ANNEX 2 INTERVIEWING YOUNG PEOPLE AND PARENTS: A NOTE ON PROCESS
In designing the study particular consideration was given to the process of interviewing young people and parents. Of specific concern were issues of informed consent, accessibility through language, and power relations within the interview framework. The latter was seen to be especially important when interviewing young people. Thus conducting the interview with the assistance of an interpreter, where two adults might be seen to be addressing one young person, could leave him/her feeling particularly powerless. Yet, interviewees might not feel confident to be interviewed in English, or might feel more comfortable speaking their home language. To address these issues it was decided to recruit bilingual researchers for the study, covering community languages of major refugee groups in Scotland. Training on research with children, and on research with refugees would be provided to the recruits.
Four bilingual researchers were recruited following advertisement in social science, politics, and humanities departments of universities in four Scottish cities, to Scottish Refugee Council networks, and to other colleges and research centres identified through snowballing techniques. The recruits were graduates with bilingual skills in English and Arabic, French, Kurdish, Turkish and Urdu, allowing for a wide geographic spread in accessing interviewees. It had been the intention to recruit a researcher with Somali-English bilingual skills, but it was not possible to identify a suitably qualified candidate in the required time. However, it was considered that a bilingual researcher with French and Arabic fluency would allow access to interviewees from African countries who did not wish to be interviewed in English.
One-day training for all selected candidates was provided by Mano Candappa from the Institute of Education, and Jennifer Turpie from Children in Scotland. Training covered issues around research with children, research with refugee children, and qualitative interview practice. In this, emphasis was placed on children's participatory rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, informed consent, confidentiality and anonymity, in relation to research with children; and on aspects of the refugee experience, including reasons for seeking refuge in a safe country, experiences of flight to safety, building a new life in a new country, and possible results of trauma suffered in the process, such as withdrawal or manifestations of aggression among refugee children. Two of the recruits did not come from a social science/humanities background. A further half-day training on qualitative research methods and interviewing skills was therefore provided to them.
Prior to recruiting interviewees for the study a series of leaflets, for young people and for parents, was prepared in English and in community languages, outlining the research and how it would be conducted. These were distributed in case study schools, in a college of further education, and through the Scottish Refugee Council, through which channels interviewees were recruited. Young people in schools selected the language they wished to be interviewed in; young people at college were confident to be interviewed in English. One (group) parent interview was conducted with the help of a Somali interpreter (since issues of adult-child power relations in the interview process which applied in the case of interviews with children, did not apply here); two were conducted in English with parents who were fluent English speakers; the rest were held in community languages by researchers.