Reconstructing Faith Narratives: Doing Research on the Faith of Adolescents

Abstract

Various qualitative studies on adolescents and faith have been conducted at the research Centre for Youth, Church and Culture of the Protestant Theological University Amsterdam-Groningen in recent years. One finding of the Centre is that there exists a lack of knowledge about good methodologies for research on faith and adolescents. This article presents an explanation of why specific methodologies are needed for adolescents and reviews possible research approaches based on the authors’ experiences. The researchers argue for a qualitative approach and seek to contribute to the discussion of investigations of adolescents’ faith from the authors’ experiences in empirical qualitative studies on adolescents and faith, as well as the literature.