Explore - Toolkit for Involving Young People as Researchers in Sexual and Reproductive Health Programmes

“One of the best ways to understand what is needed is to allow young people to participate in – and lead – our work on programme development.”

The Explore toolkit offers a step-by-step guide to train and support young people to conduct qualitative research about matters that affect them, including progress on and benefits of projects that target them. The toolkit was developed to motivate and support staff, researchers, other professionals, and organisations to involve and train young people in research, monitoring and evaluation. Research can include needs assessments, rapid appraisals, explorative studies, PEER (Participatory Ethnographic Evaluation and Research) reviews, operations research, action research, and in-depth research.

The toolkit is based on the experiences of Rutgers and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) working in sexual and reproductive health, which has shown that youth participation enables programmes to achieve better results. As stated in the toolkit, “programmes that closely involve their target audiences are more effective and sustainable because:

• people feel they have ownership over the project and a role to play in the processes of change that the project wants to establish
• changes that the programme achieves are more sustainable
• participation increases support for the project
• participation of the target group in implementing the project increases its reach (for example, through peer educators)
• projects become more attractive and relevant to the target group (matching its realities and needs) when the target group can offer input on the design and methods or if the target group gets consulted on what can be improved, and how such improvements could be achieved.

Programmes are more effective if they:

• are based on a thorough understanding of the problem that they want to address
• monitor whether they achieve what they set out to achieve
• develop and improve interventions on the basis of data on what works or does not work
• use methods and activities that are attractive and relevant for the target group
• build their advocacy activities on evidence and use compelling cases to illustrate this evidence base.”

This toolkit specifically focuses on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), but the examples and concepts can be replaced by other topics relevant for a particular field, research, or organisation. Similarly, although this toolkit focuses on youth participation, the same principles can be applied to participation by different target audiences and age groups.

The Toolkit contains three training manuals wihch all focus on building skills for collecting qualitative data through interviews and focus group discussions, the most commonly used qualitative data collection methods.  However, the tools focus on different data collection goals, so organisations need to decide which manual, or which combination of sessions, would be most useful.

The Explore toolkit consists of the following:

1. Toolkit instructions and case studies - This booklet offers guidelines to create conditions for successful youth participation in research and enhancing the effectiveness of youth SRHR programmes.

The three training manuals are as follows:

2. Rapid PEER review handbook - The first part of the handbook covers the basics – definition of a rapid PEER review; why it is important; how to choose peer interviewers; and the ethics that underpin the review. The second part of the handbook provides a session-by-session guide for conducting a four-day rapid PEER review.

3. Monitoring and evaluation and research in SRHR programmes for young people: Training manual - The overall goal of the training is for the participants to learn how to demonstrate changes that have been achieved by a project.  The training manual is ideally used together with the Monitoring and evaluation and research in SRHR programmes for young people: Handbook.  The handbook contains basic background information on monitoring and evaluation and research, which can assist participants in their work and which can be used as reference material.

4. Manual for training young people as researchers - The goal of this manual is to provide trainers with example sessions that can help them to train young people in particular aspects of conducting qualitative research. The overall goal of the training is to equip young people with the skills to conduct qualitative research about young people’s SRHR issues.

As stated in the toolkit, “The training methodologies described in this toolkit have been applied and tested in different settings in Africa and Asia, with different groups of young people (children, adolescents and young people, with different social and educational backgrounds) and in the context of different research, monitoring and evaluation activities and projects. The training methodologies are developed in collaboration with young people and on the basis of their feedback and evaluations.

Click here to access the full toolkit online.