Qualitative Interviews

In addition to online surveys to collect information, we are also conducting 60 in-depth, one-on-one interviews with young adults aged 18-29 in Canada and France. This helps us better understand how youth are impacted by the social, policy, and public health realities in which they are living.

We ask youth about the changes to their lives due to the pandemic, their perceptions of the local pandemic response, such as vaccines, information from the media, and trust in their governments, and how they are adapting and coping as young adults living through a global pandemic.

Who?

30 participants from France (15 from Paris, 15 from Bordeaux), and 30 participants from Canada (15 from Vancouver, 15 from Montreal) are being recruited for qualitative interviews, per round of qualitative research.

We aim to capture the perspective of youth from unique areas in order to capture a range of perspectives. There are major cultural differences in different regions of both countries, and at the beginning of the pandemic, some areas experienced stricter public health measures while others had higher cases and deaths. Thus these cities were chosen to allow us to interview youth with a diversity of views and backgrounds.

We designed our recruitment strategy to reach youth from various backgrounds with inclusion in mind. We know that the social, economic and health impacts of the COVID-19 are not experienced equally, and we aim to explore this through these interviews.

Why interviews?

Interviews allow us to do two things:

1. Gain a deeper understanding about young people's lives: Hearing about participants’ personal experiences through qualitative interviews allows for a deeper understanding of the impacts of the pandemic which cannot be captured in multiple choice responses, and helps us to know what to ask about next.
2. Learn what's happening in real time: Our current context is changing rapidly, so talking to young adults is our best way of learning about their lives.

Existing inequities are a particular concern for youth who are experiencing multiple forms of oppression, including due to economic deprivation, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and colonization. Our ultimate aim is to inform public health measures that seek to address these inequities.