Being Participatory Through Interviews

We all want to collect ‘good’ data, and maximising our potential for this relies on experienced researchers sharing what they do and what they have learnt, in order for others to be aided in their research endeavours when working with children and young people. In this chapter our primary aim is on making explicit our practices when using interviews in the context of research with a range of child populations. We draw upon our own studies, using focus groups with children and young people, with young people undertaking interviews with their peers, with children who have a learning disability and interviewing adolescents and young adults. Our populations were across a spectrum of ages, all requiring or receiving healthcare, for a range of medical conditions. All of our study participants were expert by experience, our role as researchers was to help them to share their stories, recognising this expertise, but understanding that not everyone is able to tell their story, some needed support from us to do that. We show how that knowledge-production process happened, how we worked with children and young people, using a range of techniques under the broad umbrella method of interviews.