From youth culture to adolescent sexuality to the consumer purchasing power of children en masse, studies are flourishing. Yet doing research on this unquestionably more vulnerable—whether five or fifteen—population also poses a unique set of challenges and dilemmas for researchers. How should a six-year-old be approached for an interview? What questions and topics are appropriate for twelve year olds? Do parents need to give their approval for all studies? In Representing Youth, Amy L. Best has assembled an important group of essays from some of today’s top scholars on the subject of youth that address these concerns head on, providing scholars with thoughtful and often practical answers to their many methodological concerns. These original essays range from how to conduct research on youth in ways that can be empowering for them, to issues of writing and representation, to respecting boundaries and to dealing with issues of risk and responsibility to those interviewed. For anyone doing research or working with children and young adults, Representing Youth offers an indispensable guide to many of the unique dilemmas that research with kids entails. Contributors include: Amy L. Best, Sari Knopp Biklen, Elizabeth Chin, Susan Driver, Marc Flacks, Kathryn Gold Hadley, Madeline Leonard, C.J. Pascoe, Rebecca Raby, Alyssa Richman, Jessica Taft, Michael Ungar, Yvonne Vissing, and Stephani Etheridge Woodson.

Representing Agency in Popular Culture: Children and Youth on Page, Screen and In-Between addresses the intersection of children’s and youth’s agency and popular culture. As scholars in childhood studies and beyond seek to expand understandings of agency, power, and voice in children’s lives, this book places popular culture and representation as central to this endeavor. Core themes of family, gender, temporality, politics, education, technology, disability, conflict, identity, ethnicity, and friendship traverse across the chapters, framed through various film, television, literature, and virtual media sources. Here, childhood is considered far from homogeneous and the dominance of neoliberal models of agency is questioned by intersectional and intergenerational analyses. This book posits there is vast power in popular culture representations of children’s agency, and interrogation of these themes through interdisciplinary lenses is vital to furthering knowledge and understanding about children’s lives and within childhood studies.

With recent attention to issues such as youth social exclusion, poverty, school underachievement, school violence, gang activity, sexuality, and youth’s interactions with media and the internet, youth studies has emerged as a significant interdisciplinary field. It has moved beyond its roots in subcultural studies to encompass a diverse array of disciplines, subfields, and theoretical orientations. Yet no volume exists that systematically presents and puts into dialogue the field’s areas of focus and approaches to research. As a unique blend of reference guide, conceptual dictionary, and critical assessment, Keywords in Youth Studies presents and historicizes the "state of the field." It offers theoretically-informed analysis of key concepts, and points to possibilities for youth studies’ reconstruction. Contributors include internationally-renowned field experts who trace the origins, movements, and uses and meanings of "keywords" such as resistance, youth violence, surveillance, and more. The blending of section essays with focused keywords offers beginning and advanced readers multiple points of entry into the text and connections across concepts. A must-read for graduate students, faculty, and researchers across a range of disciplines, this extraordinary new book promotes new interdisciplinary approaches to youth research and advocacy.

Researching Young People's Lives provides an overview of some of the key methodological challenges facing youth researchers and an introduction to the broad repertoire of methods used in youth-orientated research. Throughout the book, the emphasis is on research in practice, and examples are drawn from recent youth research projects from a wide range of disciplines and substantive areas, and from a range of both UK and non-UK contexts.

The volume is a collection of articles from scholars who pay particular attention to children and/or adolescents' voices, interpretations, perspectives, and experiences within specific social and cultural contexts. Contributions include research stemming from a broad spectrum of methodological and theoretical orientations.