Large Scale and Participatory Qualitative Youth-Centred Research in Ethiopia and Nepal, 2016-2019

Youth Uncertainty Rights (YOUR) World Research places youth at the centre. It takes as a starting point youth agency and how this is relational: they interact with confidence and creativity as well as being restricted by social norms and cultural and religious beliefs and practices.
YOUR World Research investigated youth experiences of uncertainty and pathways out of poverty and worked with over 1000 young people (aged 15-25 years) in eight research sites, four in Ethiopia and four in Nepal. National university-based and non-governmental partners hosted national teams, and there was an emphasis on capacity building and south-south sharing throughout the process.
YOUR World Research specifically explores youth perceptions of uncertainty in different domains of young lives including in: the spaces and places they inhabit and in which they work; their transitions growing up; their sense of self and relationships with others; increasingly forced and more necessary mobility and migration; and youth strategies in times of personal crisis and environmental fragility. These domains were determined, along with the methodology and questions for the detailed case studies, during co-construction workshops with marginalised young people and across the international teams. The national teams then used snowball sampling to get to more marginalised youth as defined by young people in communities.
Ethical protocols were developed and applied across the data so that data sets are identifiable but anonymised. Particular attention was paid to identifying any youth who are at risk and signposting to appropriate support and services as part of the research process. Informed consent forms were kept separate to the anonymised and coded data sets.
All young people gave informed consent and pseudonyms are used throughout the database to keep specific contributions anonymous.
After set-up in Phase 1, in Phase 2 workshops were held with over 50 youth in each country to co-construct understandings of insecurity, uncertainty, marginalisation and to develop and test creative methodologies with youth (see C2 workshop analysis). In Phase 3, over 150 in-depth case studies were carried out in each country through individual interviews (see C3 individual analysis sheets in NVivo database) across the four sites in each country (Nepal also included 10 genderfluid youth). In Phase 4 thematic small group and individual interviews were carried out with an additional 100 youth (see C4), as well as adult group and stakeholder interviews. with 100 additional youth (see adult and stakeholder interviews). In the final Phase 5 provincial and national youth seminars were held
The international teams worked together at an inception meeting in Nepal (2017) and at an analysis meeting in Ethiopia (2018) to further develop sub-questions relating to experiences of violence, peer and intergenerational relationships and dynamics and youth strategies to find pathways out of poverty. YOUR World Research worked across 5 phases with over 1000 youth, 300 of which were in-depth case studies and a further 200 thematic focused cases, 400 adults, and over 100 service providers in Ethiopia and Nepal. See methodology guide for more detail.

The Data Collection is available for download to users registered with the UK Data Service.