CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 364Youth Development and Social SupportChildren's Rights and ParticipationLGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy

Youth Empowerment and High School Gay-Straight Alliances

Open access
Russell, Stephen T., Muraco, Anna, Subramaniam, Aarti, Laub, Carolyn·2009·Journal of Youth and Adolescence
DOI 10.1007/s10964-008-9382-8PMC PMC2863040
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

In the field of positive youth development programs, "empowerment" is used interchangeably with youth activism, leadership, civic participation and self-efficacy. However, few studies have captured what empowerment means to young people in diverse contexts. This article explores how youth define and experience empowerment in youth-led organizations characterized by social justice goals: high school Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs). Through focus group interviews, fifteen youth leaders of GSAs from different regions of California explain what they think empowerment means and how they became empowered through their involvement with the GSA. Youth describe three inter-related dimensions of empowerment: personal empowerment, relational empowerment, and strategic empowerment through having and using knowledge. When these three dimensions are experienced in combination, GSA leaders have the potential for individual and collective empowerment as agents of social change at school. By understanding these youth's perspectives on the meanings of empowerment, this article clarifies the conceptual arena for future studies of socially marginalized youth and of positive youth development.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1007/s10964-008-9382-8

Cites

48 of 48 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • A sense of belonging can serve as a powerful protective factor for youth activists' health and wellbeing, even in the face of the deleterious effects of the costs of activism.

    “other work has shown how a sense of belonging can serve as a powerful protective factor for youth activists' health and wellbeing, even in the face of the deleterious effects of the costs of activism [5,14,66].”

    From Burnout and Belonging: How the Costs and Benefits of Youth Activism Affect Youth Health and Wellbeing (2023) · cites this paper as [14]

    The Results (Relational Empowerment; page unavailable) describe GSA membership as providing social support, easing isolation, and helping young activists persist when others oppose them. But the paper does not establish that belonging protects their health or wellbeing from the harmful costs of activism; it studies experiences of empowerment among GSA leaders. (LLM, conf=0.83)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Other research shows how a sense of connectedness to a collective and social capital can serve as a protective mental health pathway for youth activists.

    “Building on other research that shows how a sense of connectedness to a collective and social capital can serve as a protective mental health pathway for youth activists [5,9,14,66]”

    From Burnout and Belonging: How the Costs and Benefits of Youth Activism Affect Youth Health and Wellbeing (2023) · cites this paper as [14]

    The Results section (Relational Empowerment; page unavailable) reports that GSA youth leaders felt connected to a collective and gained social support, relief from isolation, and empowerment through group membership. Our copy does not establish social capital as a protective mental-health pathway or assess mental-health outcomes; “social capital” appears in a reference title, not as a finding of this study. (LLM, conf=0.85)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 49 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 4

  1. Dibennedetto A 1991 An analysis of youth empowerment through group involvement Unpublished Dissertation University of Massachusetts Amherst
  2. Herdt G Boxer A 1993 Children of horizons Boston Beacon Press
  3. Le Bosse Y Lavallee M Lacerte D Dube N Nadeau J Porcher E 1998 Is community participation empirical evidence for psychological empowerment? A distinction between passive and active participation Social Work & Social Sciences Review 8 1 59 82
  4. Uribe V 1994 Project 10: A school-based outreach to gay and lesbian youth High School Journal 77 108 Special issue

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Russell, S. T., Muraco, A., Subramaniam, A., & Laub, C.
Affiliations
  • University of Arizona (US)
  • Loyola Marymount University (US)
  • University of California, Davis (US)
  • Gay-Straight Alliance Network (US)
Corresponding author
Russell, Stephen T.
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Youth and Adolescence
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2009-01-10
Volume
38
Issue
7
Pages
891-903
ISSN
  • 0047-2891 (ISSN-L)
  • 1573-6601
DOI
10.1007/s10964-008-9382-8
PMC
PMC2863040
OpenAlex
W2169539224
Cited by
363
References
49
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 38 · 2018: 23 · 2017: 18 · 2016: 25 · 2015: 26 · 2014: 35 · 2013: 28 · 2012: 30
FWCI
56.69
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
Locations
  • Journal of Youth and Adolescence (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
  • William T. Grant Foundation
  • National Institute on Aging (AG000117, T32AG000117)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Safety Research › Youth Development and Social Support
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Children's Rights and Participation
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy
Keywords
youth empowerment, gay-straight alliances, high school students, positive youth development, youth activism, youth leadership, social justice, LGBTQ youth, marginalized youth, social change, self-efficacy, citizen participation
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Attitude, Communication, Cooperative Behavior, Ethnicity, Female, Homosexuality, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Male, Power, Psychological, Surveys and Questionnaires, Social Behavior, Social Justice, Social Perception, Students, Heterosexuality

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review