Beats, Rhymes, and Life: Evaluating Hip Hop Counseling Small-Groups for Adolescents

This study takes on calls in the counseling field for evaluation of culturally responsive and youth culture-centered group counseling strategies. Hip Hop Counseling (HHC) is one such counseling strategy, used to support children and adolescents in writing, recording, and performing Hip Hop songs/lyrics as a means of processing difficult emotional experiences. Calls have also been made to form university researcher and practitioner partnerships to further effective counseling evaluations. The current study, therefore, describes a preliminary evaluation of the Beats, Rhymes, and Life (BRL) small-group HHC program conducted collaboratively by BRL and university research partners. We address two aims (1) the co-construction of a Theory of Change to explicate outcomes, mechanisms, and precursors; and (2) statistical analysis of key mental health and well-being outcomes. Findings reveal that youth reported lower depression and anxiety symptoms after participating in BRL’s HHC small-group programming and highlights additional intrapersonal, interpersonal, and social-emotional mechanisms.