Data collection with disconnected youth : exploring the affordances of individual and group interviews

Author / Creator

Jones, Elizabeth Pufall, author

Available as

Online

Summary

In 2014, we embarked on a research agenda focused on raising up the voices of urban youth who had disengaged from school before graduating high school. The youth communicated events that not only c...

In 2014, we embarked on a research agenda focused on raising up the voices of urban youth who had disengaged from school before graduating high school. The youth communicated events that not only contributed to their disengagement but also to a sense of mistrust for individuals in traditional "helping roles" (e.g., teachers or parents). This distrust can subsequently affect our ability as researchers to engage authentically with youth on studies. From our experience, we conclude that to best understand the lived experiences of participants, and inform possibilities for prevention, researchers should seek ways to speak directly and authentically with youth and gain their trust so that researchers can elicit stories that accurately depict the young person's life experiences. In this case, we go in depth into the methods that we used in our work with disengaged youth, focusing primarily on the building of a shared space for our group and individual interviews, pointing to the strengths and weaknesses of each method in answering our research questions and accurately capturing and raising up the voice of youth.

Show More