1) What are you research interest?

2) Why are you doing reserach?

3) What support from adults are you getting and how can it be improved?

4) What do you hope to gain from your research?

5) Is this your second or third attempt at doing research?

6) What went wrong in the past and why will it work this time round?

7) What do you hope to influence or change? Your own knowledge, personal circumstances, or is it for the local community?

We at the Young Researcher Network want to undersanding your own personal journey's in doing research and we hope you will share your experiences and stories in order to support future individuals and groups of young people who want to use the messages from research to bring about change in their lives and communities.  

Think about ....

• who else is interesated politically in your research area?

• who could do something with your findings?

• what are the relevant policy areas?

• who is it best to contact to make change happen?

To help young researchers begin to make thses policy links we are bringing together a panel of local and national policy makers for a Question Time event.  YRN members will be able to pose questions directly but we will bring all questions to the panel.

So blog your questions here and we will ask for you and post the replies....

For more info vsisit our website http://www.nya.org.uk/youngresearchernetwork/

One topic we hope to cover as we provide support and advice to projects is online research. You might think that young people, as members of the google generation, would be far ahead in their ability to use the internet for research, but as a recent study has shown - young people still need training and support to make the most of their familiarity with the digital world. The 'information behaviour of the researcher of the future' paper tried to explore some 'myths' about young people's 'information behaviours', including this one:

They [young people] are expert searchers
Our verdict: This is a dangerous myth. Digital literacies
and information literacies do not go hand in hand.

Of course - we're interested in the 'information behaviour of the young researcher of the present' - but it's important that we look deeper into this.

When I studied for my degree, the internet was only just being widely introduced as a research tool, but now it seems that young people's skills in using the internet are often assumed in a way that means they don't have an opportunity to learn the important concepts to help in critically assessing information online.

But I'm sure there must be good resources out there to support young people as researchers.

If you're a young person, perhaps as a young researcher, have you had any good training in how to use the internet well? Or have you just always known how to make use of the internet? Do you think you're an expert searcher - or are there things you want to know about?

And if you're involved in research - are there any good resources you can recommend for teaching good online research skills to the google generation, and supporting young people in online research?

Training sessions will cover:
• the research process;
• finding focus and defining a research question;
• identifying a methodology;
• consider the ethical implications of research.

And individual customised training will also be available, as Dr Darren tours the country visiting network members.

Equipping young people with strong research skills is a key part of the Young Researcher Network project to ensure high quality research.

Some of the training will be delivered by the Centre for Social Action , and if you are a YRN member you can find full details of the training that is available to you on our website

If you've been involved in training either as a young researcher, or as someone working to support young people (ages 13 - 25) in research projects - what training have you found most useful? You can tell us in the comments below.
 

I hope that you all had a good bit of time off to relax and are raring to go now in the New Year! This year is going to be extremely busy for the YRN. We are hoping to kick start the year with a training programme for core partners. In addition the grants programme is being developed that will hopefully lead to completed research projects lead by young people in a years time....fingers crossed. Currently we are focussing on the website to begin to put useful pages together and develop a good and useful resource section. So busy busy busy......!

As promised we have started to receive some workshop presentations from the launch conference that a number of you said that you would find very useful. We also have Viv's keynote speech, in which she highlighted policy that might present opportunities for research lead by young people.

These are all available online on our current webpages www.nya.org.uk/youngresearchernetwork on the conference page. We will add more as it come in....also I guess for those of you that have made it thus far, you will be aware of the social media worksheets.

Thanks to Tim and Alex for posting these. So please keep in contact - and let us know what information would be of use to you.

Q1.  What have been the ethical dilemmas you have experienced doing research? For instance, you forgot to change the respondent’s name in a written report, you’ve lost interview tapes, you discussed interviews with friends and family, or maybe you filled-in your own questionnaires and past them off as someone else.  Let us know your ethical dilemmas and how you overcame them.

The session made use of a series of 'one page guides' to introduce the different tools available and many members of the network asked for them to be made more widely available - so here they are:

Google Earth

Using maps to explore local issues can be powerful - and 3D interactive mapping can really add to that. Google Earth is a free tools for viewing and annotating a 3D globe, with the ability to zoom right in to view a street-level satelite image of your area.

Download the Google Earth guide here (PDF)

You can also use the My Maps feature in Google Maps to record your views of your local area. This wasn't covered in the sessions, but a guide is available here.

Flickr Photo Sharing

Flickr is a tool for sharing photos online. You can accept comments on your photos, turn them into a slide-show, organise them with tags - and you can plot them on an interactive map as well. The Young Researcher Network session focussed in on using Flickr for its maps feature, but this guide offers a broader overview of getting started using this powerful online tool.

Download the Flickr guide here (PDF)

VoiceThread

Voicethread is a tool for collaboratively narrating an annotating a slide show of images or documents.

Download the VoiceThread guide here (Word)

Motion Box

If you haven't got access to video editing software on your computer, you want to share the editing of video between members of a group via the internet, or you have creative ideas for using video editing to explore an idea - then one of the many online video tools available could be just what you need.

The sessions used MotionBox, and you can download the MotionBox guide here (PDF).

These one page guides are part of a series from Practical Participation. You can find all of them on Tim's Blog over here.

The YRN is brand new and aims to support young people as researchers. The NYA have formed the network with 15 other organisations who will be announced soon after our launch conference.

We are hoping that this blog provides a space for practitioners, young people and others, interested in social research, to hear stories from across the network, to keep up to date with our work and to get involved through comment on our blog posts.

We are working hard to get ready for our launch conference on the 8th and 9th December to those of you who are members we look forward to meeting you soon!