The Methods We Used:
This project utilized peer-researchers and a participatory action-research process. An extensive preliminary literature survey and document analysis (policy, founding documents of service agencies, service provision guidelines, etc.) was followed by peer-facilitated focus groups, interviews, ethnographic observation, and video-documentary methods. In addition, a weekly late-night delivery of hot food and snacks to youth on or working the streets provided valuable opportunities both to support as well as to hear from those within the target population, likely to be at greatest risk of violence, homelessness, illness and addictions. Being the group least likely to seek mainstream supports and services, they are, therefore, youth whose voices and perspectives are least likely to be heard.
“I have no faith in healthcare” (Eliza)
  “Terribly sexually abused by my grandfather and uncle…But I didn’t identify it as sexual abuse, cuz I was gay…”(Adam)
From April to August 2002, a range of ways of looking at and for information was employed with the intention of capturing as wide a data set as possible, and to try to determine which research approaches were most productive. Methods included all of the following: individual and group interviews, observations, photographs, survey data, documentary analysis, reviews of research literature, focus groups, art-based activities, video and audio recordings. The questions we used to guide fieldwork were revisited and redefined several times in the early stages of the fieldwork, and Appendix 5 gives the initial question set, while Appendix 6 provides the eventual questions in final survey form. 
 
 An Important Note on Ethics and research involving minors
Because the age at which many youth become (homo)sexually active is below the legal age of consent, service providers who do cater to this age group are precluded, whether de jure or de facto, from formally acknowledging alternative sexual identifications/practices, and so may often fail to recognize or, therefore to meet the distinctive social, cultural, psychological and health/housing related needs of this group. This can often mean that child welfare delivery system deficits, and subsequently housing policies and priorities, have never adequately served LGBT children and their families. In other words, a significant gap exists between services provided to “youth at risk,” in general, and access to services for the particular youth at risk who are the subjects of this study. However, any attempt to conduct research involving under-age, sexually active youth meets with the same obstacles. Under-age subject—children in the eyes of the law—need their parents’ consent to participate in research. But youth who have no parental care, those who have left or who have been forced to leave their parents’ home, cannot very well be expected to obtain a parent’s signature on a consent form.
These constraints make it difficult for researchers to provide the levels and kinds of information about homelessness within this specific population that are required to remediate serious deficiencies and omissions in social policy and service provision.
“Abandonment is the worst thing a person can ever feel, being left alone and having to deal with a problem on their own.” (Tony)
Formal research ethics aside, there are numerous substantive ethical questions which arise in research involving subjects under the age of consent, and, indeed, any vulnerable and disadvantaged persons or groups.
“The issue is not that I am getting uninteresting information from my interviews and focus groups. Of course when you interview people who are street involved, you are bound to get tragic, dramatic stories of what happens to people in crises. The focus group was in fact quite interesting and from a personal standpoint, I learned a lot. The issue for me is that if we are going to get information from people in crises, I feel that there has to be some real immediate benefit to them besides a $10.00 honorarium. I think for me (and I’m still exploring this) it is an issue of ethics.” (Justin, Fieldnote)
And although the research team continuously tried to raise these issues, to deal responsibly and ethically and in a sufficiently informed way with participants, it is important to draw attention to the apparent lack of concern among participants themselves about issues of confidentiality and anonymity, about risks, about privacy, or about “telling their story” in general.
Researchers commented with some concern about the extent to which interviewees made themselves vulnerable by sharing often surprisingly personal and traumatic narrations which, however, were accompanied by little if any distress in the telling, and an almost embarrassing willingness to lay their lives bare to researchers. This is noteworthy given the documented tendency of abused children to be insufficiently guarded about their own welfare and insufficiently protective of themselves.
“I was sad thinking about why these young men were so willing to tell their stories for so little in return” (Jax, fieldnote)
Other informants appeared to want to get through the requisite probing and prodding as soon as possible, and it was often clear that the monetary payment given to interviewees for their time was the sole motivation behind the interview. In these cases, interviewees would generally choose to cut the session short. Whether for money, or for a brief connection with a person willing to listen, or because they have spent more time than most of us in reciting accounts of themselves and their lives, it appeared that many of these youth had become accustomed to telling their story, and there sometimes seemed to be a fairly rehearsed ‘script’ to many of the interviews. This is nothing new in this kind of research, but the fact that what we so often get from direct interview questioning is fairly formulaic and scripted, mediates the ways we make use of interview “data” here.

 

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