Critical Participatory Co-Analysis: Advancing Analytic Methods for Participatory Qualitative Research

New types of transgressive qualitative research can embrace more collaborative forms of truth-sharing and meaning-making, leading to more multivocal insights to advance shared knowledge-building and development goals in broader-reaching ways. In this study, I turn towards a participatory approach to data collection and analysis to explore new and more multivocal ways of developing knowledge in partnership with youth. I take this turn with the goal of conducting research that feels more honest, both in terms of analytic accuracy and in terms of analytic ethics. In this, I seek a transgressive validity that centers the humanity of both researcher and participant. In particular, I introduce and unpack critical participatory co-analysis as a transformative method for knowledge co-construction from multiple data points and perspectives, grounded in participant expertise in their lived experiences and contexts. This analytic method is an enactment of a critical commitment to multivocal truth and power-sharing in participatory research, leading to more complex and multilayered findings in closer partnership with participants. This paper explores the process of completing a qualitative dissertation study through participatory data cogeneration and critical participatory co-analysis, including steps navigated in partnership with youth, and the significance of these steps for reaching conceptual and methodological advancements in the work. Implications are discussed for enhancing mutuality and transparency between researcher and participants across all steps of analysis.