Young People's Interpretations Research Articles

‘A Drink That Makes You Feel Happier, Relaxed and Loving’: Young People's Perceptions of Alcohol Advertising on Facebook

To explore young people's perceptions of alcohol advertising on Facebook and investigate perceived compliance with the Alcohol Beverages Advertising Code (ABAC). An online cross-sectional survey with 172 Australians aged 16-29 years recruited from a market research website and via Facebook. We compiled advertisements from six popular alcohol brands' Australian Facebook pages and asked respondents for their perceptions and interpretations in open and closed-ended questions. Open-ended responses most commonly indicated that the main messages of the advertisements related to social success. In closed-ended questions, respondents perceived advertisements implied that alcohol facilitated relaxation (67%), improved mood (65%), social success (57%) and confidence (49%). Young people identified the main themes of alcohol advertising on Facebook as related to social success and significant improvement in mood. Young people's interpretations of Facebook alcohol advertising suggest breaches of ABAC guidelines. Strengthening the enforcement and application of the ABAC and social media alcohol advertising policies is justified.

‘Equality of Intelligences’: Exploring the Barriers to Engagement in Modern and Contemporary Art through a Peer‐to‐Peer Workshop at Tate Modern

AbstractThe data presented in this article explores the effect on pedagogy when inclusion initiatives are bound up with learning objectives. It explores the generation of critical thinking skills in learning programmes at Tate Modern. Effective art education empowers young people to take a critical stance and in gallery education a decision has to be made: are programmes for young people about encouraging them to think about art or inviting them to think? I explore the position and status given to artworks and to young people's interpretations of those works through data gathered during a peer‐led workshop. I illustrate the ways in which new critical voices are able to emerge and contrast them with potential pedagogic pitfalls in which such approaches become exclusive and ultimately work against their emancipatory aims. People who work in galleries and museums are ‘cultivated individuals’. They can easily take for granted their judgements about art and consider them to be ‘natural’. Because of this a disconnection can occur between people who are not acculturated and those who are. The purpose of this study is to shed light on cultural exclusion by exploring dialogue about art produced during a peer‐led workshop.

The ‘healthy self’ and ‘risky’ young Other: young people's interpretations of health and health-related risks

Concern about health-related risks dominates modern day public health discourses on young people's health. Based on ‘official’ notions of health, the public health risk-based approach not only downplays the potentially different meanings young people attach to concepts of health, but it also has a tendency to problematise and pathologise young people and their health. Drawing on findings from an ethnographic study with young people aged 15–16 years in England (n = 55); in this article, I examine young people's understandings of health and health-related risks. I used group discussions, individual interviews and observational work in a school and surrounding community settings to collect the data on which this article is based. In this article, I show the importance young people in my study attached to ‘being happy’ and ‘having fun’, but also how dominant constructions of youth as a time of risk were taken up and reproduced by young people themselves to create and sustain differences amongst young people. I examine the implications of these differences for young people's health and the possibilities for empowerment – highlighting some of the emergent contradictions between young people's constructions of the ‘healthy self’ and ‘risky’ young Other. Specifically, in this article, I highlight young people's preference for a more positive conceptualisation of their health, one which recognises the importance of their shared social positioning for the promotion of health.

‘A real man smells of tobacco smoke’—Chinese youth's interpretation of smoking imagery in film

Previous studies have associated youth's exposure to filmic images of smoking with real-life smoking acquisition; initial research in low- and middle-income countries confirms this relationship. The present study in Yunnan, southwest China sought answers to the following questions: How do young people in China make sense of smoking imagery they have seen in film? How are these perceptions shaped by the cultural and social context of images? How do these understandings relate to real-life tobacco use? A study with focus groups and grounded theory was conducted in 2010 and 2011 (Sept–Jan) with middle-school students ages 12 and 13 (n=68, focus groups=12, schools=6). Films and media literacy were important means through which knowledge about smoking was constructed and communicated. Film representations of smoking concurred with Chinese social behaviour (Confucian social networks, face-making, and the notion of society as a harmonious social unit), and were interpreted as congruent with real-life smoking. This pattern, in turn, was intertwined with perceived gender identities of smokers, gender-specific social behaviour, and willingness of girls to explore issues of gender equity. These findings lend new insights into interaction between smoking imagery in film and Chinese youth's smoking beliefs. Tobacco control programs in China should consider young people's interpretations of smoking and the ways they are nested in cultural and social milieu.

Sorting Out the Sort

This letter documents the conversations of a participatory action research team consisting of one doctoral student and eight New York City high school students. The letter documents the process of creating the instrument that was used to collect data from other lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer and questioning students. The dissertation research seeks to understand the language, policies, and behavior about sexuality and gender expression in schools, and LGBTQ young people's interpretations of them. Using Foucault and Butler to explain how young people interact with norms of sexuality and gender in contingent and contextualized ways, the researchers began to think about the discourses around sexuality and gender with a more historicized and complex lens and to examine subjectivity within those discourses. The researchers elected to use a modified Q sort to understand the intersection of the school community's attitudes and beliefs with individual student attitudes and beliefs, ultimately to understand LGBTQ students' sense of belonging in their schools.

The impact of media sport events on the active participation of young people and some implications for PE pedagogy

This article addresses the impact of selected sports media events on the active participation of a group of young people aged 14/15. Its particular focus is on an intense period of media sport coverage during the European Soccer Championships (Euro ‘96), the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships and the Atlanta Olympics and on how a group of British young people articulate ways that consumption of these products creates opportunities and challenges for their own sports participation. The data reported here focus on one aspect drawn from a wider media sport and audience investigation designed within a hermeneutic and interpretative methodological framework. Through daily diaries and interviews this article draws particularly on young people's interpretations of sport and media as competing leisure activities and lifestyle choices; ways in which they perceive that watching sport provides them with new motivations and opportunities for physical activity; and the potential of sport media messages and images to ‘inform and fashion performance’. The results suggest that whilst there are associations to be made in relation to motivation, modeling and performance levels, connections between the intensity of media sport coverage and sustained involvement and improvement in young people's sporting activity remain tenuous. The article concludes by revisiting the author's professional concern in the light of the research process and considers the pedagogical implications for PE professionals to strengthen links between media sport and active sports participation.

Violence Talk and Gender in Youth Residential Care

The article focuses on violence and gender from the special point of view of meanings attached to violence. It is based on a study where the meanings of violence were studied among young people in residential child welfare institutions (reform schools) in Finland. Fifteen focus group interviews were conducted in two reform schools, with 38 participants between the ages of 12 and 17 years. Belligerent masculinities, vulnerable femininity and negotiable violence in heterosexual relationships were the strong gendered themes in the analysis. Within those themes, different positions were available to the young. In the narrations, boys were violent actors in peer groups while violence as girls' activity or experience was clearly less talked about. The young people's interpretations of violence contained many cultural norms that are broadly shared but also criticized by society. As a result, child welfare and residential care face a demanding task in eliminating everyday practices that maintain violent relationships or experiences.

Respecting Respect: Exploring a great deal

For some people, respect is due to people of particular standing and involves formality and deference. For others, respect is based on regard and attention. This approach is essentially informal. This article explores young people's interpretations of respect and shows how an understanding of its theory and practice may enhance relationships between adults, especially those employed in the social professions, and young people. Two frameworks are employed to assist in exploring the issues involved; one is located in communication theory within educational contexts (Burbules, 1993) and the other in the politics of self-definition (Wilson, 1993). The discussion draws on three pieces of empirical research involving young people and professionals. The different interpretations of respect are shown to provide a means of understanding a source of conflict between professionals with positions of authority in young people's lives and the young people themselves.

'Because it's Our Culture!' (Re)negotiating the Meaning of Lobola in Southern African Secondary Schools

Payment of bridewealth or lobola 1 is a significant element of marriage among the Basotho of Lesotho and the Shona of Zimbabwe. However, the functions and meanings attached to the practice are constantly changing. In order to gauge the interpretations attached to lobola by young people today, this paper analyses a series of focus group discussions conducted among senior students at two rural secondary schools. It compares the interpretations attached by the students to the practice of lobola with academic interpretations (both historical and contemporary). Among young people the meanings and functions of lobola are hotly contested, but differ markedly from those set out in the academic literature. While many students see lobola as a valued part of 'African culture', most also view it as a financial transaction that necessarily disadvantages women. The paper then seeks to explain the young people's interpretations by reference to discourses of 'equal rights' and 'culture' prevalent in secondary schools. Young people make use of these discourses in (re)negotiating the meaning of lobola, but the limitations of the discourses restrict the interpretations of lobola available to them.

Adolescents' Perspectives on Racial Diversity in U.S. History: Case Studies From an Urban Classroom

Scholars interested in reforming the K-12 history curriculum have presented competing perspectives on incorporating the historical experiences of racial groups into traditional narratives of U.S. history. None of the perspectives, however, have been informed by research on young people's interpretations of race relations in national history. Framed by three academic perspectives on teaching U.S. history in public schools, I analyzed the historical narratives of 10 adolescents who completed the same 11th-grade history class. The analysis demonstrated that the adolescents' racialized identities significantly influenced their concepts of the historical experiences of racial groups, the role of government in shaping these experiences, and the existence or lack of a common national history or identity. Some of the adolescents also had difficulties explaining how themes associated with expanding democracy and racial inequality simultaneously structured their narratives of the nation's past. Using the adolescents' historical perspectives as a lens to evaluate the efficacy of the academic perspectives, I suggest ways to negotiate the differences among and difficulties within the adolescents' perspectives on racial diversity in U.S. history.