YC100: Lecture 4 – Sept. 27, Sept.

29 2022
Doing Research on and with Children, Ch. 3

Chapter 3
- Understanding research process allows you to identify and understand the steps taken by
researchers to arrive at certain kind of conclusions.
o Shows that research had other potions but chose a particular approach over others
available to them
o Understanding research methods allows you to see that when certain
methodological choices are made, they are made for a number of both scientific
and ideological reasons (to understand or prove a particular point or to support a
certain set of assumptions).

From Adult Perspectives to Children’s Voices

- Most of what we know comes from adults
o Reflecting their own experiences as children
o Reporting on experiences of children for whom they have taken care of
- Much of research is conducted on the point of view of adult researchers and adult study
participants on children’s behalf
o Reason: in our culture we view children as innocent, naive, “special: and
incapable
o Belief that children are simply adults in the making
- Adult researchers and adult study participants are treated as experts – with the most
knowledge about children’s lives
- Children could not be in research because of the power difference between adults and
children

- children were not vocal about which research technique researchers should use when
studying them, but they were considerably more vocal in how research should unfold,
how long data collection should take, how involved they should be, and how their privacy
can and should be protected vis-à-vis other children, teachers, and so on.
o Children’s views on research were informed by notions of inclusiveness and
fairness

- as we come to take children’s views and experiences into account, we are significantly
altering our traditional understanding of children and childhood.

The Research Process

- involves thinking, planning, and choosing
o who and what to study
o were
o when
o how to study
- Macro and micro approach of research
- Positive approaches (natural science-like) such as experiments and clinical trials
Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches

Qualitative research: the numerical representation and manipulation of observations for the
purpose of describing and explaining social phenomena
- The amount of something involving numbers, counting, and mathematical computations
- Statistics analysis of survey data and secondary data analysis

Quantitative research: involves non-numerical examination and interpretation of observations for

the purpose of discovering underlying meaning, patterns, and relationships.
- Think about what, how, when, or where of things
- Trying to find and understand meaning, metaphors, and symbols from the point of view
of study participants
- Used extensively when doing ethnographic or field research
- May used as a stand-alone method in social research
- Especially important when doing research with children
o Allows researchers to interact directly with children
 Observing them or allowing them to answer questions in their own words
 Can be a challenge because most require a level of literacy that younger
children do not necessarily have – most surveys are completed by adults
on behalf of children
- Techniques: participant observation, ethnographic research, qualitative interviews, arts-
based methods, focus groups

- Before determining which data collection methods to use, researchers need to think about
the purpose of their research

Deductive research: begin with a theory or hypothesis and aim to test puts value and application
in a particular setting

Inductive research: begin the research process but noticing something happening, with no theory
in mind and then trying to assess what is actually happening and why
- Often linked to grounded theory or qualitative observations

Time Dimension
- a research project can focus on and collect information at a single point in time – cross-
sectional study
- Longitudinal research – observing children and looking for patterns and trends in
information collected at multiple point in time
o Understanding the changing nature of children’s experiences with the passage of
time and in changing social, cultural, or economic circumstances
 Ex. National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth

Unit of Analysis
Who or what will be studied
 - may include individuals (adults and children), social groups (households, families,
classrooms, ethnic groups) or social artifacts (things or objects that make up part of the
social world, such as ads, jokes, or clothing).
o Parents or guardians can participate on behalf of the child
some research on and about children has been done using social artifacts
- ex. social analyses – done of commercials, ads, toys, clothes websites, television
programs, movies, and books created for or targeting children

Allowing children to use familiar props, such as dolls, stickers, or blocks, gives them the
opportunity to use the objects to reconstruct, role play, or re-enact aspects of their lives and tell
us their stories, regardless of their ability to express themselves verbally.
- It is preferable to use a range of activities and arts-based tools when including children in
research
- Remain flexible in how tools are used
Allow the researchers to purse topics in depth and give the study participants the freedom
to answer in their own words and help direct the flow of the conversation

- Consider the reasonable limits of a child’s competence and capability to allow door
“collective voices” and to show children that they are being listen to through follow-up
actions and responses to study findings
- Be patient
- Incorporate play strategies
- Interviewing in spaces that allow for movement
- Allowing for responses that do not have a beginning, middle and end\
- Be prepared to have to go with the flow and adapt to changing circumstances, events, and
personalities
- He innovates

Ethics In Child Research

The Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPS):
- Ensures research the organization funds comply with their policy involving human
participants
- Common ethical framework that ensures free and informed consent, privacy, and
confidentiality of research participants
- Mandates the creation and outlines of composition of research ethics boards to review
proposed research and provides a detailed account of its guiding ethical principals

TCPS 2: places more attention on not excluding children from research

“The notion of harm applied to children should be understood differently from harm in adults” as
“harm induced in children may have long-term consequences to their growth and development”

Children’s Vulnerability
- Some believe children are and should be treated as a “vulnerable group”
 o Requires unique ethical considerations – because of power differences between
adults and children, but also because of differences in the cognitive abilities and
resources among children
- perceptions of children and children’s marginalized position in adult society, and because
some view, treat, or understand children as inherently different from adults.

- Others believe and have argued that children do not require special or different sets of
ethical guidelines, because in granting them special treatment and protection we reinforce
the view that children are incompetent and, vulnerable concur, explaining that adult-
centred research may actually be perpetuating stereotypical, normative views of children
as ignorant, capricious, and untrustworthy.
o Assume that adults know best they make decision for children and children have
to accept them

- Some are overprotective towards children and prevent hem to participate in research

Children’s Competence
- Children are aware of the possible exploitation of information and importance of
confidentiality because this is already apart of children’s worlds
o Very young children are aware of who they should and should not speak to, who
to trust and confide in, and what to report to adults
- When working with children full confidentiality may never be fully guaranteed because
the research, we would have the duty to pass on information to appropriate professionals

- Today: growing consensus to respect children’s interest and willingness (or lack thereof)
to participate in research after parents or guardians have provided consent.
o After parents’ consent or the child participate in research, the child should be
given clear information, and the choice to accept to refuse to participate

Research by Children
- Children and young indivuals have been involved in developing research agendas as
interviews and peer researchers and in analysis dissemination
- Such a study reminds us that doing research can empower children to participate actively
in their own education and to make original contributions to knowledge.

- Including the voice of children in studies organized and directed by adult academics is an
important step forward, but this is not the same as recognizing and acting upon one’s own
sociological imagination, as many children have done and will continue to do.

Summary
- Involving children in the research process results in better understanding of children and
childhood and has challenged us to develop a wide range of innovative research tools and
arts-based research techniques using digital technology, drawings, diaries, sentence
completion, creative writing, music, mapping, and so on.
o Forces the researcher to explore, reflect upon and better understand children
 o Researchers are better able to assess their own assumptions about themselves as
researcher and about children
- the way researchers conceptualize and think about children has a profound impact on the
way we study them. In turn, the way we study them has a profound impact on our
understanding of children and childhood, as the way we see them affects the ways we
listen to them

- Treating children as weak, incapable, incompetent, and vulnerable perpetuates the

treatment of children as objects in research and as invisible and inconsequential in
everyday life.
o It undervalues children’s competencies and voices and their rights

- Doing research with children is challenging because it requires the researcher to ensure
that the practices employed in the research process reflect children’s experiences,
interests, values, and everyday routines

- good research with children involves, among other things, knowing the participants,
refraining from imposing the researcher’s own perceptions and views, building trust and
rapport, using clear and accessible language, considering innovative methods, and
creating a comfortable research context.

- By looking closely and critically at research done with and on children, one can learn
more about doing sound and innovative research involving all human participants.

Lecture Notes

Why do we care about Research?

- Understainding how we know things
o What source?
- Develop ciritcal thinking skills
o How did they find this information out? What methods did they use?
- Future positions:
o Some may go into academic jobs
o Some positions may require grant applications
- Understaning research can hekp make informed choices for yourself and families
- Research is used:
o Inform policy devekopment
o Designate funding (i.e., determine how money is spent)
o Decised who should be supported (i.e., certain groups of people)

Adult-centered Research
Most of what we know about childhood comes from adults
- Their memories of their childhoods
o Adults have false or altered memory – memory biased
- Their reports on children – what they think, think about thinking
Scholars say this is because:
- Children are viewed as under-developed or incapable
- Adults are viewed as experts and are to be trusted
- Power difference/biases

Inovilving Children
- Researchers are trying to include children in the research process
- Children are reliable informants of their own expiereinces and feelings
- Children have specific attiudes towards study participation (Hill 2006)
o Time it tajes
o Mehtod used (play vs. sitting) – responses are more genuinne
o Privacy (location, confidence)
- Bot all researchers think of chidlren’s pariticaptopn, even when conducting research
with children

- Some scholars suggest entereing children’s “culture of communication” treating

children the same as adults
- Others suggest treating children’s competencies different, but not weaker than adults

The Research Process

• Research process involves many steps
• Scholars have unique approaches to research depending on their discipline
• Experiments or clinical trials
• Participatory action research
• Different types of research!

Quantitative Research
• Two overarching research designs in social sciences – quantitative and qualitative
• Quantitative: numerical representation and manipulation of observations to describe and
explain social phenomena
• Most common approach to answering research questions!
• Data can be collected through:
• Surveys (likert scale)
• Ex. How was your experience shopping today? Bad?, Good?, Excellent?
• Observations (then coded)
• Interviews (then coded)
• Document review

• Quantitative research example:

• Research question: How do children spend their time outside of school and with who?
• Data collection: Structured telephone interviews (daily log); demographics
• Statistical analyses: Data was entered into SPSS in numerical form and then analyzed
• Results:
• 50% unstructured activities; 14% of onscreen; 6% in structured activities
• 66% of time with family; 22% with peers; 10% alone
• Boys engaged in more screen time
 • Parental education related to time spent in structured activities
• Benefits of quantitative research:
• Large sample size
• Ability to generalize
• Less factors to consider (you are collecting specific data)
• Objective
• Drawbacks of quantitative research:
• Less rich because we are dealing with numbers
• Can be presented in a misleading way

Qualitative Research
• Qualitative: non-numerical examination and interpretation of observations to discover
underlying meaning, patterns, and relationships
• Understanding from the view of participants
• Important for studies on childhood because it taps into children’s thoughts and feelings
about themselves and their world
• Survey data can be difficult to conduct with children
• Can be collected through:
• Focus groups
• Interviews
• Field notes (ethnographic research – naturalistic observations)

• Qualitative research example:

• Question: Can interviewers’ expressions and questions encourage or inhibit children
from telling their stories
• Data collection: Used previously collected and recorded interviews between adults and
children on children’s perspectives on risk and protection
• Analyses: (1) categorized interviewers’ questions and expressions and children’s
responses (2) examined relationship between interviewer categories and children’s
response
• Results: categories with richest data were encouragement, open-ended questions
• closed-ended questions produced least storytelling

• Benefits of quantitative research:

• Data is rich
• Can get into participants’ minds better
• Drawbacks of qualitative research:
• Smaller sample sizes
• Long time to conduct qualitative research – more expensive and have to
collect a large amount of participants
• Less generalizability
• Discomfort among participants (no anonymity)
• More room for biases from researcher
• More expensive to do
Mixed-Method
• A third approach that is quite common, combines the two, providing rich data
• Mixed-methods (i.e., both quantitative and qualitative)
• Research can be designed in a way in which both methods can be used
• Research questions must be suitable
• Example: Survey data + open-ended questions = mixed methods!
• Many ways to develop a mixed-methods study
• Best of both worlds, limits drawbacks
• Online approach – super effective
• Can generalize

Methods of Research
• Research goal determines which method to use
• Exploratory research: Are we trying to explore a new or understudied concept?
• Explanatory research: Are we trying to explain or better understand something?
• Descriptive research: Are we trying to describe a phenomena in better detail?
• Evaluative research: Are we evaluating the effectiveness of a policy or program?
• Beginning with a hypothesis is called deductive research
• Also called top-down approach
• Beginning research process to observe what is happening and why (with no theory) is
called inductive research
• Also called bottom-up approach

Study Structure – how we collect data

Cross Sectional Design Longitudinal Design

• Collected at a single time • Repeated observations

point • Observes the same group
• Observes different groups multiple times
• Snapshot of society at given • Follows changes in participants
point over time

• National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth is a longitudinal survey

(Quantitative self and parental report)
• Studied people from birth – young adulthood
• Examined children’s social, emotional, behavioral, cognitive development over time
(35,000 + participants)

Unit of Analysis
• Scholars must choose Unit of Analysis – who or what will be studied
• Individuals – children, adults
• Social groups – families, schools, ethnic groups (often individuals speaking about
the group)
 • Social artifacts – things found that provides insight on our social world, historical
studies, things children may have left behind, something tangible
• Oftentimes these units of analyses are studied in conjunction
• Childhood research the unit of analysis is the child, but often the child is not involved

Interview Children – how to illicit unbiased responses and GOOD responses

• Important to create a comfortable space and build rapport
• Adult interviewer and participant are often matched in terms of demographics
(gender, age)
• Difficult to do this with children
• Imaginative methods are key to connecting with children
• Building rapport with introductory questions (becoming familiar adult)
• Allowing for “I don’t know”
• Being patient
• Providing breaks for movement and fun
• Interview environment (calm, spacious, fun)
• Interviewing during play
• Go with the flow

Ethics in Research
• Ethics: A set of moral principles and codes of conduct
• All research with humans is expected to follow guidelines protecting people from
being exploited
• All research studies must receive an ethics approval
• Sometimes multiple!
• In 1998, three research agencies (CIHR, SSHRC, NSERC) launched a tri-council policy
statement: Ethical Conduct for Research involving Humans (TCPS)
• Specific training that all researchers must do (PROOF!)
• Outlines ethical guidelines
• Provides examples of what not to do

Ethical Issues Guided by this Experiment (TCPS)

• Issues raised during this experiment that inform ethics today
• Right to withdraw
• Deception/informed consent
• Debriefing
• Protecting from harm (physical and psychological)

Children Vulnerability
• TCPS  harm applied to children should be treated different than adults (longer-term
consequences)
• Some believe children should be treated as a “vulnerable group” that requires unique
ethical consideration
• Power difference between adults/children
• Cognitive abilities
• Resources (understanding withdrawal)
 • Others believe that granting children special treatment reinforces the view that
children are incompetent and therefore vulnerable
• What is the right answer?

• Children’s competence is research participation is often questioned in terms of consent,

confidentiality, and voluntary nature of research
• Some research shows that children are aware of who they should/should not speak to,
trust, and what to report to adults
• Likely depends on many factors
• There is a growing consensus to respect children’s willingness to participate after
parents/guardians provide consent
• Children need to provide ”assent” – often verbally
• Should be considered through the duration of the study

Research by Children
• Becoming more common to include children and youth as researchers in the design,
data collection, analysis, and dissemination
• Example: Recording and reflecting upon preferred play places (change play
spaces/policy)
• Observing their natural world (ethnographic research)
• Research by children can be empowering for them
• Change in their social world
• Being heard
• Contributing to knowledge

• It doesn’t have to be an empirical study (i.e., brainstorming, experiences, asking

questions)
• Important first step: including at minimum, the voice of children in studies examining
children (study design, data collection, informant)
• Some scholars say that children should be included in the data analysis (coding,
interpreting, categorizing)
• Depends on the type of analysis!

Summary
• Research tells us all the things – we should all know the process
• Quantitative (quantity) vs. Qualitative (quality)
• Cross sectional vs. Longitudinal
• Different types of research (exploratory, explanatory, descriptive, evaluative)
• Ethics (TCPS) – special considerations with children
• Children in research

Participation Activity

(1) Pose a research question (be specific - you can have more than one research question if
they are closely related).
(2) Decide the methodological approach (i.e., qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods) and give
details about data collection. Where will this data collection take place? What age group are you
interested in examining? How will data be collected (e.g., interview questions, field notes,
observations, surveys, combination of methods)? What will the data instruments look like (e.g.,
interview questions; types of surveys)?

(3) Describe how you will specifically involve children in the research process

(4) Describe how involving children in the research process would positively impact them in
their life

1. Why are children more creative than adults?

2. Methodological Approach: Qualitative because creativity cannot be measured
numerically since it is something that comes from the imagination of the child.
a. the data collection will take place either at a daycare setting or the child’s home
i. the child will have the choice to decide between either location
b. the age group of children I am interested in examining are children from ages 3.5
to 7
c. The data will be collected through some interview questions, observations and
field notes.
d. The data instruments: a couple of toys, pictures, markers, and blank paper.
i. Example of possible interview questions: tell me a story based on this
picture. What story or game are you playing with these toys? What did
you draw? What does this drawing mean to you? Is there a story behind
what you are doing?
3. I would give the child a couple of unique toys that are significantly different from each
other and a blank paper with a couple of coloured markers. Then, we would observe how
the children interact with their toys, what kind of pictures they draw and what kind of
things their imaginations would come up with. While playing or colouring they would be
asked to explain what they are doing with the data instruments they have. Furthermore, in
regards to the pictures, the child will be shown a couple of photos and asked to explain
their observations and what it means to them. This way we can observe what the child’s
imagination has come up with while using these instruments.
4. Involving the child in this research process would positively impact their life because we
are exercising their creativity and imagination skills. As individuals get older, it is typical
for their creativity and imagination to reduce. Therefore, continuously exercising these
skills will enable them to last longer in the child's brain. Also, these exercises can
enhance their innovative skills that can be useful as they grow older in the future. This
way we can attempt to create visionary minds that can contribute to future developments.