ager et al. provide very little information about the actual content of the videos, other than that the youth were meant to produce a drug abuse prevention video.

As anticipated, it seems that academic research material is, perhaps, not the best source of information for our current focus. However, one must start somewhere! It would be ideal to have access to more of agencies' actual youth-produced videos, but I imagine confidentiality restrains would be a significant obstacle. However I did find some promising work in the articles’ citations including: Chavez et al. (2004) “A bridge between communities: Video-making using principles of community-based participatory research” and Holleran et al. (2002) “Creating culturally grounded videos for substance abuse prevention.” Hopefully not more of the same!


REFERENCES:
-Ager, R.D., Parquet, R. & Kreutzinger, S. (2008). “The Youth Video Project: An Innovative Program or Substance Abuse Prevention.” Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions 8(3). 303-321.

-Bowey, L. & McGlaughlin, A. (2006). “The Youth Crime Reduction Video Project: An Evaluation of a Pilot Intervention Targeting Young People at Risk of Crime and School Exclusion.” The Howard Journal 45(3). 268-283.