Shared Spaces: The How, When, and Why of Adolescent Intergroup Interactions Data, 2021-2024

The Shared Spaces Project aimed to develop a new understanding of how, when, and why young people choose to engage in interactions with people from different communities or ethnic backgrounds. More specifically, this mixed-methods project hoped to understand more about how young people experienced interactions, where they took place and the things that influenced them to interact with others. The project included three research phases that took place 2021-2024 in two locations, Belfast and Bradford. The phases were as follows:

Phase 1 (Survey of Interaction and School Experiences): The first phase of the project used surveys to help understand the factors that influence young people’s social interactions and their effects on attitudes, experiences and engagement in society. We provide a longitudinal survey dataset, from collected paper and pen survey responses from young people at three time points over the period of a school/college year. At each time point, the survey asked young people to complete measures related to their individual orientations, their social contact experiences, their social attitudes, how supportive their school/college, family and peers are of cross-group interactions and their general school/college experiences.

Phase 2 (App Survey of Everyday Interactions): The second phase involved asking young people to record everyday social interactions on a bespoke ‘contact logger’ phone app. Young people were asked to report on the interactions they had with people from different ethnic/social groups over a period of four days. This included who they interacted with, where and how positive the interactions were in general.

Phase 3 (Photovoice Exploration of Use of Social Spaces): To understand how everyday contexts support or prevent interaction, we used a participatory photography-based approach. Young people took part in a series of workshops and following training, were asked to go around their city and take photos of the places where they interact with others. They were asked to share their photos during focus group discussions and, for those who were interested, to take part in follow-up walking interviews around the city.