Jackie Sanders

Recruiting Diverse Groups of Young People to Research Agency and Empowerment in the Consent Process

Ethical matters in research with children and young people, such as recruitment procedures and gaining informed consent, have been a fruitful ground for exploring issues such as power and protection, researcher responsibility and social versus individual good, that feature in all human research. It has also raised for debate the extent to which children and young people are similar to, or different from, adults and whether they require special protection to manage their involvement. A four-step process for recruiting young people into a qualitative research project is outlined. Young people were recruited as fully consenting participants and, at the same time, adult requirements that parents be informed and agree to their children’s involvement was achieved. The process discussed enables the exercise of parental responsibility while not discounting the rights and needs of children for recognition of their agency and autonomy

Losing Self to the Future? Young Women's Strategic Responses to Adulthood Transitions.

The multiple and conflicting identity pressures that young women in western society face have been remarked upon in the literature. Adolescence is a time when identity development activity intensifies, and this process can present young people with challenges. In this paper a social constructionist and interpretive frame is applied to such challenges faced by young women, arguing that they are refracted through socially constructed lenses that operate at a range of levels from the structural to the individual. The paper considers the experiences of two different cohorts of young females who participated in research based in two provincial communities in New Zealand. It explores the way in which both groups appeared to segment their sense of self into a present and a future self, emphasising relationship; the key source of their current sense of well-being in the present, and juxtaposing this with an independent, autonomous self in the future for whom relationships appeared to assume secondary importance. Findings from two studies are examined to identify the ways in which younger females articulate their imagined futures. Rather than seeing their imagined futures as predictive, or constituting a type of plan that they expected to work towards, we see these future narratives as expressing their understanding of their present time worlds and the possibilities they see for girls and young women like themselves.

The role of positive youth development practices in building resilience and enhancing wellbeing for at-risk youth.

Services that utilise positive youth development practices (PYD) are thought to improve the quality of the service experience leading to better outcomes for at-risk youth. This article reports on a study of 605 adolescents (aged 12-17 years) who were concurrent clients of two or more service systems (child welfare, juvenile justice, additional education, mental health). It was hypothesised that services adopting PYD approaches would be related to increases in youth resilience and better wellbeing outcomes. It was also hypothesised that risks, resilience, service experiences and wellbeing outcomes would differ by age, gender and ethnicity. Youth completed a self-report questionnaire administered individually. Path analysis was used to determine the relationship between risk, service use, resilience and a wellbeing outcome measure. MANOVA was then used to determine patterns of risk, service use, resilience and wellbeing among participants based on their demographic characteristics. Services using PYD approaches were significantly related to higher levels of youth resilience. Similarly, increased resilience was related to increased indicators of wellbeing, suggesting the mediating role of resilience between risk factors and wellbeing outcomes. When professionals adopt PYD practices and work with the positive resources around youth (their own resilience processes) interventions can make a significant contribution to wellbeing outcomes for at-risk youth.

Young people's search for agency: making sense of their experiences and taking control

This article draws on the findings of the qualitative phase of a New Zealand longitudinal study on vulnerable young people’s transitions to adulthood. The young people were aged between 12 and 17 years at the time of the first interview. The paper focuses on one key finding, how youth enact agency through their relationships with significant others: families, social workers, teachers and care workers. These youth had experienced sustained exposure to harm including abuse, violence, addictions, disengagement from school and mental health issues. The qualitative interviews focused on young people’s experiences with services (child welfare, juvenile justice, mental health and education support services) their key transitions, and the strategies they used to locate support and resources. The thematic analysis of the interviews indicated that a search for agency was a central motif in young people’s experiences. This was reflected in three thematic clusters: making sense of the world, having a voice and acting on the world.

Activity and Reflection Research and Change with Diverse Groups of Young People

There is a growing interest in expanding the agendas of research, policy and practice by the direct inclusion of young people so that these groups can contribute meaningfully to developments and decision-making. This article outlines a strategy for generating information with young people about their daily lives and the intersection between these sorts of experiences and broader patterns of inclusion and exclusion. Discussion applies eco-map and social network techniques from social work practice, city mapping strategies from geography and interview strategies from qualitative methods. It also includes a new strategy: the daily life story technique developed in conjunction with young people. These strategies provide a framework for managing conversations about experience, meaning and possible futures. Discussion illustrates the way in which a range of different strategies can be combined so that an interview can become a rich source of varied information about meaning, context, experience, events, places and the intersections and interactions between them can be explained.

Looking inside the Bag of Tools: Creating Research Encounters with Parents with an Intellectual Disability.

This paper examines the development of fieldwork methodology in a study that investigated the parenting experiences and parent support needs of a group of parents with an intellectual disability. It considers the ways in which the original planning for the project changed as the fieldwork unfolded, requiring adaptations to our methodological expectations and in the process deepening our understanding of the phenomena we were studying and reinforcing for us the importance of relationships in fieldwork‐based research. Three themes in particular are considered that became central to this research: research relationships; safety for participants/positioning of the researcher; suspending assumptions about impairment and disability and influences on life experiences.

Ethics and Research: Searching for Ethical Practice in Research

This article explores the ethical questions that were central to a qualitative study of the parenting experiences of parents with an intellectual disability. The study was located in three cities in New Zealand and involved 19 parents who have an intellectual disability. It considers three aspects of the research process, all of which involve significant ethical matters that need to be addressed throughout the research process. The first concerns issues around the construction of knowledge. Here fundamental issues such as who controls knowledge and knowledge production are explored. Building on the first issue, the second focuses on the significance of relationships in research and explores the factors that contribute to effective research relationships. The final theme explores social change in research and the role of the participant and researcher in this change process. The article provides a critical reflection on research practice by foregrounding common ethical concerns and poses some of the possible responses to these concerns so that research remains authentic and protects the interests of all participants. These involve seeking clarity around research aims and processes from the participants and others who have an interest in the research and its potential outcomes.

Multiple service use: The impact of consistency in service quality for vulnerable youth

Little is known about the way in which variations in service quality influence outcomes when youth are clients of more than one service system. This article reports on a study of 1,210 adolescents (aged 13-17 years), half were concurrent clients of two or more services and half were not involved in two or more services. Youth completed a self-report questionnaire administered by a trained interviewer. It was hypothesized that youth reporting two positive service experiences would report lower risks, higher resilience, and better outcomes than youth reporting inconsistent or two negative service experiences and that their resilience, risks, and outcomes would be similar to those of youth not involved in two or more services. MANCOVA was used to determine the relationship among service quality and resilience, risk, and outcomes with four covariates that assessed family and neighborhood environments, history of abuse and neglect, and chronic need. Results indicate that service quality had an effect on resilience, risks, and outcomes. These relationships were mediated quite strongly by the influence of the risks youth faced in their neighborhoods and to a lesser extent by the other three covariates. Of the three dependent variables, risk appeared to be the most consistently influenced by all the covariates, and it also differentiated service experience groups. Results point to the importance of services developing strategies to effectively address risks confronted by youth and also to ensure that when more than one service is involved with youth, consistency in service delivery is achieved.

Embracing the diversity of practice: indigenous knowledge and mainstream social work practice

This paper examines the way in which Maori cultural frameworks have influenced mainstream social work practice. Using the example of indigenous practice developed by Maori social workers in Aotearoa New Zealand, the paper explores five sets of constructs that have provided a framework for thinking in mainstream social work practice. These constructs bring a richness to practice which encourages practitioners to critically reflect on the philosophies and practice knowledge that inform their work with clients. Of particular significance is building an understanding of the ways in which context shapes experience and the implications this has for practice. These emerging perspectives in mainstream practice have the potential to create practice that is more responsive to diverse populations and that recognises the central place of cultural frameworks in effective social work practice.

Bolstering Resilience through Teacher-Student Interaction: Lessons for School Psychologists.

Schools are often the only formal service provider for young people living in socio-economically marginalized communities, uniquely positioning school staff to support positive psychosocial outcomes of youth living in adverse contexts. Using data from 2,387 school-going young people [Canada (N = 1,068), New Zealand (N = 591), and South Africa (N = 728)] living in marginalized communities and who participated in the Pathways to Resilience study, this article reviews how student experiences of school staff and school contexts moderated contextual risks and facilitated resilience processes. Findings of these analyses affirm that school staff play an important role in moderating the relationship between resilience resources and community/family risk in both global North and global South contexts. Findings hold important implications for school psychologists, including the need to champion the ways in which teachers can scaffold resilience resources for young people through the quality of the relationships they build with students.