Our peer research approach

What is peer research?

Peer research empowers people with lived experience to lead and conduct research.

When a young woman is interviewed by another young woman like her, she is more likely to share openly and honestly. Working with young women who have similar experiences to the communities we want to learn about allows our research to be accurate, authentic and in-depth.

We know that young women have the ability experience and drive to create change and build a more equal society. Their voices are powerful. We do peer research to amplify these voices and to fill urgent evidence gaps in the data about their lives and experiences.

Read our report on peer research

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The power of peer research

In this video, we meet Peer Researchers Amy, Mehvash and Maria. They talk about how taking a peer research approach helps us learn more than we would in a traditional research interview.

Young Women’s Trust peer research video transcript

Our Peer Researchers

We train young women as peer researchers who shape and conduct research with other young women to understand their experiences and the challenges they face.

Our peer researchers are at the heart of all our research and are always paid fairly for their time.

As experts on their own experience, we believe that empowering them to conduct the research on issues that concern them is crucial to creating meaningful research which catalyses change.

I’ve had the chance to learn to do lots of things I hadn’t done before, like transcribing, working on the interview questions, and I’ve even had the chance to do a presentation on our research which is something that was a great experience that I learned so much from. It’s been such an opportunity to learn a lot of incredible things.

Peer Researcher

Explore the Research Centre

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Our research

Explore our library of research which highlights the barriers that young women face.

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