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Young people's participation is central to the attainment of meaningful governance systems. In Fiji, this is a challenge as the traditional view of young people's participation is restricted to that of 'service' and the precarious political environment restricting free expression. Despite these concerns, young people's participation and expression appear to be thriving in hybridised forms. This paper draws from conversations with a group of 'active' young people and discusses the merits and challenges of their participation in Fiji. As a nation, Fiji is at the threshold of a new socio-political era, where young people are expected to play a significant role. This discussion offers an understanding of young people's participation in Fiji and draws attention to how they can be meaningfully supported as active citizens in the process of national development.

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Social desirability reporting leads to over estimations of church attendance. To date, researchers have treated over-reporting of church attendance as a general phenomenon, and have been unable to determine the demographic correlates of inaccuracy in these self-reports. By comparing over eight months of observational data on church attendance (n = 48 services) to self-report in a rural Fijian village, we find that 1) self-report does not reliably predict observed attendance, 2) women with two or more children (≥ 2) are more likely to over-report their attendance than women with fewer children (≤ 1), and 3) self-report of religiosity more reliably predicts observed church attendance than does self-report of church attendance. Further, we find that third-party judgements of church attendance by fellow villagers are more reliably associated with observed church attendance than self-report. Our findings suggest that researchers interested in estimating behavioral variation, particularly in domains susceptible to social desirability effects, should consider developing and employing third-party methods to mitigate biases inherent to self-report.