First steps

"If we gain a greater understanding of what we face, we can face it better. 'Know your enemy' and all that!" Youth from Canada, Voices of Youth message board

© UNICEF/HQ99-0324/Horner

Members of the Children’s Movement for Peace in Colombia walk past shelters housing people made homeless by an earthquake.

Research is a crucial part of deciding on which issue you want to take action. And once you have made your decision, you will probably want to investigate the subject in more depth. The more you know about your issue, the more effective your action is likely to be. Here are some of the questions you should think about:

• Who is affected, directly and indirectly?
  • Is there a particular group that is vulnerable, for example girls, or a particular age-group?
  • How does the issue or problem affect the wider community?
• Where do the people who are affected live?
• Is this a global, regional, national, or local problem, or a combination?
• How are people affected?
• Which rights are being violated?
• How does this issue change/impact people's lives? Negatively and positively.
• Does anyone, or any group, benefit from the situation as it is?
• Why are people affected?
• What is the underlying cause of the problem? In other words, what other factors — such as poverty, lack of school books, unemployment, or lack of access to clean water, to give just a few examples — may be partly responsible?
• What are the reasons why this group or groups of people are affected more than others?
• What can be done? 
• What solutions have been suggested or tried?
• What seems to work best, or what do you think might work best?
• Who is in a position to make decisions to bring about change?
• Who is preventing change?
• What is the most effective action that you could take to improve the situation?

© UNICEF/HQ01-0141/Toutounji

Reading about ‘Say Yes for Children’ on the World Wide Web (USA).

Finding information

There is a lot of information out there, and much of it is readily available, especially if you have access to the Internet — which you clearly do! But in some cases, and particularly if you are concerned with what is happening locally, you may need to do some more active detective work. Here are some ideas about where you can look for information and how you can try to make sure that information can be trusted.

Non-governmental organizations, schools and universities, governments, local institutions and businesses all have a wide range of published information that could be useful. Sources include:

Printed material: newspapers, books, magazines and journals. If you have access to a library or youth centre, where many of these resources should be available for free, use it!

Websites: these days there are online versions of vast quantities of material that were traditionally only available in print, as well as a huge range of information specially created for the World Wide Web.

Other media: news programmes, documentaries and even dramatizations on radio or television, or at the cinema or on video, can all be useful.

As well as using information that is publicly available, you could contact people and organizations and ask questions directly. This can be very helpful, because you can focus on specific questions. For example, you could try:

• contacting corporations and local businesses;
• contacting national and local government representatives;
• talking to teachers, parent/guardians and other relations, and community leaders;
• talking to other young people;
• carrying out your own surveys and interviews;
• contacting local organizations, groups and religious institutions.

Remember that locally based research may be the most useful for practical action in your community. For example, although it is a good idea to inform yourself about the global situation concerning such issues as HIV and AIDS, education, or access to clean water, it may be more practical and helpful to know that local families affected by HIV need help with chores, or that young children need supervision on the journey to school, or that there is a load of rotting rubbish near your water supply!

Assessing information sources

Unfortunately, you cannot believe everything you read, hear or see. Organizations, institutions and individuals tend to have goals and beliefs that affect what information they choose to present and how they present it. Even sources that aim to give all sides of an argument may distort the truth because of such factors as limited resources (so they may not know all the facts), editorial values (for example, the desire to make a story exciting or relevant to a local audience) or unconscious bias, or because they simply made mistakes!

This does not mean that research is pointless and that it cannot help you get closer to the truth. But it does mean that you should:

• use a variety of sources to cross-check facts and conclusions, and to give you all sides of the argument;
• always bear in mind who is providing information. In particular, ask yourself:
  • Who is financing or sponsoring this source?
  • What qualifications do the authors have? Have you heard of them?
  • Who is the information aimed at?
  • Do the authors and sponsors have specific interests/goals/beliefs/experiences that might influence the way in which they present information?
  • Where do the authors get their facts and how reliable are the sources of those facts?
  • How up-to-date is the information?

The numbers game

Statistics are often used to support an argument or position. But judging their reliability is itself difficult. Statistics can be chosen and interpreted to support particular points of view. To some extent you can judge the reliability of facts by the reputation of the source and the breadth of the investigation. A large-scale survey by a top university, for example, would carry more weight than a small survey carried out by the supporters of a specific campaign. If you can find out how and from whom the statistics were collected, this will also help you determine how reliable they are. For example, a survey that only interviews men will yield very different results to one that interviews both men and women.

If you want specific local figures and you find they are not available, you could conduct your own survey.

The wild web

The Internet has made a vast amount of information instantly available to anyone with access to the World Wide Web. However, for the very reason that there is such a variety of information online, and because it is so easy for anyone to set up a website, you need to be especially careful when you are assessing Internet sources. All the questions in Assessing Information above are relevant, but it is particularly important that you ask yourself who is really behind the information on the website. Is it just an individual or a small campaigning group? Who backs or funds the site? If the status of the information providers is not clear and easy to check, beware!