Evaluations of diaries and GPS-enabled trackers to plot young peoples’ geographies – asking the participants what they think

ABSTRACT

Insights into the personal geographies of young people can be gained in many ways, but there is not always a focus on the effectiveness of the methodologies used, through a comparison of the different approaches, nor is there often an examination of how the participants in the study perceive the effectiveness of the research methods. Two methodologies are explored in this study: self-completion mobility diaries and the wearing of global positioning system-enabled tracking devices. The study focuses on the perceptions of the teenage school student respondents in the study (n = 15) with relation to the user friendliness, the perceived accuracy, and the ease with which travel patterns can be recreated from the data. The participants were able to evaluate the two methodologies and to make judgements on the criteria provided. We argue that participants can contribute significantly to post-research methodological reflection.

KEYWORDS:

• GPS tracking
• diary
• northern Ireland
• education
• methodology

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the teachers who facilitated and the students who participated in this research. Kevin Coyle, of Ulster Mediascapes, kindly provided additional GPS-tracking devices. They would also like to thank the anonymous referees whose comments were very useful.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

Stephen Roulston http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6043-7261