Co-designing interview questions with young researchers
As an early career researcher dedicated to working with children and young people, a perpetual question lingers in my professional endeavours: Am I posing the right interview questions? Am I using language that is both accessible and respectful? These kinds of queries frequently preoccupy my mind during my PhD studies, a sentiment I believe is shared by many in this field. The collaboration with our seven incredible co-researchers for the current project, however, has been a source of reassurance and insight.
In November last year, we organised our second meeting with our amazing young minds. This wasn’t just any meeting; it was a collaborative session aimed at designing interview protocols for the local strand of our ongoing project.
To provide a bit more context, our project includes a series of local interviews targeting 11-18-year-old Chinese heritage language speakers in Sheffield. Our aim is to delve into their unique experiences of growing up multilingual in this local context. Hence, we turned to our co-researchers, who share a similar age and cultural background with our target group, hoping to co-design an interview protocol that would truly resonate with their peers.
Our first collective task was to identify the key themes that would guide our exploration of these young individuals' lived experiences. The co-researchers, with remarkable insight and enthusiasm, proposed various themes crucial to their lives and worth discussing with their peers. These ranged from language background and daily language use to cultural experiences and social dynamics involving family and friends. One topic that emerged with stark significance was racism – a reality that has become more pronounced in the post-Covid era and amidst the backdrop of the #StopAsianHate movement.
As we dove into each theme, the process of crafting detailed questions was a collaborative dance of ideas and perspectives. We discussed how to frame a topic sensitively, the choice of words that would best capture the intended meaning, and ensuring that the language used was both engaging and understandable for their peers. By the end of this enriching session, an interview protocol was born! This document was not static; it was a living piece of our collaborative effort, with all co-researchers having access for further refinement and editing in the following week.
Reflecting upon this process, I am truly amazed by how much our young co-researchers have produced and contributed to our research. I hope that they enjoyed this process as much as we did! As we continue to move forward with our project, these experiences and lessons will remain at the core of our approach, guiding us towards more inclusive and participatory research practices.