Abstract
Background
Adolescents who participate as peer leaders can benefit and acquire competencies from their peer leadership experience.
Objectives
To identify the competencies gained by adolescents who participated as peer leaders in a healthy lifestyle study and to determine whether the training characteristics were related to improvement in competencies.
Design
The present study was part of the European Youth Tackling Obesity (EYTO) project, a multicentre social marketing intervention involving four European countries.
Setting and Participants
Eighteen peer leaders (aged 13–15 years, three or five leaders per country) from disadvantaged neighbourhoods received training in designing and implementing activities for their peers.
Measures
The peer leaders' confidence, experience and interest in 11 tasks related to lifelong learning competencies were assessed with questions rated on a colour scale at baseline and at the end of the study.
Results
The peer leaders demonstrated improvements in experience, confidence and interest in different tasks, such as research, website or logo design, oral presentations, social media use and collaboration with people from other countries. They increased their confidence in management tasks (p = 0.03) and their confidence and experience in communication tasks (p = 0.01). The peer leaders from Spain and Portugal had greater improvements than those from the other countries.
Conclusion
The peer leaders improved their confidence in management tasks and their confidence and experience in communication tasks. Slight differences were detected in improvement in competencies by country, likely due to the differences in the peer training applied. Recommendations for peer leader training are proposed, although these results should be verified with larger sample size.
Patient or Public Contribution
The peer leaders contributed to the design and implementation of the training and intervention.
Adolescents who participate as peer leaders can benefit and acquire competencies from their peer leadership experience.
Objectives
To identify the competencies gained by adolescents who participated as peer leaders in a healthy lifestyle study and to determine whether the training characteristics were related to improvement in competencies.
Design
The present study was part of the European Youth Tackling Obesity (EYTO) project, a multicentre social marketing intervention involving four European countries.
Setting and Participants
Eighteen peer leaders (aged 13–15 years, three or five leaders per country) from disadvantaged neighbourhoods received training in designing and implementing activities for their peers.
Measures
The peer leaders' confidence, experience and interest in 11 tasks related to lifelong learning competencies were assessed with questions rated on a colour scale at baseline and at the end of the study.
Results
The peer leaders demonstrated improvements in experience, confidence and interest in different tasks, such as research, website or logo design, oral presentations, social media use and collaboration with people from other countries. They increased their confidence in management tasks (p = 0.03) and their confidence and experience in communication tasks (p = 0.01). The peer leaders from Spain and Portugal had greater improvements than those from the other countries.
Conclusion
The peer leaders improved their confidence in management tasks and their confidence and experience in communication tasks. Slight differences were detected in improvement in competencies by country, likely due to the differences in the peer training applied. Recommendations for peer leader training are proposed, although these results should be verified with larger sample size.
Patient or Public Contribution
The peer leaders contributed to the design and implementation of the training and intervention.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 455-465 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Health Expectations |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 22 Dec 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Feb 2022 |
Bibliographical note
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThis project benefited from valuable collaborations of experts and institutions: National Children's Bureau (the United Kingdom), Companhia de Ideias (Portugal), Komunikujeme (Czech Republic) and Eurecat and Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Spain). The authors thank the teachers, parents and students of each four-participating countries for their enthusiastic participation in this study. This study project was funded by the European Commission (European Directorate General HEALTH—December 19, 2012). This funder did not play a role in the Spanish study design, data collection, study management, data analysis, data interpretation, article writing or decision to submit the report for publication. This article in journal has been possible with the support of the Secretaria d'Universitats i Recerca del Departament d'Empresa i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya, the European Union (UE) and the European Social Fund (ESF) (2021 FI_B1 00160).
Data Availability Statement
The technical appendix and raw data set are available from the following authors upon request: elisabet.llaurado@urv.cat and lucia.tarro@urv.catKeywords
- adolescent
- education
- health education
- health promotion
- lifestyle
Access to Document
- Llaurad_etal_HE_Adolescents_Encouraging_Healthy_VOR
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium,provided the original work is properly cited.© 2021 The Authors.Health Expectationspublished by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.