Projects
This research is among the first to find a positive relationship between participation in foster youth advisory boards and psycho-social outcomes. It remains the only study on the topic of empowerment of foster care youth that leverages a contemporaneous comparison group. In addition to publishing a mixed-methods dissertation on the topic, I4IC founder, Tara Batista, conducted a separate evaluation of one of the programs examined in the original study, Florida Youth Shine. Batista presented her findings at the 29th Annual Research & Policy Conference on Child, Adolescent, and Young Adult Behavioral Health in 2015. In 2016, researchers Dr. Bradley Forenza of Montclair University and Dr. Judy Havlicek of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign approached Batista because they had separately published qualitative studies on the same topic. Batista, Havlicek & Forenza then presented a research panel on the topic at the 21st Annual Conference of the Society for Social Work and Research. That same year, the Journal of Family History published the historical portion of the study, which was later included in an anthology. In 2018, the Journal for the Society for Social Work and Research published an article featuring Batista´s quantiative portion of the study. The article reports the relationship found between participation in youth empowerment programs and psychological empowerment among foster care youth.
Social Entrepreneurship: Venture creation, research, and program development.
In 2015, Dr. Tara Batista incubated a series of start-up companies in the social entrepreneurship program she directed at Stetson University. One such company, TSOLife built an online sharing platform that captures life history and facilitates inter-generational exchange. The student entrepreneurs wondered if the platform could also be used to lower depression in isolated, socially excluded, or institutionalized older adults. To provide pro-bono work and study the effects of their innovation, the Leave a Legacy Foundation, Inc. was born and a series of studies were planned and conducted. Batista and I4IC Junior Researcher Stella Parris, helped create the entity, design the studies, and secure funding. Through Batista's guidance, talented undergraduate students such as Parris, applied for and received 501(c)(3) status for Leave a Legacy, which transformed TSOLife into a hybrid. The investigation started with a comprehensive literature review and then moved onto a series of pilot studies to determine sample size and measures. The faculty advisor led team then partnered with the UCF's Technology and Aging lab and submitted a NIH STTR and NSF grant proposals.
Upon hearing of these developments, Batista was recruited by Columbia University School of Social Work to develop a social entrepreneurship program. A report of the planning year can be found here. To the left, is a snapshot of the entrepreneur's curricular pathway.
Needs Assessments: A focus on positive youth development
Founder Tara Batista has conducted needs assessments for Partner's of the Americas, The House Next Door, The United Way, and the University of California. For Partners of the Americas Columbia-Florida chapter (Partners), Batista flew to Bogota and Baranquilla and conducted qualitative interviews, in Spanish, with coaches, public officials, and after-school staff. Her findings helped Partners discover that soccer coaches wanted positive youth development training to help them better support youth struggling with physical, emotional, or behavioral problems. She trained two Stetson classes to produce needs assessments for The House Next Door and the United Way as part of semester long assignments. Students conducted secondary research and designed semi-structured interview guides for focus groups they facilitated. They also designed and administered questionnaires to parents and students. Through their final document, the House Next Door in Deland, FL learned the most effective ways to allocate a $12,500 grant from Target, Inc to redesign their Homework Club. Findings also indicated that it was financially viable to start a paid tutoring program. The United Way of Volusia-Flagler counties approached Batista about administering their survey in an unincorporated low-income community consistently excluded from the U.S. Census. The students produced a 33 page document that helped the United Way prioritize funding among 4 issues: education, health, income, and safety. With help from I4IC contractor Mathias Haugner, Batista also assessed the youth development needs of Kings, Fresno and Tulare counties for the University of California Cooperative Extension (a sample of which is featured to the left). For this endeavor, she constructed a Community Research Advisory Board to help design the research. As part of the Kings County needs assessment, she designed and helped administered a community survey representing 30+ community organizations. The final report, written by Kings Partnership for Prevention can be found here.
Survey Support
Whether its cross-sectional or longitudinal surveys, I4IC can help individuals, departments, and organizations collect, analyze, visualize, and narrate results for a variety of audiences. The research brief to the left is an example of I4IC´s work completed for a business school, whose faculty wanted to examine the effects of remote work on a variety of outcomes. The faculty research team designed the study and questionnaire, partnered with Qualtrics to deliver the panel survey, and partnered with I4IC for the analysis, data visualization, interpretation and writing of the research brief. For the full brief, please see the pdf below.
Social Media and Community Engagement Supportport 1
Founder, Tara Batista, and I4IC Independent Contractor, Mathias Haugner, work together with retired historian and professor Dr. Paul Croce and various members of the Stetson University and DeLand communities to improve and scale the "Public Classroom" project. Public Classroom uses a variety of platforms to show how past experiences can shed light on current challenges, especially to bridge polarized divides in the US.
Specifically, Public Classroom’s project engages three audiences: the general public, the Left, and the Right. The "Healing our Cultural Wounds" series encourages dialogue and effective public engagement across political divides. The "Hope Trumps Fear" series helps the Left rebuild post-2024 election by listening to Trump voters and addressing their concerns. The "Varieties of Public Purposes" content connects conservative priorities—economy, security, and tradition—to broader public interests.
I4IC is dedicated to capturing Dr. Croce’s dynamic public speaking engagements, both online and in-person, for The Public Classroom Podcast YouTube channel. Our firm also proudly supports various publications on Substack, in newspapers, and academic journals. By attending community events and engaging with diverse perspectives, I4IC models the vital skill of "listening across differences," fostering meaningful dialogue in our ever-evolving society.