Young co-leads share insights from shaping a peer-led research project

What are the benefits of young people running a research project?

What are the challenges of taking a participatory approach?

What can be learnt from these peer-led research methods?

Over the last six months, six young people aged 18-24 from underrepresented groups across the UK have worked with Shift researchers and Beatfreaks to co-lead a UK-based research project aiming to surface the factors that encourage young people and research to engage one another.

This work forms part of a global participatory research project, Future Weavers, supported by Wellcome and UNICEF, into how to increase young people’s involvement in shaping solutions for global challenges. Future Weavers aims to give researchers, policy makers and practitioners new ways of involving young people in their strategies and everyday work by uncovering the barriers to involvement as well as the benefits of doing so.

The insights generated are being documented on a microsite‍ throughout the duration of the project. Here we share some short films made by the UK co-leads about their experience and findings.

 

How have you been involved in the research?

Ellis, Max, Shakira and Zuhur talk about:

  • How they were involved throughout the research and decision making process, with individual roles being assigned to each co-lead.
  • How these roles included designing the interviews and group discussion by looking at different research methods.
  • Having an active role leading the interviews, group discussion and taking notes.
  • Creating a lo-fi game where participants can design their ideal process of how inclusion in research looks to them.
  • Synthesising the findings to create a final input.

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How has your experience as a young person shaped the research?

Ellis, Max, Shakira and Zuhur talk about:

  • How their experiences as young people heavily influenced how they approached this research as they were aware of what issues their generation prioritise and how to best approach them.
  • How less formality when conducting interviews aided questioning.
  • How their own perspectives as underrepresented young people helped them approached this research in a sensitive and considerate way.
  • Reaching underrepresented young people that they might not have been able to otherwise, by speaking in their ‘language’ e.g making sure the research is accessible.

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What challenges have you come up against during this research?

Ellis, Max, Shakira and Zuhur talk about:

  • How young people have a strong interest in participating in research both within and beyond this project, but are rarely given opportunities to do so.
  • How many issues arose during the recruitment process, such as gaining trust of underrepresented groups, especially those unfamiliar with research projects.
  • The seemingly high level of mistrust in online advertisements, with many young people conflating research projects with fake ads and scams.
  • Needing to be aware of issues of underrepresentation within their own team e.g only one of six co-leads not attending university or planning to.
  • How for many, scientific language isn’t comprehensible, especially if they haven’t attended university where they can access research papers.

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In what ways could these challenges be mitigated?


Ellis, Max, Shakira and Zuhur talk about:

  • The need for a willingness to learn, experiment and go out of the accepted norms of research in order to combat challenges in research today.
  • How young people involved in research should feel empowered and how not feeling a of sense of hierarchy among researchers strengthens the overall project.
  • How mistrust in advertisements can be combated through emphasising the involvement and support of trusted organisations like Wellcome and UNICEF.
  • How young people generally trust people within their communities, so recruiting and paying people from underrepresented communities is the best way to involve them in research

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