Ethical Considerations for Interactional Research with Children

by Jessica Nina Lester, Indiana University and Michelle O’Reilly, University of Leicester

Jessica Lester and Michelle O’Reilly were Mentors in Residence for the July 2022 Methodspace focus on Studying Generations and return for the August focus on Research Ethics. View a substantive interview with them here. With the code MSPACEQ322 you receive a 20% discount when you order their books from SAGE. Valid through September 30.

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For many years now, we have been involved in conducting interactional research with children. Interactional research entails the close study of language-in-use; that is, in this kind of research, researchers are generally interested in studying how people go about constructing meaning in their interactions with one another and the world around them. There are many different methodological and analytical perspectives that a researcher might use to study language-in-use, including conversation analysis and a whole range of discourse analytic approaches. In our work, we have most often used conversation analysis and a form of discourse analysis referred to as discursive psychology. Much of our research involves the study of conversational practices that take place in clinical or educational settings and involves children and youth. For instance, we have analysed interactions taking place within child mental health assessments, as well as pediatric therapy contexts. 

Across all of our work, we generally collect audio and/or video-recordings of naturally occurring interactions; that is, social activities or events that take place regardless of whether we are present or not (e.g., conversation between a therapist and a child during a therapy session). In doing this kind of work, we have faced many ethical dilemmas, particularly as we have sought to take up a research approach that is responsive to our clinical collaborators as well as the children involved. In this short blog entry, we share some of things we have learned about working with children in ethically informed ways when conducting interactional research. To begin, we provide a general overview of research ethics in qualitative research and then move to outline some of the unique, methodologically specific lessons we have learned. 

Ethics in Qualitative Research

There is a vast literature based around ethics in qualitative research - and it is worth exploring in depth prior to starting a qualitative study. Some of this literature provides direction and insight for how to ethically engage with children and youth. The very nature of the qualitative paradigm, the types of methods that qualitative researchers use, and the goals of qualitative work, mean that the implementation, process and iterative nature of ethics requires reflexivity and flexibility. Of course, ethics boards (e.g., Institutional Review Boards) often play a role in shaping the procedural aspects of a research study (e.g., acquiring informed consent or assent), but there is much more to consider when conducting ethical qualitative research. Indeed, doing ethical qualitative research requires researchers to be reflexive and recognize that unexpected ethical dilemmas are likely to arise. 

At a basic level, qualitative research often requires a greater depth of information about children and young people’s experiences, thoughts, feelings, and opinions than quantitative work and it is this elicitation of greater levels of personal data, and potentially more sensitive information, that means there is a need for careful ethical attention. This is particularly pertinent given the role of the researcher in this kind of work. In qualitative research, the researcher is the primary research instrument. Their positionality, role, power, motivations, expertise, knowledge and so forth, all heavily influence the way in which data are collected from children and youth, and the way in which the data are analyzed. Neutral, unbiased administration of data collection tools is simply impossible. For research with children and youth, these realities raise concerns about power differentials that exist between the researcher and the child participants. And, researchers must mitigate the influence of their oft perceived status as a more knowledgeable, powerful other. 

Lessons Learned 

We share here just a few of the lessons we’ve learned working with children and youth. What we share is not comprehensive, but highlights useful messages that we have found to be most relevant across all of our research studies. 

• Assume competence. Children and youth should be viewed as competent experts on their own lives. Competency is indeed a social accomplishment co-created by children and young people within social interaction – including interactions with a researcher in the context of a research study. By taking a more holistic perspective on competency, we can see childhood as a social activity wherein children negotiate their relationships, contest understandings of their lives and struggle to assert their power.

• Offer multiple opportunities to assent, dissent, and withdraw. Aligning with a commitment of assuming competence, the engagement of children and youth must be constantly negotiated, and monitored, with multiple opportunities to express dissent, withdraw or to clarify issues of concern, including safeguarding. Even if a carekeeper consents for a child to participate in a study, researchers must remain committed to creating space for the child to decline. 

• Take a collaborative stance. It is critical that the researcher bear in mind that it is important to do research with children and youth, and not on them. They should be viewed as partners and experts, not as objects. Indeed, they are the experts on their own lives and hold ideas for what is relevant and meaningful to study and make sense of. Thus, finding ways to meaningfully partner with them is critical and demands that time is spend building relationships and rapport with them. Children and youth should never be viewed simply as ‘givers’ of research information. Inviting them to be co-thinkers, allows a researcher to learn in deeper and more meaningfully ways from them. 

• Acquiring ongoing informed assent. Children and youth are invited to participate in a study, and, if they agree to participate, they assent to doing so. This should never be a one time event; rather, researchers should continually check in with child participants to assure they are still willing to participate in a study. This is especially true for research studies that involve the collection of naturally occurring data where the children and youth participate in the normative activities and are likely to forget about the presence of the recording device. In other words, because the children and youth are going about their everyday activities, whether that be attending a lesson in the classroom, talking to their therapist, sitting through a mental health assessment, or working with a peer group, they are likely attending to the natural event, rather than the presence of the camera or researcher. As such, they may lose sight of the focus and purpose of the research and therefore it is important that a researcher consistently checks in with the participants regarding their ongoing consent to participate in the study. 

• Invite caregivers’ ideas for engagement. Inviting caregivers and those who work closest with participating children and youth to share ideas for best communicating with children can be helpful. In our research, we frequently work with non-speaking autistic children and youth and have found that individuals closest to the child can offer useful insight for how to most meaningfully and respectfully communicate. In turn, as we come to know a child, we invite them to highlight ways we might better share about our research, the research process, and findings. 

• Read, read and read a bit more: There is lots of useful literature out there on ethics, ethics in research with children and young people, and interactional research. You can learn a lot from reading about methods, reading about ethics, and looking at how other researchers have done things.

• Don’t forget the valuable role of the ethics committee (e.g., Institutional Review Boards). Ethics committees are there to help you and they will have reviewers with lots of experience and expertise. You can ask them questions and engage their advice on areas around safeguarding, data protection and related areas. 

• Think of researcher safety. The nature of the research, the depth of data, and the possible sensitivity of the research topic may mean that there are additional emotional burdens on the researcher and we suggest you be mindful of your own emotional reactions. You should take researcher safety seriously in your planning, not only in terms of physical risks related to fieldwork (e.g., infection control in hospital research, visiting participants in their homes etc), but also in terms of the possible revelations you may hear and the possibility of an emotional reaction. It is important to read more about this and engage in dialogue with your team or supervisor. 

Conclusions 

In this blog post, we have sought to provide a brief introduction to the practical concerns about the ethics of doing research with children and young people using interactional methods. Our focus has been on those qualitative methodologies that place social interaction and language at the forefront of their work. These kinds of qualitative approaches mean that the data will be of high quality and provide a lot of depth and personal detail about the participants and thus it is important that you are reflexive about your approach and take measures to work in ethical ways. 

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