Young people were meaningfully engaged throughout the research process. Women Deliver and Girl Effect worked with young people, including Women Deliver Young Leaders and Girl Effect’s TEGA researchers, to shape the research questions, collect the data, discuss the results, and generate recommendations.
Commenting on the importance of involving young people in the design of services, Shweta, a 19 year old TEGA from Jaipur in India, said: "I have learnt the importance of facilitating people to express their opinions and thoughts through TEGA. It has made me independent and confident. It is a great way to understand the way young people think as the interviewer and interviewee share common features and the conversation flows freely. It is important to involve young people as they understand their problems like no one else and have ideas for how to solve them. They are curious and confident and capable of doing anything."
Findings revealed that overall, adolescent girls and young women are turning to digital platforms as a one-stop shop, where they look for information about their bodies, their health, and their relationships. However, they reported that they do not act on the digital information they find, partly due to a lack of trust in its credibility. Additionally, stigma and socio-cultural norms impact how adolescent girls and young women talk about and access SRHR information and services.
Isabel Quilter, who led the Girl Effect research team, said: "We can’t assume what young people's needs are - mobile technology gives us the ability to bring young people into the conversation, listen to their solutions and improve services for them. Our TEGA methodology enables researchers aged 18-24 to capture fast, accurate, and authentic insights into the lives and experiences of their peers. During this project, TEGAs co-created the survey questions, collected the data through interviews with girls and young women, hosted workshops with respondents to validate findings and worked with them to shape recommendations.”