Info for youth workers

As a reminder, this is what we’ve done so far...

Phase 1: a summary of key trends affecting young people since 2010

Phase 2: 17 focus groups with 104 young people from across the UK

Phase 3: theological reflection on the focus groups with 30 youth workers

The next step is to run some further focus groups with young people, sharing some passages of scripture with them and recording their reflections and reactions, and this is where you come in!

Today I’m writing to ask for your help recruiting 20 young people aged 14-17 to take part in an ‘online community’ which will run over half-term 13th-17th February. I appreciate this is very soon, so would be really grateful for your help!

If your half-term is the week after (20th-24th) please email me let me know. I am currently planning a second group, and could include some more young people in that!

This involves logging in to an online platform called Liveminds, where they will be prompted with different questions each day. They do it whenever in the day works for them, and it should take 2.5 hours in total (30 mins a day). They'll get a £30 voucher each to say thank you for taking part. The format of this online community does mean we’d be looking for young people who would actually log in every day and complete the questions, so it wouldn’t be suitable for everyone!

I will be present all week, setting the questions and facilitating the discussion, to ensure the conversation remains positive and safe for everyone involved. Further information about the ethical protocol for the research is on the webpages below.

This part of the research is for young people who are not from Christian homes and would not identify as Christians because we are interested in how these young people interpret scripture and make sense of what they hear/read.

So, as a reminder we are looking for the following young people.

• Aged 14-17
• Would not consider themselves Christians
• Would be open to engaging with some stories in the Bible and sharing their honest thoughts and reflections
• Can give 30 mins a day over 5 days in half-term
• Have access to a device they can use to log in to Liveminds (they can use the app on their phones or a compute)

If you think you know a few young people who are interested, there are two steps

• Share the project webpage with them, and check they’ve understood it. This explains what it means to be involved, what they will be expected to do and what the wider project is about. If they want to take part, they will need to fill out the consent form at the bottom of the page https://www.youthscape.co.uk/research/online-discussion-yp
• Inform their parents/carers by sharing the webpage below and ask for their consent. If the young people are 14 or 15, we legally need their parents’ consent for them to take part. Any 16- or 17-year-olds are allowed to give just their own consent. However please do still share the information webpage with their parents, check they are happy for their child to take part and see if they have any questions. https://www.youthscape.co.uk/r...

As you can see, we are wanting to recruit these 20 young people over the next week, so would be grateful if you could mention this to young people as soon as you can!

Thank you so much, and don’t hesitate to give me a call if you have any questions.

Lucie Moore