Children's Research Centre > Neighbourhood Researcher

A unit of Girl Guides worked with Dr Cindy Kerawalla to develop and evaluate a new Guide badge called Neighbourhood Researcher. Badge activities involved groups of Guides in designing and carrying out their own research into a topic of interest to them in their local neighbourhood (see the badge syllabus).

The research questions created by the Guides were:

• Do you want a country park and what do you want in it?
• Should there be a park for older children in our area?
• What do the police do for us and what do we know about them?
• Do people want new and better shops in our town?
• What do people think about hospital hygiene and food?

The Guides created their own questionnaires (using either a 5 point Likert scale or yes/no/don’t know questions, or both) and asked friends, family and children at school to complete them. Some Guides borrowed Vado video cameras and EasiSpeak audio recorders to record their interviews and their local area. Others took digital photographs e.g. of the local hospital and shops.

The Guides recorded their work in a scrapbook and made posters illustrating what they found out.

You can see their posters here: country park, police, better shops, hospitals (we do not have permission to include the work done by Guides who researched a park for older children). The Guides presented their work to the Mayor of their town and were then awarded their Neighbourhood Researcher badge by the Guide Leader.

Some of the Guides attended a video production workshop at the Open University and created their own videos about their experience of working on the Neighbourhood Researcher badge. You can watch their videos here (police, country park 1, country park 2, better shops).

The Guides are currently working with us to develop a case to present to Guiding HQ requesting that the badge is officially recognised and made available to Guides all over the UK. We are hugely grateful for all their hard work and the unflagging enthusiasm and support of the Guide Leader and Helpers.

We are currently analysing interviews we carried out with the Guides, and looking closely at their work; academic publications are forthcoming.