The obligations and opportunities of ‘friendship as method’ in youth mentoring research: investigating the intersections with youth work epistemologies

Utilising pre-existing friendships between participants to create an environment of safety and trust when researching with young people aligns well with ethics of care and reciprocity underpinning participatory methods and youth work practice. Recent innovations in participatory and co-design methods have emphasised the importance of interpersonal and practice skills in participatory research, as well as the somewhat contradictory aim to de-centre the researcher. In this paper, we examine the potential and pitfalls of friendship as method(ology) with the aim to de-centre the researcher in the interview by prioritising the existing friendship between participants. We examine interviews between mentees and mentors from an evaluation of the Sammy D Foundation Northern Youth Mentoring program to consider, first, the insights that friendship as method might provide into the social world of young people in a mentoring program; and second, the alignment between this method and youth work epistemologies. We argue that friendship as method provides rich – if unanticipated – insights, prioritises relational values, and aligns well with youth work epistemologies, but also sheds new light on problems of power inequalities and ethical obligations inherent in relational work with young people