Focus groups

Whilst the views of policymakers, key stakeholders, staff and parents on holiday provision were captured through semi-structured interviews, it was considered important to obtain the views and opinions of children attending holiday provision clubs and to understand the needs of those who are marginalised in society (Smith, Monaghan, & Broad, 2002). Qualitative research has a key role to ensure the views of children are incorporated (Ridge, 2011). Under Article 12 of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) children have the right to be heard and be involved in the decision making process on matters that involve them (Harcourt & Sargeant, 2011; Lundy, 2009; UNICEF, 1992). Lundy (2009) proposes a four-point model to conceptualise Article 12 for informing and developing policy and analysing existing practice. Thus, children should be provided with the opportunity to express their views, be facilitated to express their views, be listened to and for their views to be acted upon (Lundy, 2009). Lundy (2009) uses the term ‘child

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voice’ to represent the right for children to express themselves and to be heard. Furthermore, a recent study in the US on children’s experiences and the reporting of sensitive topics such as food poverty illustrates that children are best placed to explain and report back their own experiences whilst parents’ reports of children’s experiences lack validity (Fram, Frongillo, Jones, et al., 2011). Therefore, the views of children attending holiday clubs were collected through focus groups. Focus groups involve a small group of people in a group discussion speaking about a set of topics which are introduced by a moderator (Roulston, 2010; Wilkinson, 2015). Wilkinson (2015) argues that focus groups are much closer to everyday conversations than one-to-one interviews and can include disagreement, storytelling and boasting amongst participants. Focus groups can create an environment for eliciting a more comprehensive account of individual’s ideas, opinions and understandings than would be possible in a one-to-one interview as co-participants help to trigger memories or stimulate a debate (Wilkinson, 2015). Research undertaken by Fielden, Sillence and Little (2011) into obesity in children, demonstrates that focus groups are a relevant method for collecting qualitative information from children as they are a similar format to the small group discussions they would experience at school.

There are a number of advantages of conducting focus groups. Firstly, less time is required to conduct focus groups than individual interviews (Morgan, 1997; Wilkinson, 2015). As the focus groups with children took place at the holiday club setting, and some holiday clubs only operate for two hours per day, it would not have been feasible to undertake individual interviews with children within the allotted time frame. Moreover, it was the least disruptive method for data collection in terms of fitting around the holiday clubs’ schedule of activities and lunch provision. Secondly, focus groups are considered well suited for the discussion of sensitive topics and groups can help facilitate personal disclosure (Wilkinson, 2015). Nevertheless, previous research has illustrated that participants may supply different kind of information in a group setting than in an individual interview (Roulston, 2010) and the group may influence the nature of the data it produces or whether participants discuss a topic (Morgan, 1997). A further limitation of this method is the challenge of organising an appropriate number of children to participate. Whilst previous research indicates the optimal size of focus groups is between six and ten participants (Morgan, 1997), it was considered that between four and six children was appropriate to encourage group discussion and ensure that all children were able to participate within the discussion. In reality it was not always feasible to arrange such small focus groups and the size of the groups depended on the number of children attending the holiday club and the dynamics and structure of the club. For instance, at one holiday club there was a focus group comprising 12 children as, due to the short operating times of the holiday club, there was only one opportunity to organise a group discussion. At the end of the focus groups, all children were provided with a verbal debrief about the research study and their participation. In addition, children were offered a sticker in recognition of their

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participation and a token of thanks (Gibson, 2007). All focus groups were audio recorded and the data were analysed using grounded theory techniques.

As with the semi-structured interviews, a non-probability purposive sampling strategy was adopted for the focus groups with children. Participants for the focus groups were recruited from holiday clubs operated by community and voluntary groups across England.

To facilitate data collection with children, five young people were recruited as co-researchers to assist with the focus groups. Young people from the Mayor’s Fund for London Youth Board were invited to attend a qualitative training session and participate as co-researchers in focus groups with children attending holiday clubs in London. Young peoples’ own views were incorporated as much as possible into this section of the qualitative phase of the research design. Smith et al. (2002) claim that the views of young people add richness, validity and relevance to the research project. The benefits of participatory research and the use of young people as co-researchers bring the implicit values of inclusion and empowerment to the study (Lewis & McNaughton Nicholls, 2014). By providing the opportunity for young people to have a role in the research process, for instance as data collector, helps to address the power imbalance of research with children (Harcourt & Sargeant, 2011). Furthermore, participatory research is considered to help improve the level of understanding of the research topic (Smith et al., 2002). Thus, in this qualitative phase of the research design young people assisted with the development of the interview schedule for the focus groups and assumed the role of moderator in group discussions with children at the holiday clubs in London. However, these young people were not involved in any other aspect of this qualitative phase, including obtaining informed consent from participants, data analysis or dissemination of the findings, as a result of constraints on their time and other commitments during the school summer holidays. In total five young people, three girls and two boys, aged between 14 and 16 years, attended a training workshop and participated in the research as co-researchers. Together with a post-doctoral researcher at Northumbria University, the author organised a two-hour practical workshop on qualitative research for these five young people to provide them with the information and skills to support the research. The workshop included developing an

understanding of ethics, creating an interview schedule and developing good interviewer skills. The workshop presentation is included in Appendix N. It was evident from an evaluation of the workshop that the young co-researchers viewed the training session and the skills and knowledge they had developed positively. In particular they identified the importance of good communication skills, being open to different views, asking questions in focus groups and developing a wider understanding for evaluation and ethics. A copy of the workshop evaluation is included in Appendix P and the results of the workshop evaluation are presented in Appendix Q. During this training session, the young co-researchers were encouraged to create ground rules to govern the children’s involvement in the focus groups, they helped design the interview schedule and were

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involved in setting up the practical arrangements. The workshop included a group discussion on holiday provision and the young co-researchers were encouraged to contribute their ideas to help them to develop open-ended questions to pose to the children of their experiences of the holiday clubs and school holidays. In total, seven questions were incorporated into the interview schedule from this workshop. The interview schedule developed from the training session is included in Appendix Jiv. The training handouts also provided to the young co-researchers and the ground rules developed at the training workshop are included in Appendix O. The five young co- researchers attended three holiday clubs on at least one occasion during August 2017 to act as facilitators in the group discussions. The researcher was present throughout all the focus groups discussions to provide support to the young co-researcher. The researcher was also present to assist the role of the moderator as well as to encourage shy participants of the focus groups to participate in the group discussions and oversee any issues or disagreements within the focus groups.

The young people were able to engage quickly with the children at the holiday clubs and the children, in turn, were happy to discuss their experiences of the school holidays and their views about the holiday club they attended. Young people engaged with the children at the club in a more relaxed way using shared language and mutual understanding and this enhanced

communication can lead to improved data quality (Smith et al., 2002). There was enthusiastic commitment from the young people in the research project and they were keen to be involved in the holiday club provision and enhance their roles as members of the Mayor’s Fund for London’s Youth Board in a more practical way. Furthermore, the experience of undertaking qualitative research helped with their skills development. Nevertheless, there were a number of practical and ethical challenges of undertaking participatory research and utilising young people as co-

researchers. As Smith et al. (2002) identified in their study on young people’s health needs in England, there still exists the issue of interviewer bias. Some children in the group discussion remained reluctant to discuss sensitive topics, such as the food they ate at home, and the

introduction of a peer interviewer did not remove this barrier. McCarry (2012) considers the value of utilising the skills and experience of children and young people to complement those of the researcher, however argues that “in the same way that we would / should not take one person’s view to represent a community of people, arguably giving expert status to young people simply because of their age should also be problematized” (McCarry, 2012, p. 65). Furthermore, there is the time and cost involved with training young people with the skills to undertake this type of research. Despite the limitations in using young people as co-investigators, the use of young people, in participatory research, has been shown to be of value in developing trust with participants (Salway, Chowbey, Such, et al., 2015; Smith et al., 2002). Prior researchers have identified trust is a major barrier to working with hard-to-reach groups (Bradby, Varyani,

Oglethorpe, et al., 2007; Gorin, Hooper, Dyson, et al., 2008). The decision, therefore, to use young people as co-researchers was a pragmatic choice to improve the engagement and participation of

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children attending holiday clubs, and thereby establishing their views on the school holidays and holiday provision. The ethical considerations of involving young people in participatory research are outlined in further detail in the ethics section below.