PROMISE partners met in the beautiful city of Zagreb to discuss emerging themes from the 21 ethnographic case studies. Hosted by the Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar (IPI-Croatia) PROMISE team members held a two day project meeting on 28-29 September 2017 to present initial findings from the case studies carried out in 10 countries. The PROMISE fieldwork started early in 2017 after a rigorous process of securing ethical approval and creating research tools, and is now coming to an end as PROMISE partners are in the last stage of their data collection and observation.
The progress of the case studies and the preliminary topics that emerged from them have been very impressive and truly ‘promising’. The 21 case studies are diverse and each team has utilised a range of methods to access and engage young people. The case studies have been presented within 4 streams in order to draw together themes into coherent clusters.
Clusters
Cluster 1 Education/justice/society
Cluster 2 Culture/politics
Cluster 3 Economy/leisure spaces
Cluster 4 Gender/sexuality
Single case analysis will be completed in the spring of 2018 in preparation for the cluster analysis that will follow.
Ethical issues
The team also discussed ethical issues emerging from the field. These centred on the questions of obtaining written informed consent, obtaining informed consent from parents, the role of the researcher in participatory action research, and how to manage the engagement of hard to reach groups and their expectations from the research.
Data analysis
The last day was devoted how to analyse the data in the qualitative software programme NVivo. The team started off by discussing the coding tree drafted by Jo Deakin and Hilary Pilkington. This was then developed and discussed extensively to make sure that there is a common understanding of what the codes are intended to capture. This is an important preparation for the next stage of PROMISE where all team members will start analysing their data in NVivo in the coming months (single case analysis). It is also crucial for the analysis of the clusters and will help the cluster leads to do the challenging work of deducing from the 21 case studies 4 main clusters of youth involvement and social engagement.
Next meeting
The next PROMISE meeting is scheduled for February 2018 in Porto where all partners will have completed data collection and coding within NVivo. This meeting will also tie in with ‘Casais: European Capital of Youth’ activities and celebrations.
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