FEFI : finding education for female inmates

Within the framework of the multilateral EU-project "Finding Education for Female Inmates" (FEFI), ten partners from eight European countries cooperated on the subject of formal and informal education for adolescent and adult women in prison. Women in prison are a particularly underrepresented group due to their small number (3 to 7%) of the total prison population in all of the partners’ countries . The project aimed to improve and increase participation in lifelong learning by female prisoners who are an integral component of a vulnerable and disadvantaged group - a socially stigmatized group, as well as prisoners and as women.peer-reviewe

Recruiting a hard-to-reach, hidden and vulnerable population: the methodological and practical pitfalls of researching vaccine-hesitant parents

While recruitment is an essential aspect of any research project, its challenges are rarely acknowledged. We intend to address this gap by discussing the challenges to the participation of vaccine-hesitant parents defined here as a hard-to-reach, hidden and vulnerable population drawing on extensive empirical qualitative evidence from seven European countries. The difficulties in reaching vaccine-hesitant parents were very much related to issues concerning trust, as there appears to be a growing distrust in experts which is extended to the work developed by researchers and their funding bodies. These difficulties have been accentuated by the public debate around Covid-19 vaccination, as it seems to have increased parents’ hesitancy to participate. Findings from recruiting 167 vaccine-hesitant parents in seven European countries suggest that reflexive and sensible recruitment approaches should be developed