Psychological empowerment and future orientation among adolescents in a youth participatory action research program

Youth participatory action research (YPAR) empowers youth to address challenges in their environment. Empowerment is associated with prosocial behaviors; however, understanding of how empowerment may serve as a protective factor and promote emotional health remains limited. We sought to characterize protective factors (future orientation and resilience) and emotional health (difficulties regulating emotion and psychological distress) among youth engaged in YPAR and examine associations with psychological empowerment. We administered cross-sectional surveys to 63 youth in YPAR programming. Multivariable linear regression examined relationships between psychological empowerment, protective factors, and emotional health. Participants had high future orientation and resilience with high psychological distress. Empowerment was significantly associated with higher future orientation. There was no significant relationship between empowerment and measures of emotional health. We demonstrate the importance of evaluating protective factors and emotional health constructs in empowerment frameworks, calling for strategies that incorporate such protective factors and more directly address emotional health.