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This paper discusses the use of diary‐keeping as part of an evaluation of a complex, community‐based health promotion initiative, using the Mobile Information Bus (MIB) as an example. The MIB was designed to provide health and related information for living adolescents in rural areas of Northeast Scotland. The general strengths and limitations of diary‐keeping as a research method are discussed alongside an account of the evaluators' experiences of using this method within the MIB context, as well as suggestions for improving the efficacy of diary‐keeping as a research method. In addition, the results of an extensive literature search on the topic of diaries as a research method are reported. As part of the MIB evaluation, the diary provided a contemporaneous, in‐depth account of the intervention in operation. Those engaged in evaluation of similar types of projects (particularly related to process evaluation) may find the use of a project diary a useful adjunct to other research methods.

This paper aims to explore hospital consultants' social identification, in terms of perceptions of their position in society, the salient targets for their social identification and how this appears to influence their perceptions of management activities and change.

A purposeful sample of 15 hospital consultants from a wide range of specialities and work locations in Ireland were recruited. Semi‐structured, in‐depth interviews were undertaken and thematic analysis was used to interpret the interview data.

The paper finds that all interviewees perceived public attitudes towards hospital consultants, as a group, to be negative. Twelve interviewees derived most sense of belonging from group membership within their immediate work area. These groups seemed to represent sources of validation and esteem and enabled consultants to exercise control over their work. Many consultants, however, described a sense of detachment from their employing health boards. Management, as a salient target for social group identification, was perceived as associated with powerlessness and lack of respect. Interviewees generally viewed involvement in management with little enthusiasm and considerable caution.

This paper shows that management approaches to hospital consultants could benefit from awareness that their social identity may already be under threat. Assaults on core professional values in the communication surrounding change are likely to provoke resistance. Existing work groups, with which consultants identify, could serve as a less threatening means to engage them with issues of cost and quality than externally imposed structures.

This paper informs ways in which hospital consultants could be more successfully involved in health service management.

This chapter explores how eight children from five Bolivian migrant families living in Madrid perceive their participation within their families. Children understand their participation as taking responsibility for domestic chores and taking care of younger siblings. Children's ideas of participation are associated with their school experience and are about simply having a voice in everyday mundane interactions with adults and peers.

Parents' cultural values, power and authority dominate decisions in the family. These children were born in Spain and practices in their family homes are influenced by their parent's strong cultural ties with Bolivia. The data collected show that the lives of these children and their views of participation need to be understood beyond the binary of the Global North and Global South (Twum-Danso Imoh et al., 2019).

The research employed the ‘routes of participation’, a playful and creative research method that aimed to empower children to explore their ‘interdependent agency’ (Abebe, 2019) and the meaning of participation within the context of their family lives. We conclude that any successful intervention with children needs to understand the meaning of what children say in relation to the various situations in which they live. Listening to children's voices and paying attention to the language that they use in their everyday lives should continue to be the basis of child-centred research and child-centred practice. The chapter encourages to reflect on the value of culturally grounded playful activities to understand children's agentic experiences and their contribution that they can make to their own lives.

This chapter offers a critical examination of children and young people’s participation in Australia’s official celebrations of the International Year of the Child (IYC) in 1979. While the global objectives of IYC strongly reflected ‘protectionist’ or ‘welfarist’ approaches to children’s rights, the chapter shows that, at a local level, the year was also shaped by alternative notions of children’s liberation that had emerged in the preceding decade and a new emphasis on children’s voices by policymakers, advocates and researchers. The chapter explores how these ideas were incorporated at a national level before closely examining three initiatives in New South Wales (NSW), the Australian state where the emphasis on children’s voices was taken furthest. The initiatives examined are: (1) the establishment of a Kids Council to provide input into the state’s response to IYC; (2) the organisation of a Youth Forum for high school students; and (3) the provision of funding for the ‘Speakout’ camp for children in out-of-home ‘care’. None of these initiatives approached the radical forms of democratic participation envisioned by liberationists. Nonetheless, they attest to the wider credence given to ideas of children’s self-determination in this period, well before the formalisation of children’s ‘participation’ rights in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989). The selected case studies also provide context to more recent debates over the inclusion of children and young people’s voices in decision-making processes, demonstrating how concerns around tokenism, exclusivity and adult-centricism manifested and were navigated at a time when the concepts of participation and voice remained relatively novel.