Research led by the students it's about.
The New Voters Research Network trains high school students to design and run original research on youth civic engagement, working alongside academic mentors and reporting findings back to the practitioners who use them.
Most research on high school civic engagement is done about students, not with them. NVRN was founded in 2022 to close that gap, pairing the lived experience of high schoolers with the mentorship of academic scholars to produce research that's rigorous enough for scholars and useful enough for the practitioners running programs on the ground.
We train high school student researchers. New Researchers, our flagship summer program, teaches students the fundamentals of social science research and how to design a study built for real-world use, not just a grade. We have trained 160 students trained since 2022. Our strongest researchers are then selected as Senior Fellows, taking on original projects and mentorship or TA roles for the next cohort.
We collaborate with academics. We cultivate a space for academic scholars, community scholars, and high school students to meet and discuss solutions to support high school students in leveraging their political power for the betterment of themselves and their communities through forums, workshops, and conferences.
We create research that gets used. Findings don't stop at publication, but rather they go back to the practitioners who can act on them, through Action Briefs shared with the New Voter Collaborative and original research published on our Substack, alongside presentations at national summits and peer-reviewed journals.
NVRN, University of Maryland Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, The Elections Group
A framework for classifying the different approaches high schools take to student voter engagement, built to help practitioners identify which model fits their school. Presented at the 2nd National High School Voting Summit and shared as a resource with New Voter Collaborative members.
NVRN, YIP , peer-reviewed, Journal of Advanced Research in Social Sciences
A peer-reviewed study examining how discourse-based classroom learning affects students' civic engagement, political polarization, and comprehension of the material discussed.
NVRN research assistants Sydney Fahn, Anish Garimidi, and Collin Wang contributed to Listening to Young Men, a national research report from Public Agenda examining how young men navigate identity, education, and civic life. The report draws on a representative survey of 3,559 American adults and two rounds of focus groups conducted in September 2025 and February 2026. Public Agenda named New Voters as a partner in making youth voice heard through nonpartisan, evidence-based engagement.
