Instruments and procedures
In order to observe how children act within their environment to protect themselves and preserve their overall well-being, our participatory approach encompassed a place-based method focused on children’s agency. All children were asked to draw a map representing all significant places within their neighbourhood, perceived both as safe and unsafe, on an A3 sized white paper and then describe it. Safe places where marked in green, while unpleasant spaces were drawn in red (Loebach and Gilliland, 2010). Upon completion of the drawing task (all children participated), 40% of them (7 from Nablus, 6 from Fasayel, 10 from Dheisheh camp, 3 from Gaza city, and 4 from Jabalia Camp) were invited to continue the conversation into the places themselves: following a ‘walk-around’ technique (Anderson, 2004; Carpiano, 2009), the children guided the research team around these places, narrating and describing their experiences in them (Akesson, 2014; Evans and Jones, 2011; Hammad, 2011). During the walk, interviews were conducted using an open-ended format. The remaining children (60%) did not participate due to previous commitments with their family, work, or school errand, or because they simply did not want to take part in the following activities.
This method provides additional access to children’s knowledge and it facilitates the observation of their everyday practices and of the interplay between structural conditions and individual agency for shaping action (Carpiano, 2009, p.268).
All children’s narratives were audiotaped, transcribed, and translated into English by a local bilingual researcher and analyzed by two independent researchers following a data-driven and grounded analysis strategy (Lambert, 2019). Thematic contest analysis (TCA) was applied to both written and drawn materials using Atlas.Ti software. The main themes were selected via a consensus by discussion procedure.