Researching with young people on health and environment: the politics of self-esteem and stress

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Abstract
This paper describes a research project with young people from a group called the Bellarine Youth Network (BYN). The project involved the identification of the perceptions of health and environmental issues held by these young people. A foundation of the project was that perceptions of health and environment were socially constructed, and reflected vested interests and political agendas. Traditional positivist research projects (designs) which attempted to generalize, marginalize and categorize young people were seen as inappropriate for this study. The most pressing environmental health concern for the members of the BYN was stress caused by school work. Attempts by community health workers, psychologists and consultants to minimize the stress felt by young people only served to individualize the problem. These attempts included diary keeping, time management skills, and the maintenance of a balance between work and leisure activities. These individualistic strategies to reduce stress were also based on the often perceived centrality of the concept of self-esteem. There was rarely any understanding of the complex lives of young people and the range of identities held by them. Instead of simplistic and naive projects focusing on self-esteem, future research with young people needs to be more sympathetic to the relationships between behaviour, context (or setting or environment) and meaning, and also needs to involve a recognition of the importance to young people of the varied social environments within which they find themselves.

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