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DEVELOPING RESEARCH AIMS, ANALYSIS AND CONCEPTS WITH YOUNG PEOPLE. YOUNG PEOPLE AS CO-RESEARCHERS SEMINAR 23 rd January 2010 rachel.pain@durham.ac.uk. What stages of research do young people participate in?. Decide on aims – and develop aims Choose the methods Collect the data
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DEVELOPING RESEARCH AIMS, ANALYSIS AND CONCEPTS WITH YOUNG PEOPLE YOUNG PEOPLE AS CO-RESEARCHERS SEMINAR 23rd January 2010 rachel.pain@durham.ac.uk
What stages of research do young people participate in? • Decide on aims – and develop aims • Choose the methods • Collect the data • Analyse the data • Make sense of findings (conceptualise or theorise) • Write it up • Disseminate - tell other people to influence change
ACtion • …is the most important part of Participatory Action Research… • But where does it come from? • What knowledge is it founded on? • Who shapes this and how? • Kellett (2005) – reports widespread concern about involving young people in developing ethical frames of research • Involvement in analysis and theory much more challenging to conventional researchers • But everyone has the capacity to analyse and theorise…we all do it, all the time!
Participatory art with acane 3 year research relationship with African-run community project in Byker 20+/- young people of African and white British heritage aged 5 – 15 Used discussion groups, diagramming, different forms of art, creative writing, web design, etc
Aims: what is this research about? • Usually driven by a knowledge/action/policy imperative • Alternative: a ground up process where YP think through what research should ask • How can that be facilitated?
Method (1):Discussion groups to brainstorm issues around hope/fear most relevant to them. Several follow ups – iterative analysis - to narrow focus. • Development of research questions and analysis • From a range of local/global concerns... • Iterative analysis by groups of their own and others’ findings on “hope” and “fear” • Prioritisation of certain issues to investigate in depth, e..g bullying, racism • Research questions continued to change: e.g. from difference to connection, from stereotypes about people to stereotypes about places • Method (2) Chose art as a means of exploring and expressing emotions and the final research focus. • Method (3) Young people designed and uploaded content for a website about bullying and racism
Analysis Ruby: Data analysis – I hate it. When doing this part of the project the day just seemed drag. Annissa: It’s just torture that’s all. Caitlin: Why is it torture? Annissa: I don’t know it reminds me of school. Ruby: It’s like to over analyse – Annissa: I think I like to speak and put things out there and not have to think about why I said them. (Caitlin Cahill, with the Fed Up Honeys, 2007)
Conventional analysis • In conventional research analysis is: • A separate phase of the research process • Conducted by experts • Includes abstract and formal tests of validity and cross-questioning of data • Supposedly, accountable… • “Participatory analysis embraces knowledge production as a contested, fraught process. It assumes there is no singular or universal truth” (Cahill 2007)
Analysis IN PAR • Techniques: a range of analytical methods can be applied to data from PAR, as for conventional social research: • E.g. content analysis, qualitative analysis, quantitative analysis, visual analysis, etc • Process: the process of analysis is different. • Collaboration: analysis is undertaken by participants • Classically with participatory methods, analysis is built into their use (e.g. diagramming) • Analysis may also be undertaken by others – e.g. external researcher, other stakeholders
Conventional theorising • Conventional stages of theorisation: • Before any contact with participants: theoretical grounding to suggest research questions • May use elements of grounded theory during fieldwork… (though most often not) • Theorisation is done afterwards, separately, with no input from participants. • If many researchers question people’s ability to analyse data….much bigger concerns about theorising: an elite activity • Who gets to interpret their lives and the world? • And what power does this have?
the fed up honeys: theory • Writing project with young women • “Risky and painful” process: identifying how they had absorbed other people’s stereotypes • Working through differences – not to reach ‘consensus’ but to agree on key themes and findings, and priorities for action • Scaling up: particular linking global/ societal/ neighbourhood/ intimate processes and causation (contextual validity) • How to capture mess and dissonance? – experiment with different voices in outputs.
mrs c. kinpaisby-hill (2010) Participatory praxis and social justice: towards more fully social geographies, in Del Casino V et al A Companion to Social Geography