Abstract:

Why on earth would you invest time or money interviewing adults when your primary research objective is to understand boy culture? Perhaps it's because you recognize that such adults: namely, parents and teachers are part of the system of relationships that comprise boys' environment. As applied research practitioners, we can benefit a lot from applying an ecological systems approach to our efforts to generate consumer insights, and the Boy Culture research project is a great example. This paper will focus on the project's methodology, and the additive advantage of interviewing multiple structures within boys' microsystems, including target boys themselves, their close friends, their parents, and classroom teachers.