Beyond "Giving Science Away": How University-Community Partnerships Inform Youth Programs, Research, and Policy

©1999 Society for Research in Child Development. All rights reserved. There is a clear need to bridge the gaps between research, practice, and policy for youth (Takanishi, 1993). In this report we propose that university-community partnerships afford the exchange of existing knowledge and the generation of new knowledge that serves this goal. We use examples from our recent research with two youth programs to illustrate steps to creating and maintaining university-community partnerships with an intergenerational and ethnically diverse team that includes youth, families, and staff as well as undergraduates, graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and faculty. We show how such research can generate knowledge that is relevant for programs and their participants as well as for theoretical debates and social and educational policy.