“Nothing about us without us”: Inclusion of unhoused youth voice in qualitative data analysis

A cornerstone of community-based participatory research (CBPR) is the inclusion of voice, which is achieved by partnering with individuals with lived experience. The incorporation of participant voices at all stages of the research process can be time and resource intensive, leaving community participants engaged in project execution to be excluded from roles in data analysis and synthesis. We conducted a qualitative meta-analysis of secondary data from a Photovoice project with youth experiencing homelessness (YEH; Snow-Hill et al., 2024) to examine the potential for engaging youth in qualitative analysis in future CBPR and Photovoice projects. Analyses examined the commonalities between themes identified by YEH to codes identified by researchers. All but two youth-generated themes had corresponding researcher codes, and all but five researcher-generated codes had parallel youth-generated themes. We also found a degree of nuance and complexity in themes identified by participants that were not adequately captured by researcher codes suggesting the inclusion of YEH voice is needed to accurately identify needs and strengths of the community. The present study provides a novel contribution as it is the first of its kind to compare participant and researcher generated content in a Photovoice project with YEH. Findings underscore the value of participant voices in all stages of the research continuum and further emphasize its importance in understanding the lived experiences of YEH.