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Asked by anon-304134 on 7 Dec 2021.
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Emily McDougal answered on 19 Nov 2021:
This is a great and very important question! Ethical considerations are important for all research involving human participants, but you are right to question whether working with children impacts this. It definitely does!
There are a few things we need to think about differently when working with children but one example is consent – do participants know and understand what they are agreeing to do? We have to approach this a little differently with children as we need to make sure that we can explain the study to them in language that they will understand so that they are able to make an informed decision about whether they want to take part. With young people under 16 we also have to ask the parent/caregiver’s permission for consent.
Another tricky thing is knowing when a child is withdrawing consent versus they need a break from the study. I come across this a lot when working with neurodivergent primary school children (e.g. who have a diagnosis or ADHD or autism) as they may find some tasks particularly challenging or need more frequent breaks. If a child I am working with says that they want to stop, I will do so and invite them back another day. Often the children are happy to try it on a different day. If they don’t want to come back, that is ok too! It is important that I have their consent to take part and would never force a child to do something that they really didn’t want to do.
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Danielle Paddock answered on 19 Nov 2021:
Great question! I run into ethical issues with my sample being teenagers. I have to make sure I get consent from parents (&head teacher if running the study in school), as well as consent from participants themselves. I usually conduct interviews/focus groups where we may potentially discuss sensitive topics (e.g., body image, disordered eating etc.) so this is something I have to be hyper aware of and always be mindful of how participants are responding and whether they are showing any signs of distress.
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Natali Bozhilova answered on 22 Nov 2021:
Yes, because children do not have the same capacity to consent as adults. For this reason, we need to make sure that both children and their parents understand the aims/procedures of the study and have the capacity to provide both consent and assent. Additionally, we need to make sure that children feel comfortable, supported and calm throughout testing sessions and discontinue testing if that is not the case.
Overall, we have the responsibility of safeguarding children. In other words, children’s best interest should always be our priority rather than research data or other aspects.
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Natalie Butcher answered on 22 Nov 2021:
I haven’t conducted much research with children so it’s not something I’ve had to consider all that much. However, I’m currently conducting a project on eyewitness identification with child participants. We had four crime videos we wanted to use depicting theft, graffiti, robbery and car jacking but we decided to only use the theft and graffiti ones to protect the children from seeing crimes with a visible victim as there was some violence towards the victims in the other two crime videos. We have also made it clear in the debrief at the end of the study that the behaviours they see should not be replicated. These have not been problems as such but just extra things to consider when inviting child participants to take part.
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