Methods in Youth Citizen Social Science

Authors: Sara Berge Lorenzen, Cathrine Marie Skovbo Winther,Aina Landsverk Hagen, Julie Ridley & Maria Turda

Handbook of Youth Social Citizen Science (Borgström, D., Canto-Farachala, P., Hagen, A. L., Norvoll, R., Rådmark, L. & Lorenzen, S.B. (Eds.). (2024). Handbook of Youth Citizen Social Science. Working with Young People and the Local Community for Social Change. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10566411)

When involving youth as co-researchers, the youth will not only contribute with their thoughts and ideas but also be actively involved in the data collection. Making sure that the data collection phases are inclusive is thus a key part of youth citizen social science. Doing participatory data collection in this way takes time and requires researchers to work differently than they are used to. Researchers must ensure that the research topics are available to the youth;  they need to adapt the research methods to be accessible and inclusive; they have to be open to learning from the youth throughout the process; and they must ensure that the environment is safe and inclusive for all youths involved. This requires a great deal of flexibility and patience, but the outcome is definitely worth it. Youth bring a different and valuable perspective to the research, asking different and often better or more precise questions, gaining access to different people, and they are experts on topics that involve themselves and their environment. An important step in involving young people as co-researchers is providing training on how to do data-collection in an ethical and scientifically responsible way.