Lived Experiences Of Young People Research Articles

Young people’s experiences of fashion modelling: An exploratory phenomenological study

Abstract Research into fashion modelling within the field of psychology remains sparse. Empirical studies do exist, but they are rare and exhibit a tendency to pathologize models, and provide only a superficial insight into this career. Little is known about who a fashion model really is; what a young person who models experiences in their careers; or how fashion models make sense of their role. With this in mind, the current study seeks to explore the lived experience of young people who are fashion models. Three participants offered experiential accounts of modelling in the fashion industry, and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) revealed superordinate themes: ‘Growth and Development’, ‘Changes in Self-Perception’ and ‘A Job? Or a Way of Life?’ Change was found to be an integral part of the participants’ experiences, which led to both positive and negative developmental outcomes, including a self-reported growth in confidence and maturity, yet a potentially more self-critical view of one’s appearance. The role seemed to be an all-encompassing lifestyle rather than a job, and it is argued that modelling at a young age may act as a catalyst for a transition into adulthood. This study is exploratory in nature but provides an initial insight into the experiences of fashion modelling. The discussion identifies ways in which cognate sub-disciplines of psychology may contribute to this area of research, thus developing and extending further the psychological literature base in the field of fashion studies.

‘This Is the View When I Walk into My House’

This article argues for the utility of phenomenology in accounting for the manner in which spatial methods yield insights into the everyday lived experiences of young people that are not as easily accessible through more traditional qualitative methods such as interviewing. Spatial methods, defined as methods that focus on the everyday spatial experiences of young people and methods that ask youth to position themselves in space, have been used by the author in a variety of research projects, and also incorporate certain visual methods. Phenomenological concepts such as the spatial perspective, the web of relations and opaque subjectivity are helpful in understanding not only that these methods work well but why they are so effective. The article also addresses Pierre Bourdieu’s critique of phenomenology, responding to his concern that phenomenology might be susceptible to ignoring or overlooking the social and political contexts that shape experiences.

Eating disorder services for young people in Ireland: perspectives of service providers, service users and the general adolescent population.

This paper illuminates how national eating disorder (ED) policy translates into day-to-day practice by exploring how ED services are experienced by those who deliver and use them. A mixed-methods approach was used, which combined qualitative and quantitative techniques. The paper collates data from three studies: (i) an interview study exploring the lived experiences of young people with EDs (n=8), their parents (n=5) and their healthcare professionals (n=3); (ii) a national survey of health professionals' perspectives on existing ED services (n=171); (iii) a nationwide survey of secondary-school students' eating concerns and patterns of help-seeking (n=290). The qualitative interviews with young people and their parents revealed feelings of isolation and helplessness. Young people expressed interest in patient support groups, while parents desired greater support for the family unit. Parents were highly critical of available services, particularly in relation to access. These criticisms were echoed in the survey of healthcare professionals, who reported many barriers to delivering effective care. Clinicians were almost unanimous in calling for care pathways to be clarified via a standardised treatment protocol. The survey of adolescents indicated widespread reluctance to seek help regarding eating concerns: over one-third expressed concern about their own eating habits, but half of these had not divulged their concerns to anyone. Participants' preferred pathways of help-seeking revolved around family and friends, and adolescents were unsure about routes of access to professional support. The research demonstrates that many aspects of national ED policy have not been implemented in practice. The paper highlights specific gaps and suggests ways they can be redressed.

Empowerment of young people who have a parent living with dementia: a social model perspective.

Socially constructed disablement has marginalized young people in families where a parent has younger onset dementia (YOD). This has contributed to inadequate societal support for their complex situation. Impacts on such young people include significant involvement with mental health services for themselves. In this paper, we explored the young people's lived experiences in these families and the influencing factors to enable these young people to be included and supported within their community. In this qualitative research study, the social model of disability was used as the theoretical framework in conducting a thematic analysis of interviews with 12 participants. Three themes emerged; invisibility highlighting the issues of marginalization; connectivity foregrounding the engagement of young people with family, friends and their social networks, and being empowered through claiming their basic human right to receive the age appropriate support they needed. The current plight of young people living with a parent with YOD demands a fundamental shift by society in developing inclusive cross-sectorial cooperation linking service providers across youth and dementia sectors. This requires working in partnership with the service users responding to the identified needs of individual family members.

Youth Intimacy on Tumblr

I examine young people’s intimate relationships formed on Tumblr. Research has extensively documented how and why adults utilize online dating services to articulate relationships online; however, scholars of this phenomenon have largely overlooked the lived experiences of young people. This article presents the initial findings of a qualitative pilot study in which 10 young male and female Tumblr users participated in hour-long, in-depth, semi-structured, synchronous online interviews via Skype. The initial findings generated by the pilot study suggest that young people are engaging online technologies to practice intimacy and sociality in diverse ways. Responses suggest that young people conceptualize Tumblr as being distinct from existing social network sites (SNS) as a result of its perceived affordances. Iconclude that the ways in which young people engage and date and socialize on Tumblr suggest a rethinking of established contemporary notions of intimacy and community in the digital era.

‘Interrupted Interviews’: listening to young people with autism in transition to college

This article examines the methodological approaches used in a research project that investigated the lived experiences of young people with autism as they made the transition from special schools to mainstream colleges of Further Education. A combination of visual methods using iPad applications and walking interviews were explored in an attempt to develop ways of engaging young people with autism in research and to privilege their voice in their own transition. The strengths and challenges of these methods are examined here and illustrated through the experience and responses of one young person in the study and his engagement with the research.

Examining concepts of power and agency in research with young people

Concepts of power and agency have become increasingly prominent in the youth studies literatures and related research. A focus of the research to date has been an examination of how a better understanding of young people's lived experiences can reveal possibilities for young people's agency to emerge. Despite increased interest in the term agency, much less has been said about how the concept is defined and recognized in research with young people, including what the concept may entail but crucially, how the term is linked to and underpinned by the related concept of power. This paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of power and agency as utilized in research with young people. The discussion that follows identifies the possible ways in which different theoretical positions shape our understanding of how power and agency are investigated and how these understandings inform the ways we interpret young people's perspectives and actions as holding potential for ‘agency’. Drawing on recent empirical examples, we consider how varying interpretations of power and/or agency shape not only the ways in which young people's agentic experiences are theorized (and the related ontological and epistemological assumptions these positions imply) but also the presumed effects of that agency.

‘It’s not what it looks like. I’m Santa’: Connecting Community through Film

The lived experiences of young people are becoming increasingly marginalised within the narrowly defined curricula of neoliberal contexts. Many young people are also cast within the media according to deficit discourses of youth, which contributes to the fragmentation of communities and the limitation of interaction between generations. This article describes a film project in which young people living in an ex-mining community in the Midlands of England worked in and with their community to create a representation of where they live. As part of the process, the young filmmakers did more than connect to other people’s memories as repositories of information; both as process and as product, their film can be seen to connect shared narratives of people and place, across time and space. We argue that this project offers a timely opportunity to reflect upon the ways in which we understand learning in and out of English classrooms.

Directed content analysis: een meer deductieve dan inductieve aanpak bij kwalitatieve analyse

Directed content analysis: a more deductive than inductive approach in qualitative analysis Directed content analysis: a more deductive than inductive approach in qualitative analysis Qualitative analysis is often described as a pure inductive enterprise where new theory is derived from the data. In contrast, we argue that when an appropriate middle-range theory is available, the combination of deductive and inductive strategies may be fruitful. We illustrate this through our study applying directed content analysis for the analysis of qualitative interviews. An existing theoretical framework was used to explore the lived experiences of young people with chronic conditions. This approach structured the analysis, increased our theoretical sensitivity and improved the thoroughness of our analysis. The framework proved to be useful and could be refined.

The unintended consequences of targeting: young people's lived experiences of social and emotional learning interventions

In the past twenty years there has been a proliferation of targeted school‐based social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions. However, the lived experience of young peoples’ participation is often elided, while the potential for interventions to confer unintended and even adverse effects remains under‐theorised and empirically under‐explored. This paper reports findings from a qualitative case study of students’ participation in a targeted SEL intervention, the Student Assistance Programme. Data was generated with four secondary schools in Wales, with 41 students (age 12–14) taking part in the study. Findings indicate that students’ identification for participation in the intervention and their reaction to the group composition may lead to harmful effects. Four iatrogenic processes were identified: (1) identification may be experienced as negative labelling resulting in rejection of the school (2) the label of SEL failure may serve as a powerful form of intervention capital, being employed to enhance students’ status amongst peers. Possession of this capital is contingent on continued resistance of the intervention (3) targeting of discrete friendship groups may lead to the construction of intervention ‘outsiders’ as students seek safety through the reification of pre‐exiting relationships (4) students may seek to renegotiate positioning within targeted friendships groups by ‘bragging’ about and reinforcing anti‐school activities, leading to deviancy amplification.

The emotional well-being of young people having a parent with younger onset dementia

Younger onset dementia (YOD) not only affects the person with the diagnosis but the whole family, which often includes young people. A limited body of research on this group of young people indicates that they experience varying degrees of emotional trauma. We explored the lived experiences of young people having a parent with YOD from the perspective of the social model of disability. Data were available from semi-structured interviews with 12 young people who had a parent with YOD looking at their lived experiences between 8 and 24 years. Thematic analysis identified four main themes: the emotional toll of caring, keeping the family together, grief and loss and psychological distress The social model of disability theory provides a helpful framework for these families who experience significant emotional distress, demonstrating that the disability is often socially constructed by a society, which marginalizes and excludes them. A 'whole family' approach is proposed, where the needs of young people and their parents are respected and responded to age appropriately.

Messy boundaries: the benefits to teenage patients of being cared for by young nursing students

To record some of the advantages expressed by young inpatients at a district general hospital in relation to the blurring of professional boundaries when they are being cared for by children's nursing students of an age similar to their own. A phenomenological study to explore the lived experience of young people in hospital and of younger children's nursing students (aged under 20 years old) caring for them. Individual unstructured interviews were conducted with nine young patients and 11 children's nursing students. Young people in hospital appreciate the company of younger nursing students. In relation to identity development and psychosocial wellbeing, these interactions could be highly beneficial. However, 'messy boundaries' can create ambivalence in professional identity for the students. 'Messy boundaries' can enable therapeutic interactions that are beneficial to psychosocial wellbeing, but students may need support in balancing these with professional detachment.

G53(P) Behaviour trends and life experiences of young people living with or affected by HIV (YPLWAH) in the UK

BackgroundYoung people living with HIV (YPWH) poorly manage their health and disproportionately experience negative health and social outcomes. Poverty, isolation, stigma, and low social capital contribute to health inequality in...

Researching with young people as participants: Issues in recruitment.

Abstract An essential element of human research is the successful recruitment of participants. Many researchers appear to be able to recruit participants quickly and without significant issues, while other researchers have more challenges. This paper presents some issues encountered when recruiting participants for a phenomenological research project on the lived experiences of young people aged 16-24 years, with type 1 diabetes living in a rural setting. Insights and strategies are presented to assist researchers when recruiting young people to their research.

The realities of researching alongside virtual youth in late modernity creative practices and activity theory

Young people's use and understanding of the Internet is still under-researched. We argue that researching alongside young people in technological settings (a virtual world on the Internet in this paper) is a complicated nexus of conceptual, methodological and theoretical challenges. We argue that these are in dialectical, and sometimes incoherent, relationships with the realities of research processes and young people's lived experiences with Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The Economic and Social Research Council/Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (ESRC/EPSRC)-funded Inter-Life Project developed a ‘Virtual Research Community’ in Second Life™ to investigate how young people can work creatively to develop their own agency and subjectivities. We reflect on these challenges as they articulated with the ‘Inter-Life’ Project's aims. They include the need for more empirical evidence of the realities of young people's lives with ICTs, and for re-theorisation of their subjectivities in ICT settings. We interrogate the challenges of participatory research in such settings and the role of creative practices and virtual spaces in finding a voice and being a participatory researcher. In the second part, we illustrate the realities of researching in a virtual world through the lived experience of young people who worked with us. We also explore how activity theory (AT) might assist in the methodological and analytical work of researching young people's creativity in a virtual world.

Speak Out. Act Up. Move Forward. Disobedience-Based Arts Education

In this essay, Alison Kotin, Stella Aguirre McGregor, DeAnna Pellecchia, Ingrid Schatz, and Shaw Pong Liu reflect on their experiences working with public high school students to create Speak Out. Act Up. Move Forward., a performative response to current and historical acts of civil disobedience. The authors—a group of instructors from the Urbano Project with specialties in contemporary dance, musical composition, and interactive digital media—discuss their collaboration with students to draw connections between nonviolent protest and the challenges, pressures, and choices teens are faced with in everyday life. Through the use of student voices and powerful images, this reflective piece illustrates the potential of contemporary art to empower youth with a platform to work collaboratively, engage in critical reflection, and provoke and intrigue their audiences in open-ended consideration of urban young people's lived experiences and views of the world.

‘Liminal learners’ in a global city: The aspirations of young British Bangladeshi women at an east London secondary school

Young British Bangladeshi women are often perceived as a marginalised, vulnerable group unlikely to succeed within the UK education system. Although achievement at GCSE level has improved significantly in recent years, female British Bangladeshis continue to be identified as an under-performing group at A-level and in higher education (Dale, 2002; Hussain, 2005). This article examines the educational experiences of a group of young British Bangladeshi women at one east London secondary school, exploring their perceptions of educational success and their aspirations for the future. Through a narrative, case-study approach, and drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives, the research seeks to challenge commonly held perceptions of a group of young women whose voices are often absent from academic and policy discourse. Using the concept of ‘liminality’ (Turner 1969) as a way to conceptualise the location of young British Bangladeshi women within the education system, the article argues that we need to re-visit the widening participation (WP) agenda, in the light of the real, lived experiences of young people from second-and third-generation migrant communities.

Necessary Conformism: An Art of Living for Young People in Turkey

AbstractThis paper focuses on the everyday life experiences of the post-1980 generation in Turkey–a generation stigmatized for being depoliticized and apathetic. Rather than accepting this stigmatizing view, however, this analysis aims to better understand young people's actual lived experiences. To do so, it adopts the concept of “necessary conformism” developed in previous empirical research. This concept offers an alternative analytical framework that transcends the engaged/disengaged or political/ unpolitical dichotomy in young people's social participation. Specifically, the application of this concept reveals that apathetic behavior may actually mask powerful discontent and suffering that can be expressed neither through conventional politics nor open resistance. The necessary conformism of young people, therefore, is not apathetic behavior, but the expression of an underlying discontent and often a hidden agony.

The lived experiences of young people (13–16 years) with Type 1 diabetes mellitus and their parents – a qualitative phenomenological study

Within a programme of research aiming to develop a technology-based educational intervention for young people with Type 1 diabetes, this study aimed to explore adolescents' and parents' experiences of living with Type 1 diabetes from an interpretive phenomenological perspective. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 adolescents with Type 1 diabetes from a diabetes clinic in North West England, and 27 of their parents. Living with Type 1 diabetes in adolescence was characterized by three distinct stages: (1) adapting to the diagnosis; (2) learning to live with Type 1 diabetes; (3) becoming independent. Experiential learning was key to adolescents developing self-management skills and independence. Parents and health professionals were instrumental in facilitating environments that gave adolescents the freedom to learn through trial and error. They also provided the support, feedback and discussion necessary to facilitate such learning. For adolescents to become independent in Type 1 diabetes self-management, they must develop capability through experiential learning. It is important that parents and health professionals understand the important role they play in this process and have the skills to support adolescents in this way. Data from this study have been used to develop an online interactive 'Adolescent Diabetes Needs Assessment Tool', which assesses individual learning and support needs to aid the process of feedback and discussion.

Learning to (Dis)Engage? The Socialising Experiences of Young People Living in Areas of Socio-Economic Disadvantage

ABSTRACT Young people are increasingly required to demonstrate civic engagement in their communities and help deliver the aspirations of localism and Big Society. Using an ecological systems approach this paper explores the experiences of different groups of young people living in areas of socio-economic disadvantage. Using volunteering as an example of civic engagement it is shown that barriers and motivators for young people stem from within the micro, meso, exo and macrosystems, and that these interact with each other, and with bio-psychological factors within individuals, to bring about differential opportunities and outcomes for young people. Through examining the experiences of three different groups of young people placed within socio-economically disadvantaged communities, considerable variation in levels of civic engagement are identified and it is suggested that some young people's lived experiences are resulting in decisions to civically disengage. It is argued that young people need to benefit from genuine opportunities to develop self-efficacy if they are to respond to the demands of Big Society aspirations for localised decision-making.