Creative and adaptive approaches to conducting research with adolescents on taboo and sensitive topics in Indonesia

We feel an important part of being participatory and people-centered is always trying to look for creative, sensitive, and appropriate ways of, and opportunities for, engaging with people.

This may include the adaptations and adjustments that we make to approaches, activities, and tools we have used in the past, and it also includes coming up with new tools. This is particularly important when engaging with young people and children, who have different communication styles, may feel uncomfortable talking to researchers/facilitators or more limited by more formal/traditional methods.

One example where our team saw a need to develop a creative engagement approach and tool was during a study exploring the pathways to adolescent pregnancy in Indonesia, a topic that is rather sensitive for both young people and many adults.

In the initial phase of this study, our team of female researchers had in-depth interviews using visual timelines with young women about their experiences becoming pregnant. In the second phase, we sought to clarify our interpretation of the initial insights as well as gather participants’ own suggestions for how girls and young women can better be supported. To do so, we planned to share the initial findings and some takeaways with a selection of the participants from the first phase, followed up by phone conversations to discuss participants’ thoughts and responses.

Given that we were working with young women and the sensitivity of the topic, rather than prepare a brief narrative summary or presentation to share some of the insights, our team felt we needed to use a tailored, creative approach that the participants could relate to and would want to engage with. We knew from the initial phase, as well as other studies with young people in Indonesia, that they often use social media as a regular communication tool and one of their main sources of information. We also knew that reading something more narrative or school-like might feel like homework and be considered boring. Additionally, since some of the topics are rather taboo, we felt that using multimedia could help us to introduce the topics in a lighter, more comfortable manner, thus helping to make the topics and content more accessible for them to engage with.

So what might this look like?

Our researchers for this study, Alifah, Thalia, Upik, Yarra, had an idea to create TikTok-style videos, which would use scenarios they would act out to introduce and explore the main topics. After discussing and breaking down the main topics, the researcher team worked on the storyboards and narratives for each video. Each video scenario was prefaced with a validation question, and wrapped up with a question presented by one of the researchers to help to initiate the discussion.

The video creation process took into account the style of language the participants use, familiar environmental settings, and characters that they can relate to resonated with their interests and spark discussion. 

Each video communicates one broad topic, namely:

1. Knowledge about sexual reproductive health and contraception

2. Contraceptive access and use

3. Relationships, sex, and consent

4. Pregnancy and marriage.

   
   

Check out the videos for topics 2 and 4 below!

These videos not only made the insights more interesting for the participants, but also made it easier for them to engage with the content, which made it more likely that they would feel able and interested to talk about these topics during the phone conversations with the researchers.

In reflecting on this experience, we believe an adaptive, creative approach to engagement supports more meaningful and relevant research outcomes, helping people’s voices to be heard.

We will be sharing more about the findings from this study in our next blog post. Stay tuned!