Tuesday 16th July
Wednesday 17th July
Thursday 18th July
Friday 19th July
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Surveying Children and Young People 2 |
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| Convenor | Ms Lisa Calderwood (Centre for Longitudinal Studies) |
While many large-scale surveys successfully collect a variety of different types of data from children and young people there is relatively little methodological evidence in this area. Much of the literature relating to children and young people's participation in research is taken from small-scale qualitative studies and tends to focus on ethical issues relating to the rights of children and young people. This session will cover experiences of including children and young people in surveys and survey design issues as they relate to children and young people. In particular, submissions are welcomed on:
- designing questionnaires for children and young people, including question testing methods and assessing the reliability and validity of children's self-reports
- collecting sensitive data from children and young people, including methods for ensuring privacy and encouraging accurate reporting
- inclusivity in data collection methods, including facilitating the participation of children with lower literacy levels
- ethical issues in involving children and young people in surveys, including gaining informed consent and protecting children's rights and well-being
- preventing non-response by engaging children and young people in research, including designing survey materials to appeal to children and using new technology and digital media for participant engagement
- collecting different types of data from children and young people, including physical measurements, cognitive assessments, biological samples and time use data
- using different methods of data collection and innovative technology for data collection, including the web and mobile phones
YLT is an annual postal survey of 16-year olds in Northern Ireland undertaken by ARK, a joint initiative by Queen's University Belfast and the University of Ulster. In its current format, the YLT survey was first undertaken in 2003. This presentation will reflect on some methodological, ethical and policy issues we encountered in the ten years of running this social attitudes survey among young people in Northern Ireland, a society coming out of conflict. We will reflect on how the survey content has broadened over time and now much more accurately reflects the 'life and times' of today's 16-year olds in Northern Ireland. The survey topics included some sensitive questions that had previously not been asked in Northern Ireland, or had been perceived to be controversial, such as attitudes and experiences to self-injury, loneliness, sexual health and sexual exploitation. We also reflect on the relationship with voluntary and statotory sector organisations which have often either commissioned us to undertake fieldwork or have used the survey for monitoring of policies.
Methodolodologically, we will reflect on the challenges of relying on administrative data (the UK Child Benefit Register) and the advantages and disadvantages of this. Furthermore, we will talk about the challenges of incorporating participatory elements in the survey: each year we ask some questions that were proposed by previous YLT respondents. We also consider respondents' comments and suggestions in the decision-making on the broader subject areas that should be involved in the next annual survey.
We present methodological aspects on using vignettes as an innovative way for surveying young people using a study on how teenagers evaluate peer violence and related interventions in their daily life.
Vignette studies use experimentally varied descriptions of situations or persons (vignettes) that are shown to respondents within surveys in order to elicit their judgments about these scenarios. In combination with quantitative research techniques they are a powerful research tool of high internal and external validity and with high potential for causal investigations.
In this study, which was conducted in Vienna (Austria) in 2012, each of the 1779 students (aged between 12 and 15 years) had to assess 8 text vignettes and 6 video vignettes that represented systematically varied descriptions of hypothetical violence scenarios with different context elements, e.g. different forms of violence and characteristics of involved persons. The video vignettes were produced with young lay-actors and a professional film team. Thus, the young respondents were confronted with rather specific, highly contextualized forms of violence and violent behavior instead of abstract concepts and aspects of violence as typical for standard questionnaires.
We discuss the strength of using vignettes as opposed to standard questionnaire designs. We also report about our experiences related to the computer assisted way of collecting our data. Assessing Vignettes, especially video vignettes, seem to be an attractive survey tool for investigating young people with relatively low requirements of literacy capability.
The early childhood cohort of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) will assess longitudinally the direct and indirect measurements regarding various factors relating to education in early infancy. Because of the profound significance of familial learning opportunities for child development, the NEPS is taking up the challenge of directly assessing the quality of familial learning opportunities that can be observed in parent-child interaction.
To gain reliable data on parent-child interaction, the NEPS has decided to take two steps of assessment, which both lay the ground for possible measurement errors:
1. Parent-child interaction, which is embedded in a personal interview during a visit to the family and structured by a standardized play situation, is videotaped by the interviewer.
2. Videos are analyzed afterwards by trained coders using a macroanalytic coding system that mainly focuses on the constructs of parents' sensitivity and responsiveness.
After describing both steps and the attempts to keep causes for measurement error at a low level, this presentation shall focus on first results and the nature of measurement errors in pilot studies for Wave 1 and 2. Finally, we discuss the adaptions to minimize measurement error for the 1st wave of the main study (n = 3,000), which started in October 2012, and the 2nd wave of the main study (n = 1000) starting in June 2013.
Children as respondents are a challenge to social scientits because their verbal, interactive and cognitive skills are not just different from those of adults but also vary among children. To follow the call for adequate methods we need to learn more about those skills in interview settings and their dependency on age.
Based on 112 semi-structured interviews with children aged 5 to 11 we examine children's verbal, cognitive and interactive skills. Each of 56 children was interviewed twice, once face-to-face, once via telephone. The two main variables for analysis are interview mode and respondent's age. By an innovative triangulation of qualitative and quantitative analyses gains and limitations of each data collection mode dependent on children's skills are examined. The qualitative approach is used as a vehicle also for a better understanding of question-answer processes in more standardised interviews. Consequently, it can help to enhance data quality in standardised approaches by adapting questions and procedures.
Verbal skills seem sufficient for simple questions even for 5-year-olds. Better communicative comptence, perspective taking and greater self-awareness facilitate interviews from the age of about 9 years. The downside of advanced interactive skills is social desirability bias at the age of 11. Logical thinking and reasoning seem sufficiently developed from the age of 9 years.
ELAP is an ongoing longitudinal survey about transition to adulthood and leaving care conditions in France. At 18 (21 at the most), youths in care have to leave state-run child care and fend for themselves. Considering the weakness of family ties and welfare policies (not accessible under 25), they might find themselves at risk of exclusion. What resources (educational background, job experiences, networks...) can they rely on to reach autonomy?
To deal with these issues, a two wave survey has been designed, tested and will be carried out in the field by the end of 2013. A representative sample of 1 500 youths in care (including minors) will be interviewed, first face-to-face and then by mobile phone, a few months before and after they leave care. In this presentation, based on the pilot survey, we'll go over methodological, legal and ethical issues raised by this sensitive topic and population, including:
- the questionnaire design and testing process, from preliminary qualitative interviews to question monitoring (on topics and phrasing);
- the design of a consent protocol, respectful both of the rights of parents (for minors, even when links are broken off) and the rights of youths;
- the communication tools (letters, leaflets, website and video) designed to inform the professionals on the survey and promote their cooperation with interviewers to reach the sampled youths;
- the methodological and ethical dimensions of the follow-up protocol, designed to avoid attrition between W1 and W2 in this very mobile and vulnerable young population.