Читать книгу Everyday Courage - Niobe Way - Страница 23

Because my intention was to conduct an in-depth investigation of urban youth in their passage through adolescence rather than to generalize to larger populations, I chose to investigate a small sample of teenagers. Twelve girls and twelve boys from the urban school in which I worked were selected from a larger pool of students who had participated in a cross-sectional study in which I was also involved.² In order to recruit students, the research team from the cross-sectional study (including myself) announced the project to all the students in ten academically diverse classrooms. Eighty percent of those who were told about the cross-sectional project volunteered to participate, and 93 percent of those students who were eligible for my smaller, longitudinal project were willing to participate in my project. The adolescents in my study identified themselves as African American (12), Puerto Rican (3), Dominican (3), West Indian (2), Bolivian (1), El Salvadoran (1), Irish American (1), or half Irish American and half Puerto Rican (1).3 Those who participated have spent most or all of their lives in the United States and speak English fluently. All came from poor or working-class families⁴ and lived in the neighborhoods surrounding the school in which the interviews took place.