The Focus Group as a Tool to get Young People “Talking”

A few years ago, I carried out research on a group of young people who could be defined as NEETs, which aimed to analyze how they perceived this state of their lives from a gender perspective. I chose to use a qualitative methodology since it allowed me to identify the ways in which young people structure their existence from different perspectives. Current literature and research carried out in Italy show how being a NEET in Italy originates not only in the fragility of the learning path but is also influenced by family models that act on young people’s life paths. In the Italian context, the phenomenon of young NEETs is located within two fundamental issues: the centrality of the family and of women in the Italian welfare system, along with the youth issue that sees the young generations as the protagonists of a still too slow process of leaving the family of origin. The decision to carry out focus groups arose from the need to understand young NEETs in greater detail and to understand the influence of certain social processes, typical of a Mediterranean society, in determining their entry and permanence in the NEET condition. The focus group technique is based on generating data through the discussion of a specially formed group that interacts to show both how meaning is collectively produced as well as how identities are continually renegotiated. Conducting focus groups with young NEETs made me realize how they are an excellent tool to use when carrying out research with young people. Focus groups can be more appealing to young people than other research tools since they allow the participants to talk to each other in a more relaxed and colloquial way.