Posted 26 February 2018

The second and third pilot phases of the GHWY NCOP Young Researchers programme are taking place in February and March 2018. After a successful first pilot study which took place in the Wakefield area at Castleford Academy (see more details here). Researchers from the NCOP team are delivering workshops in schools across Leeds and Bradford.

The first session in Bradford took place today at Appleton Academy. Our group of intrepid young researchers started by eating pizzas (research cannot be carried out on an empty stomach!) and then told us about what they already know about research (a lot, as it turns out!). The young researchers, all from year 9, are learning about how to do research so that they can carry out their own projects. They will be interviewing people they know, in their schools and in the local area, to ask about their experiences of Higher Education.

The initial Young Researchers workshop goes through some of the basics of carrying out a research project. We look at what research is and why people do it. We also look at what kinds of findings researchers discover and why these might be useful? The young researchers had some fantastic ideas about this – from understanding voting patterns in the EU referendum to identifying new planets in space.

We talked about some of the different kinds of research that people do, for example,  qualitative and quantitative research. We also tackled the tricky topic of research ethics and discussed the kinds of issues which might arise in research carried out with people. The young people were introduced to different research methods, for example using questionnaires and using interviews. We had a debate around why we would use each method and there were some fantastic insights and compelling answers!

Our young researchers from Bradford are now ready to start their fieldwork. They will be using a research journal, designed by the Go Higher West Yorkshire research and evaluation team, which also includes lots of handy hints about carrying out research and being a researcher.

We’re looking forward to catching up again with our young researchers in the next couple of weeks and seeing what they’ve been up to! The next session will focus on the interview data, and in the final session we will be exploring our findings and analysing our data!

 You can see how we worked with our pilot group (Castleford Academy) via this digital story below:

By the NCOP research and evaluation team