Guiding questions, methodology, limitations and data files: The Post-2015 research process

This page details our questions, methodology, limitations and the downloadable data file that have guided youthpolicy.org’s research and the composition of our upcoming article on the post-2015 development processes and outcomes of the High Level Panel. *Update* The article, researched and written by Alex Farrow and John Muir, is now finished. You can read it for context here: Post-2015: The signal from the noise.

Recommendations from 17 reports, consultations, submissions and communiqués from youth focused organisations and events, were manually inputted and meta-analysed to discern the key asks made by young people. The 17 documents are available to view and download here.

Our curation of documents for analysis was limited to a call on the Beyond 2015 CYWG and Major Group for Children and Youth list-serves, twitter and our own knowledge of organisations, events and processes. We are missing reports specifically covering Asia and Central and South America.

For the research, there were three guiding questions:

1. What do global youth want from a post-2015 development agenda?
2. To what extent has the HLP met their asks?
3. What are the key youth issues missing from the HLP report?

804 recommendations were analysed and coded by the illustrative goal headings in Annex 1 of the High Level Panel report to show which recommendations had a ‘natural home’ in the report. The illustrative goal headings are:

1. End Poverty
2. Empower Girls and Women and Achieve Gender Equality
3. Provide Quality Education and Lifelong Learning
4. Ensure Healthy Lives
5. Ensure Food Security and Good Nutrition
6. Achieve Universal Access to Water and Sanitation
7. Secure Sustainable Energy
8. Create Jobs, Sustainable Livelihoods, and Equitable Growth
9. Manage Natural Resource Assets Sustainably
10. Ensure Good Governance and Effective Institutions
11. Ensure Stable and Peaceful Societies
12. Create a Global Enabling Environment and Catalyse Long-term Finance

Where recommendations covered multiple topics, these were coded multiple times by themein order to capture the spirit of the recommendation. Recommendations were then broken down further in line with the national targets identified in the HLP report.

Recommendations that did not fit under existing illustrative goals were analysed with different coding labels created. This was needed to highlight the gaps in illustrative goals where recommendations did not naturally fit under one of the existing goals. These were:

• Labour/Capital Relations
• Urban Planning and Housing
• Inequality, Universal Access and Equal Opportunity
• Human Rights
• Migration and Mobility
• Other

Each goal was then coded with a second and third theme and additional sub-themes - addressing gaps in the national targets - were created and the recommendations coded. These can be viewed in the data set.

The recommendations were often compounded with multiple themes and this made it difficult to code without any form of attribution or inference as to the priority or meaning of the goal.

Recommendations have not been weighted based upon the number of young people that participated in the consultation, workshop or event. Each recommendations is considered ‘like for like.’

Our publication of the data is on an open-source basis and we welcome further exploration of the data, suggestions for its continued use, and a critical evaluation/suggestions for improvement of the research methodology.

The data set can be viewed and downloaded.

The research was undertaken by two researchers from the youthpolicy.org team in June 2013.