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Peer research methodology: an effective method for obtaining young people’s perspectives on transitions from care to adulthood?

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posted on 2015-07-31, 10:45 authored by Clare Lushey, Emily R. Munro
Peer research has the potential to empower young people to participate in research by minimising power imbalances between researchers and participants; this may reduce bias and promote improved understanding to inform policy and practice. However, these benefits are not automatic; the relative inexperience of peer researchers adds layers of complexity to the research process. Moreover, the validity of findings from research adopting less traditional methods may be questioned and policy makers may be cautious about accepting this evidence, thus limiting its contribution and impact. This paper explores the advancement of participatory peer researcher methodology in research with children in and leaving care and ethical, practical and data quality issues that arose in two studies exploring young people’s transitions from care to adulthood. It concludes that the peer research methodology can yield rich data but that adequate resources and effective research management are crucial. The authors also caution against a reductionist approach that privileges peer research methodology above other methods of inquiry in the study of transitions from care to adulthood.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies

Research Unit

  • Centre for Child and Family Research

Published in

Qualitative Social Work: research and practice

Volume

21

Citation

LUSHEY, C. and MUNRO, E.R., 2014. Peer research methodology: an effective method for obtaining young people’s perspectives on transitions from care to adulthood? Qualitative Social Work, 14(4), pp. 522–537.

Publisher

SAGE © The Author(s)

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2014

Notes

This article was published in the journal, Qualitative Social Work and is available from SAGE at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1473325014559282

ISSN

1741-3117

Language

  • en

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