Researching Children

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CHILDREN SOCIETY VOLUME 10 (1996) pp. 145-154

Researching Children:

Methods and Ethics

Ann Mahon and

Caroline Glendinning

National Primary Care

Research and

Development Centre

University of Manchester

Karen Qarke

Department

of

Social

Policy, University of

Manchester

Gary Craig

School of Sodal Policy,

University of

Humberside, Hull

Address for correspondence:

Professor G ary Craig, School

of

Policy Studies, University

of

Humbers ide, Inglemire A venue,

Hull HU6 7LU

he appropriateness and desirability of researching children have

been issues of

some

debate. Children may be perceived as non-

competent or vulnerable, and proxies have been used as children s

representatives. Increasingly researchers ar e speaking to children

directly. Why

is

this so and w hat are the methodological an d ethical

implimtions of researching children s views? In this paper the

authors draw on their own experiences of researching children in the

fields of child carers and the im pact of the Child Support Act 1991.

A number of

social

political and legal trends are identified w hich

form a background to the growing interest in children as potential

and actual participants

in

th e research process. The

theoretical

methodological ethical and p ractical issues involved are then

identified and

described

using

examples

from two

separate

studies

conducted

by

the authors.

T

his paper reflects

on the

experiences

of

two research

studies involving semistructured interviews with

children. The first stu dy focused on the experiences

of children and y oun g people caring for a family mem ber an d

evaluated the impact

of

three projects specifically designe d

to

support young care givers and their families. Face-to-face,

semistructured interviews were conducted with children and

the person who they w ere caring for in 25 families. The

yoimg carers' ages ranged from nine years to mid-twenties,

although issues discussed here generally relate to yoimger

carers in this Scimple. Wherever possible, interviews with

children and parents were conducted on separate occasions.

The study was commissioned by the former Mersey Regional

Health Authority, which had funded the young carers'

support projects (Mahon and Higgins, 1995).

The second study focused on the impact

of

the Child Support

Act 99 on lone mothers and their children receiving certain

means-tested benefits. Sem istructured interviews we re carried

out with 12 children aged between 10 and 17, whose mothers

had already been interviewed earlier in the study. The

interviews explored the children's perceptions of family

relationships, their views on parental obligations and their

C C C 0951-0605 /96 /020145-10

© 1996

by

John WUey Sons, Ltd.


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146 Ann Mahon and others

knowledge of financial arrangements associated with the Child Support Act. Again,

every attempt wa s made to interview the children separately from other family m emb ers.

This was the last stage of a part-longitudinal stud y (Clarke, Craig and Glendinning, 1993,

1994,1996) and was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

In designing and undertaking these studies we had to address a number of difficult

ethical and methodological questions about involving children directly in research in this

way. The first was about the competence of children to provide answers to questions of

both fact and opinion: wo uld they know , for example, about the paym ent of ma intenance

and other sources of household income; would they have views on the respective rights

and obligations of parents and children in separated families? Could equally valid or

more accurate responses not be obtained from the adults involved? A second issue was

the particular vulnerability of children and their need for extra protection from potential

exploitation by researchers. Should not children be shielded from intrusive and

potentially distressing questioning, with proxies—parents, teachers, sodal workers—

representing the views of children instead?

In addressing these issues, we came to the view that in many research contexts it is

neither theoretically nor m ethodologically app ropria te to rely on proxies to represent the

views and experiences of children. On the contrary, children's views can an d o ught to be

taken seriously. However, accessing and understanding these views raise a number of

important issues for researchers across a wide range of disciplines.

Social̂ political and legal pressures

he trends outlined here, whilst not new, together create a set of imperatives for

researching children's experiences within a wide range of theoretical and applied social

research.

Chan ging family pat terns

Fundamental changes in the structure and stability of families in recent decades have

major implications for how we approach family research. Even so, there is considerable

discrepancy between official statistics on family status and the actual experiences of

women, men and children. For example, whilst numbers of both lone and single

(never married) parents appear to have increased rapidly, these mask growing trends to

cohabitation prior to or instead of marriage. Evidence firom birth registrations suggests

that increasing num bers of children are bom into stable cohabiting relationships (Kieman

and Estaugh, 1993). There is no official documentation of the breakdown of such

cohabitations—an increasingly common cause of lone parenthood (Bradshaw and Millar

1991;

Ford and others, 1994)—nor of the entry of wom en an d children into new cohabiting

relationships.

Official figures on remarriage are equally unhelpful, as they do not include growing

num bers of children who live in unmarried step-parent families. Nor do they reveal w ays

in which ad ults and children may experience a num ber of different family forms dur ing

their lives. For example, a fifth of the lone moth ers in the C hild Sup port Act study had

had children with more than one partner: some lone mothers had been m arried, divorced

and subsequently cohabited with another partner with whom they had had further

children; others had been married (and divorced) more than once; yet others had had


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Researching Children: Me thods and Ethics 147

children in a succession of short-term, non-cohabiting relationships (C larke, Glendinning

and Craig, 1994).

It is therefore not appropriate to rely solely on information about family structure and

status to tell us how children experience their families and, through them, their wider

social worlds. Assum ptions abo ut the impact of, say, marital break dow n an d entry into a

step-family— even about the effects of such basic characteristics as age an d birth ord er—

may be increasingly unreliable. For example, one lone mother in the C hild Support study

had had her first son while married to a violent partner. After this marriage broke dow n,

she had three m ore children with ano ther man who treated the older boy exactly the same

as his own children; whe n interviewed, the boy confirmed that he regarded his mo ther's

subsequent partner as more of a 'father' to him than his biological father. Even children

who share the same biological parents may have very different relationships with each

paren t; such differences in affection a nd allegiance become increasingly salient in shapin g

the childre n's experiences if the parental relationship is in difficulty. We therefore cannot

even assume similarities in the experiences of children wh o are currently m embers of the

same family. The diversity and fluidity of family forms as children move through

childhood th us impe l us increasingly to seek their ov m accounts and experiences, rather

than assuming that we can automatically know them from demographic and structural

information we have about their families.

Pol i t ica l t ren ds

The 1980s saw a political emphasis on 'consumerism' within public sector services,

reflecting the introduction of a market ethos as a mean s of promoting user responsiveness.

This has added to the pressures for the 'consumers' of public services—including,

potentially, young 'consumers'—to be involved directly in the evaluation of service

initiatives. Thus in the study of youn g care givers, the Regional He alth A uthority which

commissioned the research assumed that the evaluation of the young carers' projects

wo uld of course involve those service 'users ' whom the projects ha d been established to

support, rather than simply relying on reports from parents or social services

staff.

Concern to involve young people directly in the research also reflected the child-centred

approach adopted by the projects that were the subject of the evaluation study (Mahon

an d H iggins, 1995). This, in ti un reflects, i n t e r a l i a , the impact of legal trend s outlined later.

L e g a l t r e n d s

The rights of children and their status within the family have been addressed by several

major recent pieces of legislation— the C hildren Act 1989, the Child Su pport Act 99 and

the Criminal Justice Act 1991. These Acts originated from very different policy concerns

and have resulted in some marked inconsistencies in the current legal status of children

among the separate social security, criminal justice and child welfare systems.

Nevertheless, the flurry of legislative activity is itself a reflection of the rapid sodal and

political changes referred to earlier.

Of most significance here, the Children Act represents the culmination of a shift from

children being the passive objects of parental rights to becoming legal subjects in their

own right. In any decision und er the Act, the welfare of the child must be the param ount

consideration and his or her views and wishes must be ascertained. Although the latter

are to be 'considered in the light of his (sic) age and understanding' (S. 6.1), this never-

theless represents an impo rtant formalisation of children's rights to be heard within the

legal system.


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Theoret ical problems

N or m a l

childhood

and th e cons t ruct ion of

social

p r o b l e m s

Academic acceptance of diversity in family form is wides pread . H owev er, the funding of

applied research is still too often focused on situations and b ehaviours that are assu med ,

implicitly or explicitly, to be deviant and problem atic. For example , studies of the effects

of separation and divorce have tended to focus on the negative outcomes for children,

compared with that in children in intact families; only recently has research begun to

challenge this implicit accep tance of nega tive outco mes (Burghes, 1994) or to focus o n the

factors that might help children adapt and cope (Cockett and Tripp, 1994). Yet in view of

the diversity of family forms a nd re lationsh ips describe d earlier, the prefiguration of some

types of family experience as 'normal' and some as 'deviant' seems increasingly

inappropriate.

Similarly, much research on child carers has assum ed th at informal caregiving as a w hole

is necessarily problematic and may have pathological consequences for the people

involved. This model has itself been vigorously criticised by disabled people, on the

groun ds that it denies their autono my and agency by casting them as wholly passive and

dependent (Keith, 1992; Morris, 1991). It is equally debatable whether this is an

appropriate model to use when investigating the kinds of support that younger people

may give to adult family mem bers with physical or mental disabilities. Quite simply, we

know very little about the range of responsibilities that children feel and carry towards

their various family members, nor how these vary with age, gender and ethnic group. In

the stud y of child carers a wide range of caring scenarios we re encountered, including

variations in the illness or disabilities experienced by those being cared for, the t)rpes of

caring tasks and responsibilities being undertaken by the young people, and their

attitud es tow ards the tasks an d conse quence s of caring. Inde ed, one of the difficulties in

interpreting these sorts of findings is that of distinguishing those tasks considered

'norm al' from those that are out of the ordinary, both within the particular families being

studied and in the wid er social context.

Val idi ty

A second issue which emerged in our studies concerns the concept of validity. As

indicated earlier, the increasing diversity of feimily situations means that we cannot

assum e that adult 'pro xies' such as parents or teachers will be able to give valid accounts

of children's own social worlds. In the Child Support Act study, lone mothers we re often

awa re that their child had very different experiences of and feelings tow ards an 'absen t'

parent from those of their own. Moreover, these mothers knew that children would

sometimes conceal such feelings so as not to hurt them, even to the extent of hiding

appare ntly straightforward 'facts' such as recent contact with their father. Valid accounts

of children's attitudes and experiences could therefore only be obtained by engaging

directly with the children and treating them as independent actors who were engaged in

negotiating a complex set of relationships and loyalties.

Similar questions of validity arise in relation to the use of siblings as 'proxies' for each

other. Again, the Child Supp ort Act stud y revealed that siblings could have very different

relationships with each of their parents. Consequently, the attitudes of children within

the same family about parental obligations and the payment of maintenance could be as

polarised as those of some lone mothers and their former partners. The study of child

carers also found that children within the same family assumed different caring


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Researching Children : Me thods an d Ethics 149

responsibilities, held different views about their roles and experiences as carers and used

the support offered to them through the projects in different ways.

Methodological issues

A key issue in researching children is the extent to which the researcher is seen as som e

kind of expert—with the risk that 'public' accounts will be given that are thought to be

acceptable to the 'exp ert' point of view of the researcher (Com well, 1984). This distinction

between public and private accounts may have particular relevance for children and for

the relationship between researcher and child. Younger children m ay be more suggestible,

or more inclined to respond to an interviewer w ith answers that they think are expected

and wa nted than are adu lts; but the problem is essentially the same as that faced in relation

to adults. The options available in response to the problem are rather different howeve r.

With adults , the interviewer can be matched to the person being interviewed on a range of

social characteristics su ch as age, gende r or ethnic origin, in order to create a re lationship

in which the person being interviewed feels rapport and identification with the

interviewer. However, this is not always possible with (younger) children because of

one of the most salient social characteristics in the situation— age (and, derivin g from th is,

in most cultures, a uthority). Increasingly, how ever, children a re being involved in research

projects, not just as subjects of research, but as researchers in their own right (Alderson,

1995). The appropriatene ss of involving children a s researchers is not always appa rent and

should be judged on the basis of the research topic, the research me thods, and the degree

of skill and responsibility (and, hence, age or maturity) required of the researcher.

In the research conducted with the children of lone mothers, the two interviewers

employed both ha d extensive experience of working with and talking to children in social

work and legal context. We have n o way of knowing how the identity of the interviewers

that children constructed affected the kinds of issues that they were wiUing to talk about

or the way s in which they expressed their views. However, it seems very likely that the

nature of the conversations w hich took place were affected by the interviewers' identity

in the child's mind. The 'prob lem' of adult au thority in relation to children m ay be more

acute whe n the child and the researcher are together on a one-to-one basis. The ad option

of more varied and imaginative research methods may make it possible to overcome

these problems to some extent; for example, the use of group interviews and focus

groups, interactive research methods such as video and drawings, and the involvement

of young people themselves as researchers.

When interview ing children it is important that children understan d the que stions asked

of them and that researchers understand what children are saying; that the children are

understood as well as (literally) understanding. So far, we have referred to 'children' as if

they are a homoge neous group. Clearly, the problems that arise in relation to validity a nd

other aspects of research methodology are very different for children of different

chronological and developmental ages. The research with child carers, for example,

involved children across a wide range of ages from as young as nine years. Less

'successful' interviews, in terms of the depth of response and rapport established, were

conducted with those in younger age groups, and with boys. In retrospect, alternative

and more imaginative methods, perhaps including the use of a male researcher, might

have yielded richer and more valid data. For the older age group, face-to-face interviews

generally seemed an appropriate method. Obtaining iriformation from children in

younger age groups may therefore require an approach different to that from older age


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150 Ann Mah on and others

grou ps and this involves different skills an d different research me thod s. Recent research

exploring children's and young people's perceptions of cancer, for example, devised a

'write and draw ' technique for the collection of data from children aged nine to ten years

(Oakley an d others, 1995).

Ethical issues

In some of the discussions w ith colleagues and advisers arou nd our respective studies, we

encountered anxieties that the children we planne d to interview wo uld not fully

appreciate wh at was being asked of them; or, as discussed earlier, that they wo uld

construct the researcher as an authority figure to whom they had to acquiesce, even

though it might not have been in their own best interests to do so. In other word s, it wa s

argued, children somehow needed extra 'protection' from the invasive questioning of

researchers, who otherwise risked exploiting or abusing the children's lack of under-

standing and/or lack of power. Thus, in the Child Support Act study, we were warned

about the risk of interviewing children about relationships with their (separated) paren ts

and their views on pare nts' continuing financial obligations, on the grou nds that this

would prove too upsetting for the children.

How ever, the researchers' view was that children are, in a variety of different way s,

capable of deciding whether or not they wished to be interviewed. The children were

given fuU information beforehand about the scope of the proposed interview and had a

num ber of oppo rtunities to decline. Children were approac hed directly for their consent,

with parents first being asked only for permission to make contact with the child. Parents

were given vratten information about the aims and scope of the interviews with the

children. A separate approach was then ma de to the child at which his or her consent wa s

sought an d each child wa s asked again at the start of the interview wh ether he or she was

willing to take part. At the end of the interview, in acknow ledgement of the time that they

had given, a small payment was made to the chUd, although care was taken not to

mention this paym ent in negotiating the child's consent. Children wh o did not wa nt to be

interviewed either refused outright or did not keep appointments (here the interviewer

had to exerdse a considerable am ount of discretion in deciding wh ether to call back an d

try and fix another interview).

In the study of child carers it was decided at the outset that the children involved s hotdd

be the main focus of the study rather than adu lts; indeed this was assum ed by the

com missioners of the research an d reflected the child-centred focus ado pted by the

projects. In this study pa rents a nd children we re contacted by letter at the same time a nd

both were asked for their consent to approach the child to request consent to be

interview ed. As the research also involv ed interview s v^dth pare nts or ano ther family

member, children were asked for their consent to approach their par ent/re lative for

interview. All of those contacted were m ade a ware of the right to refuse and it was ma de

dear by the researcher that participation was not something which was expected. Careful

reading of bod y language revealed some conflict at times with children's verbal consent

and further probing led to a refusal to be interviewed in at least one case in this study. As

experienced in the Child Support Act study, 'failure' to keep appointments may be an

indirect wa y of refusing to participa te.

Perhaps the greatest anxieties or concerns that emerged from our respective studies were

those relating to confidentiality and disclosure, both in relation to paren ts an d in relation


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152 Ann Mah on and others

Finally, it is important to bear in mind that children, more than adults, may have

expectations that issues and prob lems w hich they identify in the course of the interview

might somehow be put right as a result of taking part in the research. It is clearly very

impo rtant wh en explaining the purp ose of the research to spell out its limitafions and the

restricted role of the researcher in relation to the child's day-to-day situation.

Practical issues

Many of these m ethodological issues have imp ortant practical implications for research

with children. For example, the age and development of children should be considered as

part of the selecfion criteria for a stud y pop ulation becau se of the implication s that these

have for the choice of research m ethods and the skills and un ders tand ing required of both

researcher and child. Hav ing de dd ed on the study popu lation, the researcher mu st be

able to gain access to the children. Again the process of gain ing access will vary acco rding

to the characteristics of the children being studied. For examp le, child carers are often

referred to as a 'hidden' or 'secret army' and studies attempting to gain access to child

carers have often experienced difficulfies. In the study of child carers children were

recruited via supp orting projects; other studies of children have recruited them throu gh

schools (A lderson, 1995; Oakley and others , 1995).

The process of gaining informed consent and maintaining motivafion are of particular

importance when researching children and young people. In the study of child carers it

was m ade de ar on the first approach and at the beginning of the interview that the child

or you ng person was not und er any obligafion to parfidp ate. This wa s impo rtant because

the you ng people may have regarded the interviewer as an authority figure or

succumbed to parental pressure to partidpate in the research. Requesting consent from

children should , whenev er possible, be don e privately, away from other family mem bers.

In term s of mofivafion, the choice of research me thod ma y ha ve different implications for

the length of time that children with different interests, personalities, gender and so on

can con centrate and ma intain an interest in the interview. In the stud y of child carers, the

age of the child was directly related to the length of the interview, which in turn was

related to the dep th of response. Declining mofivafion du ring an interview could also be

und erstood as an indirect way of withholding or withd raw ing consent to parfidpate, if a

you ng per son found it difficult to do so directly.

Finally there are pracfical considerafions relating to privacy, location and the need to

conduct interviews away from paren ts or other family membe rs. This is impo rtant, bu t

not always feasible. W here should interviews with children be carried out? At hom e, at

school, in a bu rger bar? It is frequently desirable to interview peo ple in their ow n hom es

and this often provides important observafional data for the researcher. In the child

carers study , several interviews were conducted in burge r bars or other 'neu tral' settings,

as du ldr en did not wa nt to be interviewed at hom e. On other occasions interviews were

conducted under very difficult circumstances with constant interrupfions and back-

ground noise. The locafion and environmen t in which interviews are conducted has

implicafions not just for privacy and the quality of data collected bu t also for how the

data are recorded. In both the child carers study and the Child Support Act study,

interviews were taped and it wa s anfidpated that there migh t have been some problem s

in doing this. In practice no problems were encountered in gaining consent to tape-

record. Giving children control over the tape recorder—b y giving it to them to hold and

to turn o n and off as they wishe d— was found to aid not orJy the willingness to be taped

but also rapport between researcher and respondent.


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Researching Children: Methods and Ethics 153

Conclusions

We have started from the viewpoint that, for important theoretical, social and legal

reasons, children's perspe ctives on the issues and experiences which affect them can and

should b e investigated. It is no longer appropriate (if indeed it ever was) to rely on the

accounts of others or to try and make deductions from knowledge about children's

location within a given family structure. At this stage, we would like to draw two main

conclusions, although our work in this research area is continuing.

First, we d o not claim that an y of the problems w e have encou ntered a nd the solutions we

have described in this paper are particularly original to sodal research. The ways in

which we have been forced to think these issues through has brought home to us a

number of practical and methodological issues that are important and relevant to

research in other contexts as well. In other words, the experience has had an additional

heuristic value as well, in helping us to think our way more dearly through some of the

issues involved in a wider variety of research contexts.

Secondly, it has made us aware of the importance of drawing on and building on the

experiences of others. We we re lucky in that we ha d available to us work carried ou t, for

example, by the National Children's Bureau and the major national children's welfare

organisations, which have already developed guidelines on involving children in

research. We w ere able to recruit sldlled an d sensitive interviewers. We w ere also able to

talk to people w ith expe rience of carry ing out research o n very difficult subjects,

indu ding the immediate aftermath of marital breakdown. We we re also aware that there

is a wealth of experience of researching children to draw on in other disdp lines, such as

developmental psychology. These contacts should help us to develop good practice in

what is likely to become a growing research area. They may also prove valuable allies

against those who maintain that children's voices cannot or should not be heard.

References

Alderson, P (1995) L i s t e n i n g t o C h i l d r e n : C h i l dr e n E t h i cs a n d Social R e s e a r c h . Ba ma r d o s

Brad shaw , J and Millar , J (1991)

L o n e P a r e n t F a m i l ie s in t h e U K .

DSS Research R eport 6. HM SO

Burghes, L (1994)

L o n e P a r e n t h o o d a n d F a m i l y D i s r u p t io n . T h e O u tc om e s f or C h i l dr e n .

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Studies Centre

Qarke, K, Craig, G and Glendinning, C (1993)

C h i ld r e n C o m e F i r s t?

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Clarke , K, Craig, G and Glendinning, C (1996)

S m a l l C h a n g e : T u r n Y e a r s o f t h e C h i l d S up p o r t A c t.

Family Policy Studies Centre

Clarke , K, Glendinning, C and Craig, G (1994) L o s i n g Su p p o r t : C h i l d r e n a n d t h e C h i l d S u p p o r t A c t.

Children 's Socie ty

Cockett , M and Tripp, J (1994) T h e E x e t e r F a m i l y S t ud y . Universi ty of Exeter Press

Comwell , J (1984) Ha rd Earn ed L ives: Account s o f Heal th an d I l lne ss f rom East London. Tavistock

Publications

Ford, R and others (1994) Lone Par en thood in 1989,1991 an d 1993: Thre e Cross section Survey Report .

Policy Studies Insti tute

Keith, L (1992) 'W ho cares wins? W om en, car ing emd disabil i ty '.

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Kieman, K and Estaugh, V (1993) C o h a b i t a t i o n . Family Policy Studies Centre

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Funded Projec t s i n Merseys ide. Health Services Management Unit , Universi ty of Manchester

Morris, J (1991) Pr ide ag ai ns t Prejudice: Tran s form ing a t t i tudes to Disabi l i t y . Wo men 's P ress

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young people ' ,

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Journal 3 1 0 ,1 0 2 9 - 3 3


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Contributors' details

Ann M ahon

is a research associate at the Nation al Primary C are Research an d Development Centre,

University of Manchester.

Gary Craig is Professor at the School of Social Policy, University of Humberside, Hull.

Caroline Glendinning

is a seriior research fellow at the National Primary Care Research and

Development Centre, University of Manchester.

Karen Clarke

works in the Department of Social Policy, University of Manchester.

Professor

Gary Craig, Caroline Glendinning,

an d

Karen Qarke

collaborated in the study of the

Child Support Act, 1993-96, and Ann Mahon conducted the study of young carers, 1994-95.


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