Negotiating Ethical Challenges in Youth Research

Negotiating Ethical Challenges in Youth Research brings together contributors from across the world to explore real-life ethical dilemmas faced by researchers working with young people in a range of social science disciplines. Unlike literature that tends to discuss youth research at an abstracted and exalted level, this volume aims to make the basic principles and guidelines of youth research more ‘real.’ By openly discussing actual challenges that researchers have experienced in the course of conducting their fieldwork or interpreting their findings, this collection provides the most authentic overview of the ethics of youth research available.

A careful selection of chapters addresses a range of ethical challenges particularly relevant to contemporary youth researchers. Each chapter identifies an ethical issue that the author has personally experienced in his or her youth research, explains why this was a challenge or dilemma, outlines how the researcher responded to the challenge, and provides advice and draws out broader implications for youth researchers. The chapters are organized around three themes that capture core ethical challenges: power and agency, protection and harm prevention, and trust and respect. The result is a collection that is a rigorous and valuable resource to those embarking on research with young people for the first time as well as supporting the resolution of ethical challenges by more experienced researchers.

Kitty te Riele is Principal Research Fellow in the Victoria Institute for Education, Diversity and Lifelong Learning at Victoria University, Australia.

Rachel Brooks is Professor of Sociology at the University of Surrey, UK.