Learning from young people about their lives: using participatory methods to research the impacts of AIDS in southern Africa

Abstract

Methods of participatory research have become popular among children's geographers as they are believed to enable young people to speak openly about their lives in unthreatening contexts. In this article, we reflect on our experience of using participatory methods to explore the sensitive topic of (indirect) impacts of AIDS on young people's livelihoods in Malawi and Lesotho. We examine how different methodological approaches generate varying knowledges of children's lived realities; challenges of using ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ research assistants; the place of group-based approaches in participatory research; and ethical issues. We suggest that researchers of young people's lives should take full account of the relationship between epistemology and methodology in selecting and employing methods appropriate to particular research questions.

Keywords:

• participation
• research methods
• knowledge production
• Malawi
• Lesotho

Acknowledgements

This research was funded under the joint ESRC/DFID funding scheme, contract RES-167-25-0167. We are grateful to all those who gave generously of their time in support of the project: members of the Institute of Southern African Studies, National University of Lesotho, and Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, Chancellor College, University of Malawi; the project's National Steering Groups in Malawi and Lesotho; our research assistants, translators, and transcribers; the young people and adults of Nihelo and Ha Rantelali, and all those who were interviewed for this research.

Notes

Our research did not focus exclusively on the present and past. As Langevang (2007) points out, combining methods enables researchers to explore young people's lives in transition, and to investigate trajectories from past events to future prospects and aspirations. In this paper, however, we focus on the production of empirically grounded conditions and events of the past and present.

The headteacher interviewed at the primary school in Malawi described AIDS as a key reason for children dropping out.

Collected and analysed by the research team.

It is argued that participatory methods are based in Western rationality and modes of cognition; that supposedly neutral participatory techniques such as diagramming actually rely on Western modes of seeing, understanding and representing the world and may be unfamiliar to those not educated in a Western tradition (Mohan 2001).

Similarly, from researching the sensitive topic of citizenship among Singaporean transmigrants Ho (2008) interrogates the many instances of silence or self-censorship.

Ennew et al. (2009, p. 2.15) emphasise very strongly that in respecting children's rights to be properly researched, researchers should avoid acting like teachers in order to minimise power inequalities between adult researchers and child participants as far as possible. This laudable ethical ideal is difficult to achieve.