In the past, much research with children and young people cast adults in the role of experts and children as the subjects of research. In recent years, researchers working with children and young people are increasingly attempting to work in a participatory manner, involving children and young people at various stages of a research project. Thus in some projects children and young people have been involved in developing research agendas, as interviewers and peer researchers, in analysis and dissemination. Clearly the most appropriate kind of participation will depend on the focus and objectives of the project concerned.
Main research methods used with children and young people
A range of research methods can be used with children and young people. Effective research with children depends on engaging them in an age and culturally appropriate manner. This may involve a range of techniques including:
Visual techniques, with groups or individuals
Visual techniques are commonly used in participatory research and many are derived from Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) or Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) as it is now commonly called. Children, including those who are not literate can use these techniques to describe their environments, life situations, preferences and past histories. Mapping is a very commonly used visual technique, which can give information about a local environment or a child’s view of their place in a community. Other techniques include weekly timetable charts showing work, school, domestic chores and play, seasonal variation charts, drawings of scenarios or card games. Working with a group of children can help them not to feel intimidated and means they can share ideas with other children and young people and bring up key issues of concern to them.
It is important to note that while PLA tends to encourage the use of visual techniques, this is not always the best or most appropriate technique to use. Where there is an oral tradition children and young people may be more comfortable discussing verbally issues of importance to them. These techniques may also exclude children with visual impairments. Where children and young people feel comfortable writing, asking them to write about an issue can be another means of eliciting their views and experiences. Writing can enable shy children who don’t feel comfortable with group work to express their views. In both PLA and longer-term research, observation is also an important tool.
Interviewing children
Both semi-structured and unstructured interviews can provide vital insights into children’s lives, their interests and needs. As in every day conversation, interviews with children and young people can take the form of life stories, testimonies or ‘key informant’ interviews about specific topics. Life stories of teenagers and older children may be a particularly useful way of examining perceptions of thinking, for example, about the impact of poverty in earlier childhood.
Interviews with children and young people are rarely the first method used in a research project, as it is important to build up some rapport with them first. Children and young people themselves too can make very good interviewers. This may make talking about difficult issues easier, particularly in relation to poverty, and they may well use more appropriate language and ask more relevant questions than adults. This however cannot be assumed and children and young people will need training and briefing like any new interviewers. Children and young people who have been involved in well thought out research have reported finding it an interesting and empowering experience.
Ethical issues
Ethical issues in research with children and young people, as with adults, relate to confidentiality, the costs of their time (not wasting it on unnecessary research), ensuring that power differentials are not used to push children and young people into situations, or answering questions, with which they feel uncomfortable. Some key principles of ethical research with children and young people therefore include:
- Obtain informed consent from both children and their parents/ guardians, and ensure that they feel able to withhold their consent and stop being involved at any point
- As with adults, children’s confidentiality should be respected, except where they are at risk of harm (see below)
- Consider reimbursing children and young people for their work
- Allow adequate time to prepare adults and children and young people. Don’t rush
- Be clear about how the information is going to be used and who will participate in the analysis
- Be clear about roles, relationships and power
Child protection
In any piece of research with children and young people concern for their safety and well being should be of paramount importance. It is vital that at an early stage, researchers recognise that all children and young people are potentially at risk from physical and emotional abuse and exploitation by adults. This could include physical or sexual abuse, social or psychological harm, where questions may be intrusive and result in a child’s distress, or physical harm where for example a child is taken to an unsafe place or made to undertake an unsafe journey. Research could also lead to challenges to power dynamics in a family, leading to tension between older members and children or between the genders in the longer term. While it is not possible to foresee every possible consequence for a child of taking part in research, researchers should attempt to prevent children being placed in a difficult situation as a result of having taken part.
All researchers working with children and young people should be aware of how to prevent these types of problem. Research projects should consider establishing a code of conduct, which would apply to everyone involved in the project. As part of this code it should be made clear that researchers will be supervised and held accountable for practices that discriminate, abuse or exploit children and young people. Equally important, children and young people themselves should be made aware of their rights and of what is unacceptable behaviour by researchers.
Another key element of child protection is that researchers and other staff should understand their obligation to protect and support children and young people who are abused or who are at risk of being abused. This includes being trained to talk to and behave sensitively and appropriately with these children and young people, being aware of any legal obligations to act, and of what support services, if any, may be available. Where children reveal they are at risk of abuse or harm, the researchers concerned must take into account the child’s view and wishes, in deciding how to act. Where the research project is with children who are by definition abused, such as child sex workers, it may be necessary to draw up special procedures, ensuring that those involved are clear about the limits of confidentiality.
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Including children's perspectives in work not specifically focused on children
Since vulnerability to chronic poverty may well begin in childhood, it is likely that some of CPRC's work will include research with children, even where research is conceived in broader terms. Children and young people often have helpful insights into a variety of issues and it can be useful to include their perspectives in work which, on the face of it, does not have an obvious child focus. Many policies, programmes and institutions have direct and indirect effects on children, either through their households, or as recipients of services and members of society. These effects are of course mediated by gender, age, ethnicity and disability, among other factors.
Clearly, at household level, children and young people may have different experiences, perspectives and priorities than adults and these differences can be illuminating. For example, in research about how local social relations sustain or help people escape from chronic poverty, adult household members may see contributing to family funerals to ensure future social support as a top priority. A child or young person who has had to drop out of school, or start working to finance this contribution may have a very different perspective on the issue. Or research on the extent to which trade liberalisation may be entrenching chronic poverty could examine whether household responses appear to be reducing children's possibilities to acquire 'human capital' in the longer term.
Children and young people are also directly affected by policies and institutions, as recipients of services (health, education etc), or as members of wider society. This is self-evident in relation to key social services. Thus research examining the role of education in preventing chronic poverty, might want to contrast the experiences of children today, with those of young adults or older people who attended school in the past.
As members of wider society there may be less obvious impacts. For example, how have efforts to promote security affected children? Are they less afraid of being attacked on the way to school, or to fetch water? Are girls now less vulnerable to sexual violence? Have police reduced their harassment of young men?
In some cases statistical data can be reconfigured to reveal additional information about trends in childhood poverty. This has successfully been done with Vietnam's Living Standards Measurement Survey data to reveal changes in the proportions of children living in income/ expenditure poverty over time, and relative to other groups in the population. Analyses of this sort may inform the development of research agendas on chronic poverty.