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Tapping the Perspectives of Children: Emerging Ethical Issues in Qualitative Research
Qualitative Social Work, 2004
The unique ethical issues related to conducting research with children are insufficiently distinguished from issues in working with vulnerable groups, despite a shift to recognizing children as active in the research process. Qualitative researchers are challenged to consider complex ethical issues related to children and are obligated to protect their rights, freedoms, safety, and dignity. While some issues are similar to those in any research context, the nature of the researcher-participant relationship, and the unstructured nature of qualitative research methods, add a dimension of risk. This article examines ethical issues in qualitative research with children: (1) consent and assent; (2) the obligation to protect children from harm while respecting KEY WORDS: children ethics qualitative research research with children ethical issues ARTICLE 449 children's rights; and, (3) the challenges of ensuring that children have fair access to research initiatives and the benefits that ensue. A study conducted by one author illustrates ethical issues that arise. We provide implications for conducting qualitative research with children.
Ethical issues in qualitative research addressing sensitive issues with children and young people
Youth, Technology, Governance, Experience, 2018
This chapter maps ethical issues which arise in conducting qualitative research into sensitive issuessuch as sexualitywith children and young people under eighteen years of age. Our purpose is to provide information for researchers in the field and members of Ethics Committees who evaluate proposals in this area. We begin by defending the use of qualitative research with young people to study sensitive issues. Within the research community, increasing importance is being placed on the opinions and perspectives of those under eighteen, which qualitative research is well placed to record. Understanding young people as active makers of meaningincluding as active research participantslessens the concern that they must be 'protected' from information and instead points us towards ethics as the most important framework for managing this research. There are, of course, a number of particular ethical concerns confronting researchers undertaking research about sexuality with young people. We identify two important approaches to addressing these concerns: creating safe spaces for young people to participate, and the use of reflexive research methods. be researched, to illustrate the complexity of these issues. We hope that this article will be of practical use for everyone who engages with the ethics processes of research institutions in relation to these issues. 'Young people', agency and research Social attitudes towards children and young people are closely linked to the way they are approached in research and research ethics (Morrow and Richards, 1996; Greig and Taylor 1999, 3). Traditional conceptions of young people in ethics procedures have understood them to be 'developing adults'. That is, in their developing state, young people were seen to be fundamentally vulnerable research subjects, lacking the communicative and cognitive Alderson, Priscilla (2005) 'Designing ethical research with children' in Ann Farrell (ed) Ethical research with children, Berkshire and New York: Open University Press, 2736 Ariès, Phillipe (1962) Centuries of Childhood: a social history of family life, London, Jonathan Cape. Balen, Rachel et al (2006) 'Involving children in health and social research: 'human becomings' or 'active beings'?' Childhood, 13:1, 2948 Barbovschi, M., Green, L. and Vandoninck, S. (eds) (2013). Innovative approaches for investigating how children understand risk in new media. Dealing with methodological and ethical challenges. London: EU Kids Online,
While engaged in a research project involving the use of visual methods with children, the authors discovered that there are many ethical considerations beyond what could have been predicted at the outset. Some of these considerations are important with respect to research with children in general, while others arise more particularly when using visual methods. Framed around the two broad categories of procedural ethics and ethics in practice, five areas of ethical concern are considered: (a) assent or willingness to participate, (b) informed consent and assent using visual methods, (c) issues of disclosure, (d) power imbalances, and (e) representations of the child. The authors propose that researcher reflexivity on ethically important moments lies at the heart of living ethical practice in qualitative research and that the ideals of enabling child safety, dignity, and voice serve as useful guides in the quest for ethical practices in research with children.
Ethical research involving children: Putting the evidence into practice
Family matters, 2015
The Ethical Research Involving Children (ERIC) project has endeavoured to address these and many more questions that arise when funding, governing or undertaking research involving children. Following extensive research and consultation internationally, the print and webbased resources developed through the ERIC project (Graham, Powell, Taylor, Anderson and Fitzgerald, 2013) provide a useful framework for approaching these and multiple other considerations that are core to ensuring research involving children can justifiably be deemed “ethical”. This article introduces the ERIC project and resources to Family Matters readers and invites further engagement, dialogue and sharing of experience in the continued international movement towards safe, respectful research that foregrounds children’s dignity, rights and wellbeing, across all methodological, social and cultural contexts.
Qualitative Inquiry, 2013
While engaged in a research project involving the use of visual methods with children, the authors discovered that there are many ethical considerations beyond what could have been predicted at the outset. Some of these considerations are important with respect to research with children in general, while others arise more particularly when using visual methods. Framed around the two broad categories of procedural ethics and ethics in practice, five areas of ethical concern are considered: (a) assent or willingness to participate, (b) informed consent and assent using visual methods, (c) issues of disclosure, (d) power imbalances, and (e) representations of the child. The authors propose that researcher reflexivity on ethically important moments lies at the heart of living ethical practice in qualitative research and that the ideals of enabling child safety, dignity, and voice serve as useful guides in the quest for ethical practices in research with children.
ETHICAL ISUUES IN RESEARCH INVOLVING CHILDREN
This essay aims to explore some of the main ethical issues that arise in research involving children. After introducing basic concepts and definitions, the essay evolves around the importance of distinguishing between the needs and rights of children and adults as well as recognizing the fact that children should not be dealt as objects of protection but as subjects of rights, as active social actors. This constitutes one of the first and foremost ethical challenges in research involving children. In addition, the essay investigates the fundamentals of ethics, how ethics can be promoted and justified in research involving children while embarking on a more detailed account of ethical issues before, during and after research such as informed consent, power relations, and confidentiality. The last part suggests and recommends a new methodological approach to research involving children based on the scientific shift from research on children to research with or by children. To conclude, the essay insists on reflecting on the importance for children to remain at the centre of consideration and re-conceptualize children within the social sciences as active agents rather than as the objects of research
Research, children and ethics: an ongoing dialogue
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was a crucial moment that changed children’s status in both society and in research. Nevertheless, if on the one hand children’s competence has been recurrently challenged by the dominant discourse of developmental psychology; on the other hand children have demonstrated themselves to be very helpful in helping researchers to understand the complexities enclosed in their contemporary life experiences.The recognition of children as social actors, followed by the upsurge in empirical interest in childhood, raises new ethical discussions, dilemmas and responsibilities for researchers that need further discussion and reflection.In accordance with this, this text gives an overview of key ethic decisions that were carefully considered along a qualitative study: access to children; protecting children’s privacy and confidentiality, managing power in adult-child relationship, building trust, entering children’s space
Children as Research Subjects: The Ethical Issues
Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics, 2015
From the very beginning of civilization, children are made the subject matter of many social and clinical researches. Due to the vulnerabilities of physical frailty and mental immaturity, children's interests and rights need to be protected from the risks associated with any kind of research. Recently, there has been increased global concern towards the involvement of children in research for the protection of their rights by the ethical research practice. It emphasizes upon the ongoing nature of ethical considerations that ethical issues need to be considered throughout the research process and even the post research ethical issues are equally significant. The study explores some of the major ethical issues that arise in research involving children during and after the research in terms of the best interests of the children.
Conducting research with children: the limits of confidentiality and child protection protocols
Children & Society, 2005
This paper addresses the issue of child protection protocols within research conducted with children. Based partly on primary data this paper raises questions about the role of ethics committees in defining the limits of confidentiality in relation to child protection protocols within research, the perceptions of both children and parents about the meanings of confidentiality and notions of ‘harm’, and the role of the researcher in relation to legal and professional guidance about the protection of vulnerable people in society. We explore the concept of confidentiality within a research setting from a child protection perspective. In doing so we examine the legal and moral obligations of researchers to report child protection concerns, how children themselves perceive ‘harm’, and the need for much clearer guidance to researchers, as well as child participants and parents, about the limitations of confidentiality.
Ethics in Research with Vulnerable Children
2016
The aim of the paper is to point out the importance of securing ethics in research in order to protect vulnerable children from psychological or physical harm during or after the research process. Numerous countries already have some regulations or guidelines related to human research and ethics committees are established to review and control are they sufficiently respected. However in the Republic of Macedonia there are not yet strict state regulations in this field. It is not obligatory to obtain parental permission for the child involved in research. Researchers in their master and doctoral thesis or other research reports sometimes present photos, documents and research results announcing the name and other personal information of children. Other ethical issues are related to the child willingness to participate in the research and the conditions that the child experiences before and after the intervention of the researcher. Educational researchers should carefully assess the risks and benefits of children involved in research, to use approved protocols and to consider any potential conflicts of interests that might occur with publishing the results of investigation. In the paper we recommend establishing of an ethics review committee as independent body that will monitor, review and approve educational research with vulnerable groups. The role of this committee will be to analyze the risks and benefits of the proposed research and to determine whether or not research should be done. In that way we will protect and ensure the rights and welfare of children participating as subjects in a research study.