Youth as Interviewers: Methods and Findings of Participatory Peer Interviews in a Youth Garden Project

The process of conducting peer interviews has not been widely reported on as a participatory method. Youth gardens are known to support individual and community health and well-being. Producing for the Future utilized the principles of community-based participatory research within a gardening and microenterprise program for low-income youth. In addition to several mixed-methods data collection techniques, a process was implemented in which youth participants designed, conducted, and debriefed peer interviews in order to address their own questions about program impacts. Participants in the peer interview process observed four emergent themes, which were not identified elsewhere in the data, focusing on individual outcomes and the successes and challenges of implementation within unique community settings. A methodological discussion of the process of peer interviewing within a participatory research project is presented. Researchers found that the benefits of the peer interview process included high levels of youth engagement in research, shared learning and new ideas generated by youth, and building youth capacity for critical social awareness. Researchers present lessons learned from the peer interviewing process, as well as implications for using peer interviewing in future participatory research and evaluation projects