Doing Research with Children and Young People
Fraser, Sandy and Lewis, Vicky and Ding, Sharon (eds.) et al. (2004).
London: Sage Publications; 294 pages. $39.95. ISBN 0761943811.
The past decade or so has witnessed a dramatic shift in our collective view of children and young people. Indeed, the problematic phrase “our collective view” now prompts reflection on the Western (minority world) versus non-Western (majority world) understanding of the nature and meaning of childhood. In current research practice, children and young people are no longer thought of as passive objects of scientific study or as merely indicators of intervention effects. Falling generally under the rubric “the new sociology of childhood,” this transdisciplinary movement is rooted in a sustained critique of scientific methods of understanding children and childhood, and has been particularly focused on challenging the laboratory-based experimental models and quantitative methods that dominate fields such as psychology. Your reaction to this last statement will likely predict your response to Doing Research with Children and Young People. For some readers, the contributed chapters may seem just another salvo from the social constructivists, aimed at undermining positivist claims of research objectivity and generalizable truth. Others, like me, will welcome this collection, and its companion volume, The Reality of Research with Children and Young People (Lewis et al. 2004), as long overdue accounts of reflective research practice with children and young people.
As Vicky Lewis writes in her introductory chapter, the editors set two broad goals for the volume. One was to identify and reflect on the many issues arising out of research with children and young people. These include broad concerns such as ethics, power relations and the characteristics of respectful practice, but also how particular research frameworks shape not just the observer and the observed, but exert an often unacknowledged influence on research outcomes. Building on this awareness, the second goal was to help consumers of research question what they read by critically examining the products of research through the lens of reflective practice. Although the book is not a research methods book, in the sense of “how to do” research, it certainly takes as its focus the issues affecting choices of research questions, data collection and analysis, and dissemination of results. It is therefore an indispensable addition to more systematic research methods texts.
The 18 chapters of Doing Research with Children and Young People are organized into four thematic sections. The first section, “Setting the Context,” includes chapters on the changing nature of empirical research, the changing nature of childhood, the changing legal context of research with children (limited to the UK context) and ends with a discussion of the scientific paradigm of empirical research and its post-structuralist and social constructivist challengers. Together these chapters provide an historical account of changes in research theory and practice and in particular set the context for the transformation from doing research on to Doing Research with Children and Young People.
The next section, “Research Relations,” brings together four chapters focused on issues arising from the relations between the researcher and the researched. These include the role of ethics (as understood separately from legal considerations—not everything that is legal, we are told, is ethical), power relations, gender relations and participation. Emerging from the general critique of scientific research on human subjects, these chapters reflect a growing sensitivity to the power relations between adult researchers and children and young people as subjects of research.
The third section, “Diversity,” includes chapters that each explore the social construction of a particular category of research subject through the lens of age, gender, ethnicity, race and disability. Although each is treated separately, the authors stress the fact that children construct intersecting identities across multiple categories. In addition, children’s identities are not formed or practiced in isolation, but are produced within the many social relations in which they are a part, including families, peers and other social groups. More important for researchers, perhaps, are the implications of these multiple identities for research practice. In particular we are reminded to consider our own gendered, aged, and racialized positions and to be aware of how the interaction between researchers and researched is shaped by these relations and how these dynamics, in turn, influence research outcomes.
The final section, “Relevance, Evaluation and Dissemination,” includes discussions from three disciplinary perspectives, including health and social care, education and childhood studies. The main focus here is on the ethical and practical issues surrounding the publication of research results. The primary message is to make us aware of the often unintended effects research results may have on particular groups of children and young people, and that our responsibilities as researchers must include critical evaluation of the potential effects of our research.
In her introduction to the volume, Lewis identifies three key themes expressed throughout the chapters: (1) the choice of theories and methods strongly influences research outcomes, (2) the power relationship between the researcher and the researched affects the research process, and, (3) the increasing participation of children and young people in research raises important theoretical, ethical and practical issues. In my reading, however, I note two additional themes of particular interest to readers of Children, Youth and Environments, including a focus on the changing concepts of children and childhood and how these changes demand that researchers pay closer attention to the voices of children and young people in all phases of research practice.
Background to the profound changes in how childhood is conceptualized is presented in Chapter 3, “The Images of Childhood.” Here the authors trace the evolution of the idea of children from being seen as passive, incompetent, non-adults developing through universally predictable and linear stages en route to becoming adults, to viewing children and young people as active agents in their own social worlds, who understand themselves as members of multiple social groups while retaining an independent voice “conditioned by neither competence nor chronological age” (p. 35). The changes in both the way children are understood and the way childhood is researched emerged from the tensions between those who have daily contact/experience with children and researchers who do not. This divide was particularly evident between developmental psychologists who considered young children incapable of fully understanding their world and practitioners who daily witnessed evidence of competence. In Chapter 11, “Middle Childhood,” Mary Kellett and Sharon Ding argue cogently for thinking in terms of “different” not “lesser” competence.
Likewise, Sandy Fraser argues in Chapter 2 that, like everyone, children and young people possess a diversity of competencies and that our research practice must acknowledge this diversity, in part, by determining the appropriate methods and practices through negotiation with our young research partners. There has also been a sea-change in how older children—teens, in particular—have been conceptualized in research practice. Alan France highlights in Chapter 12, “Young People,” the changing research focus from youth as problem to be corrected through intervention, to research focused on the cultural and historical context of what it means to be a young person. Finally, the reader is asked to abandon the notion of singular youth identities and to consider, for example, how references to a “child with disabilities,” while highlighting the use of person-first references, still masks the fact that the child also has gender, ethnic, class and other identities as well. Furthermore, it is not just that cultural practices and norms impinge on youth, but that young people employ active and competent agency in these realms.
A second important theme has to do with making certain that children and young people have a voice in research that concerns their lives. As Alan France points out in Chapter 12, voice is a critical component of all social science research and is at the core of qualitative methods. But giving young people a voice in research is elusive as well. At best, it involves a negotiation between the researcher and the researched and an acknowledgement that what emerges is always a “blended voice” between the researcher and the researched. Even if it was possible, isolating the youth “voice” is problematic because young people do not live in isolation, but as members of social groups. Therefore, research with children and young people should provide a balance of other voices as well (family members, peers and teachers, to name a few). Finally, we are reminded as well of the importance of non-verbal communication in research with children and young people. To fully understand consent, for example, researchers need to pay close attention to non-verbal cues of distress or more subtle signs of desire to stop participating. Finally, researchers should ensure not just that the children and young people in their studies have a voice that is reflected in the data, but that they have a voice in all phases of research. Even more important than simply ensuring that children’s and young people’s voices are heard, researchers bear a responsibility to ensure that those in power respond in some meaningful way.
Doing Research with Children and Young People joins other important recent books reflecting the significant evolution in our understanding of children and the nature of childhood (James and Prout 1998; Graue and Walsh 1998; Holloway and Valentine 2000). As many of these chapters argue, reflective practice is the key to understanding better the lived experience of children and young people as well as improving the conditions of their lives. What Vicky Lewis and Mary Kellett present as a framework for “Emancipatory Disability Research” works equally well for anyone doing research with human subjects. Reflective practitioners understand that (1) the researcher as expert is inequitable, (2) that all people have a right to be consulted and involved in research that effects their lives, and (3) participation is important, not only because it helps address inequities in the research practice, but because it also improves the quality and relevance of the research itself. This book should be required reading of anyone Doing Research with Children and Young People, but is also highly recommended for anyone wishing to become a more reflective research practitioner.
References
Graue, M. Elizabeth and Daniel J. Walsh (1998). Studying Children in Context: Theories, Methods and Ethics. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Holloway, Sarah and Gill Valentine, eds. (2000). Children’s Geographies: Playing, Living, Learning. London: Routledge.
James, Allison and Alan Prout, eds. (1997). Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood : Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood. 2nd ed. London: Falmer Press.
Lewis, Vicky, Mary Kellett, Chris Robinson, Sandy Fraser and Sharon Ding, eds. (2004). The Reality of Research with Children and Young People. London: SAGE publications.
Reviewer Information
Samuel Dennis, Jr., received his Ph.D. in geography from the Pennsylvania State University and his MLA in landscape architecture from North Carolina State University. He is currently assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His recent research employs visual culture theory to examine youth participation in urban planning and design, particularly in the form of qualitative geographic information systems (GIS). His teaching and design practice are focused on urban open space planning and design, learning landscapes and participatory methods.