Qualitative research toolkit: GAGE’s approach to researching with adolescents

This toolkit is a companion piece to the GAGE baseline qualitative research toolkit and provides the group and individual research tools, all of which are age-tailored (early adolescents, mid/older adolescents and adults), used during the second round of data collection in GAGE’s longitudinal study. A selection of these could be used to understand different dimensions of adolescent wellbeing and development trajectories in any given context. For the purposes of the GAGE research programme, this collection of tools has also been designed to mirror the GAGE ‘3 Cs’ conceptual framework which reflects the close connections between the ‘3 Cs’: capabilities, change strategies and contexts. It considers adolescents’ multidimensional capabilities and the ways in which these differ depending on age, gender and (dis)ability; the change strategies that are employed by families, communities, service providers, policy-makers, civil society and development partners to promote empowered and healthy transitions from adolescence into early adulthood; and finally the broader meso- and macro-level contexts that shape the enabling/constraining environments in which adolescent realities are played out (Figure 1). Adolescents are situated at the centre of this socio-ecological framework

Qualitative research toolkit to explore child marriage dynamics and how to fast-track prevention

Accelerating progress towards eliminating child marriage and empowering married girls requires not just more research, but different tools. Tools that are designed with action and inclusion in mind. GAGE’s new child marriage toolkit builds on existent tools, including those we used in our formative and baseline work (see GAGE baseline qualitative research tools), and hones in on how to prevent child marriage – for girls and boys – and mitigate its impacts on adolescent girls, including those who are separated and divorced. Our new tools focus on marriage decision-making and ask marriage decision-makers what might encourage them to make different decisions. They also trace the threats and opportunities that girls (and boys) face at various steps along the child marriage pathway (engagement to divorce) and explore how a range of services might improve outcomes. Most importantly, our new child marriage toolkit is built around the decision-making underpinning child marriage and the experiences of married adolescents, rather than indirectly through an exploration of adolescence more broadly. Our tools are directly aimed at two questions: how can we prevent child marriage and how can we make married girls’ (and boys’) lives better