Youth and adult researcher reflections on participatory research in Australia and the United Kingdom

It is clear to us that young people should be seen as creative agents who bring about change (Chapter 2; Sayer 2003). As researchers currently employed by universities, with practitioner backgrounds in non-profit, youth and community work, we believe that throughout the research process the relationship of knowledge to practice should be "interactive rather than passive" (Sayer 2003: 354). Young people's own subjective accounts and constructions of their social world lie at the heart of our studies (Morrow 2002; Prout 2005), and our work in participatory research has been oriented towards the productive and respectful inclusion of these subjective accounts in the research process. We are aware that this approach does not come without criticisms. These include concerns about the danger of bias (Hammersley 2009), the mediation of young people's views by "adult" researchers Gones 2004: 113) and the benefits to individual young people coming at the expense of quality research (Chapter 3). In this chapter we consider how health and social research involving young people can address these challenges. We will present some of the young people's reflections on their experiences as peer researchers in two projects in which the authors have been involved: one in Australia and the other in the United Kingdom. At the same time, we offer our own reflections as academic researchers in these projects. Through these reflections we hope to contribute to broader understandings of how to facilitate participatory research with young people that is meaningful and rigorous.