Lived Experiences of Adolescent Girls with a History of Running Away from Home: An Interpretative Phenomenological Study

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the lived experiences of adolescent girls with a history of running away from home and to understand how they perceived, interpreted, and assigned meaning to running away, street life, and the process of return. This qualitative study employed an interpretative phenomenological analysis approach. The participants were eight adolescent girls aged 14–18 years who had run away from home at least once and were residing in welfare and supportive care centers in Tehran, Iran. Participants were selected through purposive sampling until interpretative saturation was achieved. Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews lasting between 40 and 90 minutes. The interviews were analyzed according to the six-stage procedure proposed by Smith, Flowers, and Larkin, including repeated reading of transcripts, exploratory noting, development of emergent themes, clustering of themes, independent case analysis, and cross-case analysis. Research rigor was enhanced through sensitivity to context, commitment and methodological rigor, transparency and coherence, reflexive note-taking, and attention to the emotional vulnerability of participants. Four overarching themes emerged from the analysis: “a home that was not a refuge: domestic violence, rejection, and the collapse of security”; “running away as an escape into the unknown: the moment of decision, crossing the threshold, and entering a world of danger”; “unprotected on the streets: survival, exploitation, and loss of innocence”; and “the difficult return: between an imperfectly repaired family and the struggle to reconstruct the self.” Participants described running away not as delinquency but as a survival-oriented response to physical, psychological, and sexual violence, emotional rejection, forced marriage, and the loss of safety at home. Nevertheless, street life exposed them to hunger, homelessness, sexual exploitation, violence, and social invisibility. Returning to the family frequently involved the continuation of conflict and abuse, whereas supportive care centers provided some participants with opportunities to reconstruct their identities, regain hope, and reclaim authorship of their life narratives. Running away from home among adolescent girls should be understood as a survival response to domestic violence and profound insecurity rather than merely as social deviance. Effective prevention requires family-centered interventions, trauma-informed psychological services, stronger child-protection mechanisms, accessible safe houses, and initiatives addressing cultural silence and social stigma.