Putting participatory research into practice: the challenges and benefits of peer interviewing with ‘hard to reach’ youth

Avril KeatingLLAKES Research CentreInstitute of Education, University College London

Contact: a.keating@ioe.ac.uk December 2014

Aims of this presentation

To describe and discuss a small-scale effort to get young people involved in a research project that we were doing at LLAKES Research Centre (part of the Institute of Education, UCL)

Why involve young people as researchers?

Increasingly common, not just in education/ social sciences, but also in other health research, business studies, etc.

Why? Several drivers, from policy and academia The ‘user engagement’ & the ‘youth consultation’

agendas Children’s rights agenda (Davis, 2009: 161) New sociology of childhood (see Heath et al, 2009) Revival of participatory [action] research

What is participatory [action] research?

The ideal: Shared ownership of research projects Community-based analysis of social problems An orientation towards community action (Kemmis &

McTaggart, 2000). Cyclical learning process (Munn-Giddings, 2012: 72)

Different variants/ labels, including: Community-based PAR Critical PAR Hybrid models – academic researchers as catalysts and

coordinators (Munn-Giddings, 2012: 71)

Why choose participatory methods?

Practical Easier access [make funding body happy]

Epistemological More insider perspectives

Ethical benefits From research subject to research partner or co-researcher Minimise asymmetries of power in the research relationship

(Bourdieu, 1996, cited in Warr et al, 2011: 348) Social justice, community empowerment and solution to

community problems

“Hard to reach” social groups

Especially useful for research in/ on “hard to reach” or vulnerable, disadvantaged or disenfranchised groups

E.g. Low SES; refugees and asylum seekers; immigrants/ non-English speakers; drug users; sex workers; the elderly

Peer interviewers act as intermediaries/ translators

Help to gain access, overcome language barriers, trust issues (of research and/ or of outsiders)

Adding a youth research dimension to our project

Why include young people as researchers in our project?

Project title: The Crisis for Contemporary Youth: Young People, Opportunities and Civic Values in the UK

Exploring the transition to adulthood and How young people try to access education, employment,

housing How civic values like political engagement change

Conducting surveys and in-depth interviews, but finding it difficult to recruit young people from deprived / disengaged communities (i.e. the typical H2R group)

Original aims of this youth strand

Recruit young people to act as peer interviewers - and to access to ‘hard to reach’ groups

Engage with user community – youth perspective on the Topic Guide + and the preliminary findings

Help with the “researcher effect” - can we gain different insights when young people talk to other young people about these issues?

“Action” – help build youth research skills and employability

Recruitment via the Young Advisors charity

“Young Advisors are young people typically aged between 15 and 21, who show community leaders and decision makers how to engage young people in community life, local decision making and improving services.

Young Advisors are trained agents of social action who guide local authorities, housing associations and other local partners about what it is like for a young person to live, work, learn and play in their neighbourhood.”

From www.youngadvisors.org.uk

Original brief given to YA

Recruit 5 Young Advisors with prior experience of: interviewing young people working in areas of high deprivation

Each to conduct 5 interviews with “hard to reach” groups (in this context, NEETS with low qualifications), age 22 – 27

YAs = paid for their work (£10 per/ hour)

YA Charity liaison – to help with management/ oversight

Proposed Format

Workshop 1: Training Day for all YAs Introduction to the project + the topic guide Interview + recruitment techniques N.B. Introduction to Ethics rules and informed consent

Fieldwork in their communities (2 days in June)

Workshop 2: debrief – YA contribution to analysis

Use of incentives

High-street shopping voucher

Ethical reasons - offered to all other interviewees

To facilitate recruitment

Mixed evidence on whether it was necessary, but…

… I don’t think I’d have got [the interviews] without [the incentive voucher], regardless of how much money they’re making [selling drugs]. Especially one of them, he had scored quite a big lot of money but still, he didn’t want to waste his time, so in his eyes it’s all about money, so in his eyes £20 worth of incentive for 40 minutes was good. And he was looking at that clock! (YA from East Midlands)

Project management in practice…

In practice, as you can imagine, things did not go quite as smoothly.

Workshop 1 went quite well – but it gave me some insight into what could do wrong… Poor preparation, limited recall of their task Limited time to build trust between the YAs

Deadlines extended – end of June to beginning of August Two drop-outs – 0 interviews completed One ‘incomplete’ – only 3 interviews completed

Research model adapted

Workshop 2 not feasible (work commitments, travel distance, trying to find a date to suit all five).

Ultimately decided to replace W2 with individual interviews.

To add a participatory dimension asked questions such as:

Did you learn anything new from these interviews?

What do you think were the main messages that emerged from the young people you interviewed?

Evaluate your experience as a participant

Added more interaction with the YA central charity - became a research partner/ collaborator?

“Results” and “Outcomes”

1. Achieved increased access to more H2R respondents

Despite these challenges, we ended up with 17 valuable (and usually high quality) interviews; 14 of these were conducted by the YAs themselves, and 3 were conducted (by me) with the YAs.

These interviews were particularly valuable, as the YAs were able to access interviewees that are typically H2R, and helped us to diversify/ balance our sample.

In particular, (and as requested), the YAs interviewed young people who had left education with few/ no qualifications, and who had been unemployed for a long-time.

Beyond basic demographics…

Experience of homelessness / family breakdown/ living in care

Learning difficulties and/ or mental health issues

Long-term unemployment

Ex-prisoners

Drug dealers/ other illicit activities

Low(er) trust and low(er) optimism about the future

2. Insider perspectives

YAs also able to provide more information about the community/ more contextual information than professional/ academic researchers often collect

And able to provide more information about the interviewee that is not on tape

Respondents also more trusting, if they have known the YA for some time

3. New insights (a) methods

1. Bring pen, paper and tasks for interviewees that might find it difficult to talk/ sit still for a long period of time

2. … quite a lot of people have said that when we were talking about their personal questions like where they live, the issues close to them, they were flying through the answers. But as soon as you mentioned something like the politics section it was, “oh well I don’t really know” and I think they all sort of clammed up on that. (YA NE England)

Talking about politics = perhaps more suited to focus groups, not one-on-one interviews?

New insights (b) - Asking about unofficial ‘employment’

Q. At that same time was there anything else you were doing money-wise, the area you live etc?

A Yeah, the only other way to be honest is selling drugs.

Q Yeah? What made you do that then? Like, how old were you? Was it when you left school or was it while you were in school, or after?

A …I felt I was being a bit mistreated, so I left college, I had no other means of getting money, couldn’t get a job for about 4 or 5 months, 6 months, I couldn’t carry on living broke, so I had to do what I had to do. Had to go out and try and get some money together really.

4. Youth participation in research process

More limited than expected

Some additional probe questions/ some re-wording, but YAs tended to stick to the Topic Guide

Input into analysis also limited – Too early? Too much to expect?

5. “Action” = mixed success

Youth empowerment/ skill development – not transformative/ empowering

YAs already had experience/ skills Room for further professionalism

Unanticipated action = learning At the organisational level, and At the academic level

Lesson #1

Peer interviewers = not professional researchers Even though paid, and have some experience

Not meant to be professional researchers – part of why they have been recruited

But creates tensions, competing objectives, and takes more resources

Reveals that ‘remote management’ from London/ Manchester = not easy. Perhaps local leads need more of a role in the management/ over-sight?

Lesson #2

Assumptions about young people = deeply embedded

E.g. Young people ≠ not digital natives

Lesson #3

YAs = not peers… but should not be patronised

YAs are young adults, not children

Have to be managed

Have been employed to do a task, should not be treated as charity cases/ children

Failure to deliver should be penalized, if we are to respect YAs as young, responsible adults

Lesson # 4: Power imbalance = unavoidable?

YAs need to be managed and monitored to ensure the task is completed

But this re-asserts the power imbalance

Undermining the participatory principles of the project?

Reflections, discussion and conclusion

Successful? Depends on what measure you use

Pros: More data collected for the project, and (more importantly)

with the target audience we were finding it difficult to achieve Learned new questions that have been applied in subsequent

interviews Feedback to YA Charity – keen to learn from this experience

and work together – evidence of change/ learning at the organisational level.

Learning also at the personal/ academic level

Participation-light? Tokenistic?

But the participatory/ social justice element = limited, or at least not direct

‘Partial’ participation not uncommon Perhaps even more democratic/ more practical in research

with C&YP, as it can allows young people to allow much they want to be involved (see Heath et al, 2009).

But raises the question – How can we improve the research model to increase the

benefits for young people while ensuring that the project is well-run and we gather good research data?

Key practical lessons

Recruitment = crucial

Remote management = challenging

Still resource-intensive – not simply sub-contracting out the work

Risky process – may not generate (enough/ good quality) data

Relationships, with their communities and with the interviewees = the value added

Reflexivity = central to the process

Next steps…

Feedback to YA central organisation

Follow-up interviews with some of the YAs

YAs to participate in dissemination events with policy actors

Planning of Phase 2

Bibliography/ background reading

Heath, S., Brooks, R., Cleaver, E., & Ireland, E. (2009). Researching young people's lives. Sage.

Kirby, P. (2003). Building a culture of participation: Involving children and young people in policy, service planning, delivery and evaluation: Research report. DfES Publications.

Fleming, J., & Boeck, T. (Eds.). (2012). Involving children and young people in health and social care research. Routledge.

Warr, D., Mann, R., & Tacticos, T. (2011). Using peer‐interviewing methods to explore place‐based disadvantage: dissolving the distance between suits and civilians. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 14(5), 337-352.

Ospina, S., Dodge, J., Foldy, E. G., & Hofmann-Pinilla, A. (2008). Taking the action turn: Lessons from bringing participation to qualitative research. The Sage handbook of action research: participative inquiry and practice, 420-434.

Avril KeatingLLAKES Research Centre

Institute of Education, University College LondonContact: a.keating@ioe.ac.uk

December 2014