https://www.mdu.se/

Methodological issues when conducting research with children and adolescents

Maja Söderbäck, Marie Golsäter, Maria Harder,

CHILD Research Group, Sweden

This symposium will focus on methodological issues and challenges using different techniques in qualitative research when conducting research with children and adolescents in health care. The session will consist of three linked presentations that:

1. Provide experiences of using video technique in observing children’s expressions of actions.  
2. Provide experiences of using participatory methods such as drawings and pictures to encourage children to tell about their perceptions on a specific theme.
3. Provide experiences from focus group interviews with children and adolescents.

The concluding discussion will focus on methodological issues related to children´s competence to bodily and verbally express their wish, experiences, motivation and feelings, when using these techniques. Also, research findings from these techniques will be discussed. Furthermore, ethical considerations and the researchers’ interpretation of the children´s perspectives are issues demanding reflections.

i  The use of video technique in observing children’s expressions of actions  

Maja Söderbäck

School of Health, Care and Social welfare, Mälardalen University, Sweden

Maria Harder

School of Health, Care and Social welfare, Mälardalen University and Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

Video technique is found to be useful in qualitative research when the interest is to explore young children’s expressions of actions in situations where they participate as actors with parents and health care professionals. Through this technique the whole situation and the child´s varying and detailed expressions are captured. Thus the use of video provides the opportunity to capture the child’s subjective perspective. The researcher’s role is to be objective and follow the child in the course of the situation without interference.

Further, the video technique allows the researcher to study a child’s expressions several times during the analysis, and to reflect and validate with co-researchers. However, the interpretation of the children's expressions of actions needs to be guided by the intention to understand the children’s perspectives.

This presentation will demonstrate issues related to the use of video technique when observing children three to five years of age during health visits in a Primary Child Health Care situation and in a care procedure involving venepuncture. Further, discussion concerning analysis of the gathered data with respect for children´s competence to bodily and verbally express their wish, experiences, motivation and feelings will be brought up.

1. ii.                  The use of drawings and pictures as participatory methods to encourage children to tell about their perceptions on a specific theme

Maria Harder

School of Health, Care and Social welfare, Mälardalen University and Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

Maja Söderbäck

School of Health, Care and Social welfare, Mälardalen University, Sweden

The movement from doing research on children to do research with children within the health care area challenges researchers to use participatory methods. The use of drawings and pictures are such participatory methods which allow children to share their perceptions and experiences of a situation. Drawings and pictures are familiar from children’s every-day-lives and suit their competence. Furthermore, the use of drawings and pictures facilitate the interaction between the child and the researcher. To let children make drawings about a specific theme and tell about them announce the children as experts and that their perceptions and experiences are valuable. The use of pictures makes a theme well-defined for the children and will make it easier for them to associate and talk unconstrained. The combination of various participatory methods in one data-collection might contribute to detailed descriptions of children’s perceptions about a phenomenon. This presentation will demonstrate a combination of participatory methods which have contributed to grasp children’s perceptions of various situations as for example going through a vaccination. The presentation will further bring up methodological issues related to the use of participatory methods and the analysis of grasping children’s perceptions with respect to their competence.

1. iii.                The use of  focus group interviews with children and adolescents

Marie Golsäter

School of Health Sciences, Jönköping University, Sweden.

Karin Enskär

School of Health Sciences, Jönköping University, Sweden.

According the Convention on the Rights of the Child, children and adolescents have the right to be heard in matters concerning them. Focus group interviews is a useful way to voice children's and adolescent's perspectives. The interaction that occurs in a focus group can contribute to new dimensions of a topic from the participant’s perspective and contributes to the exploration of perspectives that might remain undetected in one to-one interviews.

Focus group interviews might also encourage children and adolescents to express their own view instead of answering in a way they believe the interviewer wants them to answer. One disadvantage could be that those not comfortable taking part in groups may choose not to participate or might have no chance to express their experiences.

This presentation will demonstrate the methodological issues revealed during focus group interviews with children and adolescents regarding their experiences of health and life style dialogues with the school nurse. Issues such as performing focus groups interviews with participants in various age groups, the size of the group and the use of mixed or unisexual groups will be brought up.