Young people and research – why should people in universities do it?

The major rationale for young people’s involvement in research is often given in terms of participation; however there is a limit to how much research can rely on borrowing from the young people’s participation agenda regardless of its strengths, as this does not address all the issues the research agenda needs to consider.   

Whilst there are theoretical positions that contribute to an understanding of participative research, none has succeeded in making the bridge to include children and young people systematically. It is crucial to build a bridge from the research community’s end for the sake of good research, not just borrowing a few ideological and methodological planks from the participation side. 

There are four primary reasons for researchers with young people to be builders not borrowers. 

First, involving young people challenges academics on the purpose of their research.   

Second, it questions the principles behind the research, asking in whose interests it is being done and encouraging the creation of emancipatory research paradigms, with the power considerations that inevitably come with such a perspective.   

Third and linked, young people encourage us to think about how research can provoke change for children and young people.   

Fourth, it questions the rigour of the research process by identifying from the outset the requirement to understand the context of the area of enquiry and that young people as ‘experts by experience’ are likely to be central to that.  

Sixteen year olds cannot be professors; research with young people requires, therefore, even more than with other oppressed groups, collaboration between young people and adult researchers, backed by their institutions. This partnership needs to be based on principles that articulate the relative powerless position of young people, to strive to generate research with young people that will create change in their lives and, in so doing, inevitably challenge assumptions about the purpose, principles and process of research. 

All too often attitudes to young people’s involvement in research is either to assume un-critically ‘it is a good thing’ or in contrast to think ‘young people have little or nothing to contribute to research’. Youth research does require significant skills and understandings and as advocates of it we must be prepared to spend time and effort enabling others to understand what it means. 

Young people’s participation in research needs rigorous appraisal and evaluation from the ‘research community’ to review the integrity of participative research within research paradigms. Researchers who are committed advocates of young people’s right to be involved on issues that affect them have, perhaps unwittingly, pushed the participative paradigm into research rather than building the bridge from the research end - justifying and promoting young people’s involvement based on a grounded theoretical position in research terms.   

There is little rigorous evaluation of how working with young people on research changes the research process, how the research is undertaken and what knowledge is created. This is similar to the situation regarding young people’s participation per se. Reflecting on service user involvement in research, SCIE is looking at ways in which service user participation in research is being evaluated and suggests ways in which service user participation makes a difference; we need similar investigations into young people’s involvement in research.

For further consideration of the issues raised here see: Young People’s involvement in research: Still a long way to go? Qualitative Social Work online first 18^th May 2010  http://qsw.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/1473325010364276v1

Jennie Fleming

Director, Centre for Social Action, De Montfort University