Using qualitative methods to elicit young people's perspectives on their environments: some ideas for community health initiatives

community contexts, and that the ways that individuals relate to wider social networks and communities have important effects on health and This paper describes qualitative methods used in a research project for the former Health Educawell-being. The Government Green Paper Our Healthier Nation: A Contract for Health (Depart-tion Authority, exploring Putnam's concept of 'social capital' in relation to children and young ment of Health, 1998a,b), for example, highlights a range of complex factors affecting health and people's well-being and health. Putnam's conceptualization of social capital consists of the followemphasizes 'social environments': ing features: trust, reciprocal support, civic Neighbourhoods where people know each other engagement, community identity and social netand trust each other and where they have a say works, and the premise is that levels of social in the way the community is run can be a capital in a community have an important effect powerful support in coping with the day to day on people's well-being. Research was carried out stresses of life which affect health. And having with 102 children aged between 12 and 15 in two a stake in the local community gives people selfrelatively deprived parts of a town in southeast respect and makes them feel better. [para. 2.16] England. The paper describes the research setting, methods, consent process and ethical issues During the late 1990s, the Health Education Authority (now the Health Development Agency) that arose. It explores how the methods generated different forms of interconnected data, giving commissioned a number of research projects to develop and test a range of hypotheses about the rise to a number of health/well-being-related themes. The paper concludes that using a range way in which health-related behaviours are shaped and constrained by a number of social and com-of methods, including visual methods, has helped to explore quality of life issues for children that munity factors. One way of exploring this link has been to develop the concept of 'social capital', are usually neglected in studies of young people's health-related behaviours. based on Putnam's (Putnam, 1993) formulation of 'social capital' as consisting of trust, networks of