Researching Young People's Lives by Heath Sue & Rachel Brooks & Elizabeth Cleaver & Eleanor Ireland

Author:Heath, Sue & Rachel Brooks & Elizabeth Cleaver & Eleanor Ireland
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446244852
Publisher: Sage Publications, Ltd.
Published: 2009-03-29T16:00:00+00:00

Some expressed attitudes that were inimical to the multi-national ethos of the project – which I never heard them express openly in front of others within the project – stating that they were telling me things they would not tell others, even though they were aware that I was conducting research that might be published. (2001: 79)

Those who enter the research site as outsiders face a different set of challenges, related to perceptions about the difference between their own status and that of those they are observing. Aune (2006), for example, despite being of a similar age to many of those involved in her study of couples attending an evangelical church, appeared to be defined as an outsider, not necessarily as a result of her ‘researcher’ role, but by virtue of her single, childless status. This, she claims, hindered her ability to communicate on a shared basis with her (partnered) respondents. In Curtis’s (2002) research, his status as an outsider to a group of young drug users had an obvious impact on their behaviour. He notes that many of them would not allow him to observe them injecting drugs, ‘often turning their backs with a shameful look’ (2002: 304). When he asked them why they acted in this way, they replied that they believed it would be ‘disrespectful’ to use drugs in front of someone who was carrying out research to try to help drug addicts. Nevertheless, outsiders bring with them a number of important advantages as a result of their status: they are more likely to question taken-for-granted practices and are less likely to become embroiled within community relations and tensions (Raby, 2007). Of course, a very important determinant of ‘insider’ status in the context of all forms of youth research, not just ethnographic research, is the age (or at least the perceived age) of the researcher, an issue which we discussed at length in Chapter 3.

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