Objective: To gain some understanding of the attitudes and behaviours of Indigenous young people in Townsville concerning relationships, contraception and safe sex. Design: Cross‐sectional study using a computer‐assisted self‐administered survey and single‐sex focus group discussions designed by a Young Mums’ Group operating on participatory action principles and acting as peer interviewers. Participants and setting: 171 Indigenous students in Years 9–11 at three high schools and 15 residents of a homeless youth shelter in Townsville, Queensland, 27 April – 8 December 2004. Main outcome measures: Self‐reported attitudes and behaviour about relationships, sexual intercourse and contraception. Results: 84/183 participants (45.9%) reported past sexual intercourse, with 56.1% commencing intercourse at age 13–14 years. The likelihood of having had sex increased with being male (P = 0.001), increasing age, increased perceived sexual activity of peer group (both P = 0.000), and drinking alcohol at least weekly (P = 0.015). Young women were more likely to report unwanted sexual touching (P = 0.031), and less likely to report enjoying sexual intercourse (P = 0.001). The main qualitative themes concerned females’ reputations, coercion, and denial of female desire. Only 49/80 participants (61.3%) reported always using condoms. The main reasons for not using contraception were “just not thinking about it”, shame, and problems with access. Despite having reasonable knowledge about contraception, most lacked the confidence and negotiation skills to communicate with partners about condom use. Conclusions: Like teenagers elsewhere, Indigenous teenagers in Townsville are becoming sexually active at a young age, and not practising safe sex reliably. The need to protect their reputations puts young women at risk by not being prepared for safe sex by carrying condoms.

Objective: To explore attitudes to pregnancy and parenthood among a group of Indigenous young people in Townsville, Australia. Design and participants: Mixed methods and a cross‐sectional design involving Indigenous women from a Young Mums Group designing the research instruments and acting as peer interviewers. Data were collected in 2004 from young Indigenous people who had never been pregnant (171 students at three high schools and 15 people at a homeless youth shelter) using a computer‐assisted self‐administered survey; from 59 of this group who also participated in single sex focus group discussions; and from 10 pregnant and parenting young women in individual semi‐structured interviews. Main outcome measure: Self‐reported attitudes and behaviour about aspirations, pregnancy and parenthood. Results: Only eight of 186 young Indigenous people who had never been pregnant reported wanting to have a child as a teenager. Large proportions of this group of 186 reported idealised views about pregnancy, particularly young men, with 50.5% reporting that being a parent would always be enjoyable, and 62.6% reporting that being a mother or a father would not change their lives. Idealised views were associated with earlier sexual initiation (P = 0.001). Issues identified in the narratives of young mothers related to difficult backgrounds, pregnancy “just happening” to them, and the transformative impact of having a child on their lives and aspirations. Conclusions: Accurate parenting information may be necessary to address unrealistic views about parenting among Indigenous young people. Young Indigenous parents often come from extremely disadvantaged backgrounds, and becoming a parent may be the impetus for positive change.

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How should gradua-2 students be taught to become qualitative researchers? How can they learn about research decision points and consider different ways of being present in a research setting? How can they develop sound researcher judgment and discover researcher selves that fit both them and their unique research situations? As interest in qualitative inquiry in education grows, these questions are being raised with more urgency (Eisner 1991;Nowakowski 1990; Reinharz 1990).Most qualitative research instruction focuses on reading the methods literature and learning how to gather, code, and analyze data by conducting small-scale research projects. Whether the focus of preparation is on naturalistic research methods or on a research topic, graduate students rarely learn how to be present in the lives of research participants. In this article, we reflect on a qualitative-research-methods field experience through the following questions: How many ways can researchers be present in a given situation? How might each way of being present affect the lives of those in a research setting? How might each way of being present affect what we learn about a situation?Our field experience as long-term participant-observers in a high school was undertaken as an independent study. We both had been secondary teachers and administrators; so the field experience allowed us to look at a school as a research setting and to explore the complexity of being present in a school as researchers. Our focus was on the process of being a researcher, rather than on a research topic. By not pursuing a research question, we did not have some of the pressures of doing research. However, we had the latitude to try out a variety of research strategies to learn about different aspects of schooling.As qualitative researchers-in-training, we were instructed to watch ourselves closely by recording decisions that we made about how to be present in the research setting and by reflecting on responses to our decisions. The development of our judgment as researchers centered around four themes: (1) thinking of our presence as a crossroads for Anthropology 6 Education Quarterly 26(1):112-122.