Using Focus Group Research in Exploring the Relationships between Youth, Risk and Social Position

This paper draws upon current research to consider the value of the focus group method for exploring the relationships between youth, risk and social position. Groups comprising young people occupying similar social positions were used to generate talk about aspects of everyday life regarded as risk. Through the processes of conversational interaction facilitated by the focus group method, participants co-produced detailed risk narratives, understood here in Bourdieu's terms as product and producer of the habitus related to social position. Using data from several of the focus groups I illustrate how the method was especially useful in generating narratives indicative of how risks were experienced and understood in different ways according to social positions of class, gender and ethnicity. Such risk narratives also reproduced distinctions between and within different social positions. Consideration is given to certain limitations of the focus group method in respect of this research. Ultimately, however, the ability of the method to generate collaborative narratives reflective of shared social position is viewed as an invaluable means for developing a rich and nuanced account of the relations between youth and risk.