Interview design

I decided that a face to face approach with young people would provide the most detailed information, and the two methods I considered for data gathering were using semi-structured interviews and focus groups. I ruled out using creative approaches with young people such as art, photography and drama, partly due to the limitations on my time as a full time EP, and partly because I did not consider myself to have appropriate skills nor resources to work in these ways.

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I chose to conduct semi-structured interviews, because I believed that having individual face to face discussions, would enable me to build a rapport with participants and to create the best conditions for in-depth exploration of the experiences of a single individual at a time. Smith and Osborn (2008, p. 57) suggest that:

‘this form of interviewing allows the researcher and participant to engage in a dialogue whereby initial questions are modified in the light of the participants’ responses and the investigator is able to probe interesting and important areas which arise.’

The idea of conducting focus groups was ruled out, because I was concerned about the possibility for some individuals to be inhibited from talking about their experiences within a group, particularly in view of the potentially sensitive personal nature of some information.

A semi-structured format allowed me more scope to adapt the interview so that it was suitable for the interviewee (for example, varying language, providing explanations, and exploring a theme in more depth). Thomas (2009) describes a typical interview schedule as consisting of issues, which lead to possible questions, which lead onto follow up questions and finally lead to probes which encourage the interviewee to continue with aspects of their answers. The potential disadvantages of a semi-structured interview might include the interviewee providing responses that he/she thinks the interviewer wishes to hear, the factor of researcher bias, and the time that semi-structured interviews

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take to conduct and to analyse. A copy of the interview schedule can be found in Appendix 1.

As the study is broadly interpretivist, the notion that the interviewer and interviewee will have their own perceptions and constructions of the interview and the topics under discussion is already a given and is not regarded as problematic; this was therefore explicitly acknowledged by me at the outset of each interview. I tailored my approach and script with the aim of minimising any pressure on the interviewee.

I considered the idea of training young people who have had experience of being NEET, to conduct interviews. A potential advantage of this might be that young people might give a more authentic account of their experiences to another young person, (although I do not believe this is necessarily the case, due to the barriers which might exist between two young people who do not know each other). I recognised that how I might be perceived by interviewees (for example as a middle aged professional woman who has not been in their position nor faced the challenges they have faced) might be a barrier to them being able to share how they really felt.

However I concluded that it would be preferable to carry the interviews out myself. I hoped that my experiences of talking to many different young people in my role as an EP would enable me to establish a rapport with participants. There would also have been considerable practical barriers of selecting and

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training suitable interviewers, and I anticipated that it would also be more difficult to analyse the interviews, if I hadn’t directly carried them out myself.

The format of the interviews was naturalistic and as a starting point asked young people to reflect on their current experiences (‘now’), then moved to past experiences of being NEET (‘then’), and finally explored the participant’s views about the future (the future’). This format seemed the most natural (starting with the ‘here and now’) and also anticipated that potentially more sensitive topics (the experience of being NEET) were covered once the young person had been put at ease.

The aim was to generate a conversation that was as natural as possible, so relatively few, open-ended questions were asked, with accompanying prompts to follow up issues that arose. As stated by Hoggart and Smith (2004, p. 237), the aim was to ‘develop a conversational style, picking up on the young

person’s situation and perceptions.’

Based on my experience of working with young people as an EP, I decided that it might facilitate the discussion with the young people if I provided specific tasks and visual ‘props’ to support their understanding of the areas I wished to cover. I therefore prepared a sheet of flipchart paper in landscape format (see figure 3.1 below) to cover ‘the present – what’s happening now?’; ‘the past - the time when you found yourself without a job or college placement or training’ and ‘the future’. I used it at the start of each interview to show the young person

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what areas we would cover, but it was also useful as a prompt and also a space for the young person to draw or write on if needed.

Figure 3.1: Time line grid used during the interviews with young people

Now Then The future

For each of the time periods ‘now’ and then’, I produced an A3 sheet divided into ‘helped me’ and ‘didn’t help me’, as shown in figure 3.2. This helped to support the discussion with the young people about what had helped or not helped them in these two phases of their lives.

Figure 3.2: Grid to support discussion about what the young person found helped or didn’t help when they were ‘NEET’ and since moving out of ‘NEET’

Now/Then

Helped me Didn’t help me

I also anticipated based on my experience as an EP that young people might find it difficult to describe a variety of emotions and I therefore provided twenty- one ‘thoughts and feelings’ cards reflecting a range of perceptions. These were presented in random order and respondents were asked to sort them into five categories to reflect how frequently they experienced the feelings in question both at the time when they were NEET, and since they had moved out of being

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NEET. The list of ‘thoughts and feelings’ words and frequency categories are shown in Table 3.3:

Table 3.3: List of ‘thoughts and feelings’ words and frequency categories

Disappointed Relieved Relaxed Gloomy Fed up Bored Pessimistic Other Confident Happy Excited Hopeful Stressed Proud Optimistic Sad Worried Angry Frustrated Motivated Calm Frequency categories

 I never feel/felt this

 I rarely feel/felt this

 I sometimes feel/felt this

 I often feel/felt this

 I almost always feel/felt this

The written thoughts and feelings cards, the flip chart sheets with ‘now’, ‘then’ and ‘the future’ and the other visual aids were intended to support the young person, but to ensure that they didn’t create an additional barrier for anyone with literacy difficulties, I read everything out and invited the young people to ask me about any words they weren’t sure of.