Conducting Research with young people and developing the MTW Approach - a methodology that grasps young people's perspectives

Abstract

In this article we present our qualitative mixed-methods methodology that we name the MapTalk-Walk Approach (MTW Approach). We developed the approach to better grasp young people’s understandings of youth, normality and belonging, which make up the thematic framework of our current youth research. The MTW Approach is based on three phases, 1) Researcher-initiated workshops, 2) Focus group interviews, and 3) Walk-and-talks in the young people’s local environments. In the article, we discuss the ethical complications related to doing research with young people and positioning them as experts in their lifeworlds. Our ambition is to create a democratized research process that allows the participants ownership, and we find this to be a challenging task. In the closing section, after a thorough presentation of the three phases, we discuss some of the pitfalls we experienced during the process, in which approximately 70 students from 8th grade in three different lower secondary schools in a Danish Provincial Town (in this article called Lomby) participated.

Keywords

• youth research
• qualitative research
• mixed-methods methodology
• research ethics
• young people's perspectives