When staff present at conferences or talk with interested applicants, we sometimes encounter the misperception that the William T. Grant Foundation funds only quantitative intervention studies. While we do value—and fund—research that tests hypotheses about whether programs, policies, or practices reduce inequality among young people, we also value studies that employ rigorous qualitative approaches to examine how and why those programs, policies, or practices work.
Ten years ago, former program officer Vivian Louie wrote an essay detailing the value of qualitative and mixed methods studies for examining how and why programs, policies, and practices reduce inequalities among young people. In 2022, Alegría and O’Malley amplified the importance of qualitative and mixed methods approaches for studying causal mechanisms. Below, I highlight some recently funded studies across our three major grant programs to illustrate the range of work we support.
Examples from our Major Grants Program
The Foundation’s portfolio includes several studies that use qualitative approaches to explore how schools can better engage families to reduce inequalities in academic outcomes by race, ethnicity, immigrant origin, and other dimensions of inequality we prioritize. One example is a study led by Ishimaru and colleagues in partnership with Seattle Public Schools. Using a participatory design-based research approach, the team co-designed and implemented a process of partnering with East African and African American students and families, community leaders, and educators at three elementary schools to develop literacy tools (e.g., stories or other instruments) affirming Black students’ identities to improve literacy outcomes. Through an iterative process, the co-design team created a children’s book that emerged from families’ traditions and was written in multiple languages; they partnered with Seattle Public Libraries to host book launches and connect with families. The study also generated a toolkit to guide districts and schools in equitable collaborations with Black families to strengthen student academic outcomes across subjects. More recently, the Foundation awarded a grant to Palacios and colleagues, who will use surveys, interviews, and observations to examine how home visits with Latine families may improve family-school relationships and teacher classroom practices—again, with the aim of improving academic outcomes for Latine youth.
In the housing sector, Lenhoff and colleagues are conducting a longitudinal mixed methods study to examine how the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, designed to strengthen community cohesion through cross-sector collaboration, reduces academic inequalities for Black youth from low-income families by transforming their social networks. Their case study of the Corktown neighborhood of Detroit uses repeated representative surveys of residents; longitudinal qualitative interviews with parents, youth, and case managers; critical network analysis; and educational administrative data. As part of the network analysis, the team will conduct a guided mapping activity and interviews with twenty youth across each study year. They plan to integrate data from the surveys, interviews, and youth mapping to create narratives for each participant for cross-case analysis. Their study will examine whether and how Black low-income families experience changes in their social networks and through what mechanisms (e.g., social resources, information, support) these changes improve educational opportunities for Black low-income youth.
Examples from the William T. Grant Scholars Program
The notable feature of the Scholars award, a career development grant, is that it enables promising early career researchers to stretch their expertise in ways that will enrich their longer-term research agenda, whether methodologically and/or substantively. For example, some Scholars start with expertise in qualitative studies and expand their knowledge about quantitative approaches, while others who are quantitatively trained learn how to collect and analyze qualitative data. Others grow their qualitative expertise in new directions.
Quadlin, trained in experimental quantitative data collection and analysis, is using her Scholars award to develop expertise in qualitative interviewing and data analysis. Substantively, she’s expanding her sociological knowledge about inequality and the labor market to understand psychological approaches to youth behavior. Quadlin will undertake two studies over the course of the five-year award. In the first, she will conduct a five-year longitudinal interview study with 60 White, Hispanic, and Southeast Asian undergraduates from low-income families at two California universities that differ in terms of institutional resources and success in facilitating student mobility. The interviews will allow Quadlin to develop an in-depth understanding of how students understand the transition to work at different stages of their undergraduate experience and the meaning they ascribe to their experiences. She will also conduct interviews with administrators and staff at each institution. The second project, a mixed methods study at one of the universities, will include focus groups, participant job search diaries, and an experimental intervention, to examine how students self-select into job applicant pools. Taken together, these two studies will allow Quadlin to more deeply understand how institutions of higher education can better support students from low-income families in developing successful pathways to employment and economic mobility.
Ambo, a qualitative scholar of higher education who focuses on Indigenous students, is expanding her expertise in indigenous research methodologies, youth- and community-engaged research, and organizational mapping, and her theoretical expertise on settler colonialism and critical theories. In a three-phase comparative case study of three universities, Ambo is exploring the relationship between the educational outcomes of Indigenous youth and Native nation-building and how higher education can improve academic experiences for Indigenous students. Her project includes content analysis to develop an inventory of university practices that address the educational needs of Indigenous youth; interviews and focus groups with Indigenous students to understand how systemic racism embedded within curricular, co-curricular, and campus activities affects their university experience; and interviews with members of neighboring Native nations to understand their educational needs, as well as how tribes explain the ways higher education can advance nation-building.
Examples from the Institutional Challenge Grant Program
Many of our grantees in the Institutional Challenge Grant program use qualitative methods in their co-developed research agendas. The partnership between the University of Michigan School of Public Health and Focus: HOPE is using photovoice and focus groups to elicit insights into how Black youth experience workforce development programs alongside stress burden and other mental health challenges. Using findings from these qualitative approaches, the team is developing a workforce development program with a mental health component, which they will compare with a business-as-usual workforce development program in a randomized controlled trial. Findings will yield insight into whether the integration of a mental health component into a workforce development program improves employment, economic, and mental health outcomes for Black youth. Partnerships between the University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco Unified School District and the University of California at Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz County United Way have, respectively, used Youth Participatory Action Research to inform district strategies to reduce inequalities in chronic absenteeism and to elevate youth voice to identify and address community concerns.
One of our newest grantees, a partnership between Virginia Commonwealth University and Richmond Public Schools, will examine how multilingual family participation in school-based improvement teams—called a Networked Improvement Community—leads to the development of more culturally responsive family engagement strategies that increase belonging and agency for multilingual families, enhance knowledge about educational pathways and advocacy for children, and ultimately lead to improved youth outcomes. The team will implement Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles across three middle schools in Richmond, Virginia, to foster multilingual family belonging and agency as key levers for improved transition to 9th grade, improved attendance, and increased enrollment in advanced coursework and career and technical education programs.
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These studies illustrate the Foundation’s ongoing commitment to funding high-quality qualitative and mixed methods research that provides robust insights into how or why programs, policies, or practices reduce inequalities for young people. Qualitive approaches can delve into the processes, experiences, and interactions that are critical to understanding responses to inequality. They allow researchers to open the black box of programs, policies, and practices: How are they implemented effectively? How are they experienced by young people? Why do they work well in some places and not others? How do meaning-making processes shift to support lasting change in youth-serving systems? We encourage you to browse our awarded grants to find more examples of how our grantees are using qualitative approaches to grow our robust portfolio of scholarship on reducing inequality.
