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.