Tracy Skelton @ Children as Social Actors network - collective notes

by Kim Brown, Tracy Rogers, and Lara Sanderson

 

These notes are an assemblage of our recollections of the discussion today - 1st Auust, 2014

·      Ethics committee are mindful of the issues faced by schools, who are being saturated by research requests. The flip side for researchers is finding willing participants amongst schools to partner with for research. Schools outside Dunedin also face numerous research requests from large-scale research projects.

·      Raises the question of how useful research might be for schools. We should be considering what participants might gain from our research. Is research intended to benefit participants or PBRF-driven?

·      In the UK currently, publically funded research must indicate and then report on the impact of the research. This system of accountability is favouring research that has demonstrable outcomes.

·      Children are often keen to get involved in research and many in the group have found children agentic in expressing when they do not wish to reply/continue participating. Offering children a range of verbal and non-verbal cues can support their voicing their withdrawal.

·      Parents/schools are often supportive of children participating in research because of the opportunities/learning participation offers.

·      Participation in research can place enormous time pressures on children, who may already have busy lives.

·      Research activities do not always take into consideration the varying abilities of the children involved (despite them being similar ages), nor are always age-appropriate. Take into consideration children’s varying abilities and build flexibility into the ethics application and research design.

·      Research activities may also place considerable demands on parents, who are required to support their children with research activities, transportation, appointments and so on.

·      Parents/carers and schools as gatekeepers – involving parents in the early planning stages of research design may help eliminate gatekeeping further down the track (although may displace children as being recognised as competent social actors).

·      Ethics application – how much are postgraduate students engaging with the document rather than the process of thinking through the process of building ethical relationships and conduct..

·      Ethical engagement in research is a two-way process and sometimes researchers are subject to questionable behaviour from participants. Requires ongoing consideration and learning.

·      Participant information and consent forms are not always culturally appropriate and reflect procedural ethics rather than ethics in practice. Researchers should argue for alternatives in their ethics application and provide a rationale for different approaches.

·      Perhaps the consent could include more statements with a positive orientation towards participation rather than repetition of the right to withdraw.

·      Researchers should see the ethics application as an open or honest conversation.

·      Tokens of appreciation: there seems to be a trend towards larger tokens being offered around Dunedin. Tokens need to be more age-appropriate and consideration shown that the token does not disadvantage or generate a cost for the family (eg. a movie ticket for children too young to watch a movie without an adult).

·      Ethical dilemmas presented by a duty of care towards participants

·      Suggestion that one place on the ethics committee could be reserved for staff call up to (like jury summons)

Post-grad discussion

To support a shift in thinking from the ethics application being merely procedural, to a situation where the ethics application is an aspect of ethics in practice, should postgraduate students undertake a compulsory paper or course in ethics? Is the supervision process enough to foster deepening understanding of research ethics?