Giving a Socially Distanced Voice to Disabled Young People: Insights from the Educational Pathways and Work Outcomes Qualitative Longitudinal Study
The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges for social research. However, little isknown about the impact of social distancing measures on research with hard-to-reach populations.This paper provides a methodological reflection on the efficiency of socially distanced recruitmentand interviewing methods for research with disabled young people, drawing on our experience fromthe Educational Pathways and Work Outcomes longitudinal study, which started in November 2020during the second national lockdown in England. We discuss difficulties in gaining access to disabledyoung people and argue that the pandemic has exacerbated longstanding barriers implicated in therecruitment of hard-to-reach populations who are typically seen as vulnerable by gatekeepers. Incontrast, our experience suggests that flexible online/virtual interviews can overcome pitfalls inherentin the face-to-face interviewing of disabled young people and could therefore be utilised to make theirvoices heard in a variety of contexts and scenarios beyond the ongoing pandemic.