Characteristics of responding-, nonresponding- and refusing-parents in an adolescent lifestyle choice study.

The acquisition of a random sample is one of the many methodological problems that arise when conducting research with adolescent populations. Frequently, due to ethical considerations associated with collecting data from adolescents, active parental consent procedures are required. The current study examined characteristics of parents who consented, refused consent, or did not respond to an active consent request for their children to participate in a large-scale study of adolescent lifestyle behaviors. Results indicated nonresponding-parents were more likely to be employed than consenting-parents. Further, differences were found for a number of attitudinal variables and about the importance of adolescent research. There were significant differences between refusing-parents, and consenting- and nonresponding-parents who were similar in their attitudes toward adolescent research. The findings suggest that nonresponding-parents are characteristically more similar to consenting-parents than to refusing-parents, which supports the use of passive consent procedures as a reasonable alternative to requiring active parental consent in adolescent research.     

Producing and Using Video Data in the Early Years: Ethical Questions and Practical Consequences in Research with Young Children

This article considers ethical questions and practical challenges arising from the production of video data with young children, and suggests that such considerations are reciprocal and that video data should be seen as constructed collaboratively by all participants. Video data can be a valuable means of eliciting children’s perspectives, but it raises particular issues of consent and confidentiality. Opportunities for young children to use video cameras are helpful in supporting informed consent and active participation, whilst the visual nature of video renders anonymity and confidentiality more difficult, and anonymisation of images may impact upon data quality. Video, like all research data, is influenced by the actions and biases of participants, and young children’s experiences as consumers of television will influence their reading of, and responses to, video data. An advantage of video is that it can provide participants with feedback about their participation. Challenges remain with regard to ownership.     

Active parental consent in school-based research. An examination of ethical and methodological issues

To date, most school-based research has used passive parental consent. However, the Family Privacy Protection Act of 1995 aims to change these requirements. The proposed legislation requires written parental consent if minors are to be asked "sensitive" questions as part of any program or activity funded in whole or in part by the federal government. This act is representative of a growing trend toward restricting research involving minors. Whether or not this act is passed by Congress, two lines of concern are highlighted by this legislation. The first deals with ethical issues surrounding consent procedures. For instance, are parental rights compromised when active consent is not mandated? A second line of inquiry pertains to the effect of active consent procedures on response rates and sample bias. In this article, the authors discuss ethical issues surrounding passive and active consent procedures and then report response rates from two projects in which active consent procedures were implemented.     

Ethical challenges in researching in group homes for people with severe learning difficulties: shifting the balance of power

Our aim in this paper is to open up debate about informed consent. We do this by presenting stories from group homes where staff have frustrated our research efforts and marginalised the interests of people with severe learning difficulties. We problematise normative ethics and argue that in some circumstances the basic principle of informed consent should be waived for employees of human service organisations. We maintain that, in such circumstances, researchers and an organisation’s senior managers can still act in a manner that is consistent with the broad aims of ethical regulation. We consider the role of Research Ethics Committees and suggest that in order to fully consider the conflicting interests of multiple stakeholders, the application of different ethical theories is required. A requirement for making balanced ethical judgements is to see outside the extant dominant view of ethical research standards and behaviour.     

Differential attrition rates and active parental consent.

Active parental consent in survey research poses ethical and practical concerns. One common argument against the requirement of active consent procedures is its effect on participation rates. There is additional concern that higher risk groups may be underrepresented in the final sample. Empirical support of differential attrition, however, is lacking. In the current multisite longitudinal study, passive consent procedures were approved for the collection of pretest data. For subsequent years of data collection, active parental consent procedures were required. In this article, we use the pretest data to examine demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral differences between those students for whom active consent was provided and those for whom active consent was either denied or for whom no response was received. The results indicate that active consent procedures produce deleterious effects on participation rates and lead to an underrepresentation of at-risk youth in the sample.     

Negotiating Informed Consent with Children in School‐Based Research: A Critical Review

The methods literature on research with children recognises the challenges of negotiating informed consent with this group. Special ‘child‐friendly’ techniques are advocated to overcome these challenges. We argue that, upon closer inspection, research with children foregrounds more fundamental problems with informed consent that are not easily resolved. Drawing from three ethical texts commonly consulted in our own research fields, we highlight problems of information, understanding, authority, capacity and voluntarity. We conclude that informed consent is more problematic than is generally admitted, and that researchers would benefit from more openly acknowledging its limitations.     

Characteristics of adolescents who provide neither parental consent nor refusal for participation in school-based survey research

Schools offer a convenient setting for research on adolescents. However, obtaining active written parental consent is difficult. In a 6th-grade smoking study, students were recruited with two consent procedures: active consent (parents must provide written consent for their children to participate) and implied consent (children may participate unless their parents provide written refusal). Of 4,427 invited students, 3,358 (76%) provided active parental consent, 420 (9%) provided active parental refusal, and 649 (15%) provided implied consent (parental nonresponse). The implied consent procedure recruited more boys, African Americans, students with poor grades, and smokers. This dual-consent procedure is useful for collecting some limited data from students who do not provide active consent or refusal.     

A Comparison of Methods of Increasing Parental Consent Rates in Social Research

Previous research on children requiring written parental consenthas indicated that this requirement reduces samples to halfthe size they might otherwise be and results in overrepresentationof whites and underrepresentation of blacks. Within the courseof a four-year study, four methods were utilized to increaseparental consent rates, particularly for black students. Allmethods increased consent rates. Providing an incentive to theparents increased consent rates significantly more for the whitestudents than for the black students, while communication withthe children and incentives to the children resulted in consentrates which were more similar for the two racial groups. Communicationwith the parents was the most effective method for both blackand white children, but was also the most time consuming.     

Risky Experiences for Children Online: Charting European Research on Children and the Internet

Children’s online experience, especially the risks to which they might be exposed, is an increasingly important policy and research concern. This article reports an analysis of the amount, nature and range of empirical research concerning children’s online experiences across 18 European countries. Research teams in each country have collaborated, as part of the ‘EU Kids Online’ network, to identify, code and compare studies. In all, 235 studies were identified and coded in a publicly accessible data repository. All countries had some available evidence regarding children’s online risky experiences, with strengths mainly in relation to research into access and use; several countries were found to have a richer evidence base encompassing research into online learning, literacy, participation, parental mediation and so forth. Regarding risks, more research focused on potentially harmful content than on risky forms of contact. Key research gaps included research on younger children, into mobile online platforms, and into certain types of online risk. The article concludes by observing the challenges facing researchers in this field, including the time‐sensitivity of research that quickly dates, the difficulty of tailoring research to meet the needs of a demanding policy agenda, the complexity of designing projects that recognise the contextual and contingent factors that mediate children’s online activities, and the ethical considerations that apply when asking children about private, transgressive or upsetting experiences.     

Variation within households in consent to link survey data to administrative records: evidence from the UK Millennium Cohort Study

This study expands our knowledge of consent in linking survey and administrative data by studying respondents’ behaviour when consenting to link their own records and when consenting to link those of their children. It develops and tests a number of hypothesised mechanisms of consent, some of which were not explored in the past. The hypotheses cover: parental pride, privacy concerns, loyalty to the survey, pre-existing relations with the agency holding the data, and interviewer effects. The study uses data from the longitudinal Millennium Cohort Study to analyse the correlates of consent in multiple domains (i.e. linkage of education, health and economic records). The findings show that respondent’s behaviour vary depending on the consent domain and on the person within the household for whom consent is sought. In particular, the cohort member’s cognitive skills and the main respondent’s privacy concerns have differential effects on consent. On the other hand, loyalty to the survey proxied by the longitudinal response history has a significant and strong impact on consent irrespective of the outcome. The findings also show that interviewers account for a large proportion of variations in consent even after controlling for the characteristics of the interviewer’s assignment area. In total, it is possible to conclude that the significant impact of some of the correlates will lead to sample bias which needs to be accounted for when working with linked survey and administrative data.     

Mid- and Late-Life Divorce and Parents’ Perceptions of Emerging Adult Children’s Emotional Reactions

A paucity of research exists pertaining to the experiences of emerging adult children in the context of parental divorce. This study uses Paul R. Amato’s divorce-stress-adjustment framework to organize a set of predictors that potentially influence parents’ perceptions of their emerging adult children’s emotional reactions to a divorce. Data come from a nationally representative AARP study, from which we analyzed a sample of 283 parents who experienced a divorce at age 40 years or older. Results indicate that parental gender, nature of contact with the ex-partner, divorce timing, time spent contemplating divorce, a history of parental divorce, and the reason for divorce influence parents’ perceptions of their emerging adult children’s reaction to the divorce. Implications, limitations, and future direction for research are discussed.     

Children’s Experiences of Completing a Computer‐Based Violence Survey: Ethical Implications

This article aims to contribute to the discussion about the ethics of research on children when studying sensitive issues such as violence. The empirical analysis is based on the accounts given by children (11 377) who completed a computer‐based questionnaire about their experiences of violence (‘The Finnish Child Victim Survey 2008’) and their reflections on the survey. We argue that experiences of violence should not be excluded from the research agenda on children due to ethical reasons, but that a more sophisticated practice should be developed instead to meet the needs and rights of children as informants. © 2010 The Author(s). Journal compilation 2010 National Children’s Bureau and Blackwell Publishing Limited.     

Desiring Self‐Determination in Research and Beyond: Parental Consent Requirements and Situated Ethics for Migrant Young People Living amid Changing Family Dynamics

How are procedural research ethics complicit in homogenising and paternalising young people? Through a youth‐centred ethnographic study completed in Canada, I illustrate how migrant young people's complex experiences of family separation, responsibility, and autonomy sit in relation to parental consent requirements for research. By complicating notions of childhood and critically discussing capacity to consent, I elucidate how procedural ethics can negate diversity among young people and perpetuate the structural barriers some face in determining their lives. More flexible ethical procedures and responses could reduce barriers and better accommodate young people's inclusion by recognising their specific circumstances, desires and competencies through heightened contextual awareness.     

Informed Consent with Children and Young People in Social Research: Is There Scope for Innovation?

Over 20 years of research has enhanced our understanding about the methodological and ethical benefits and challenges of involving children and young people in research. Concurrently, the increasing bureaucratisation of research ethics governance within UK universities has reified expectations about the methods used to gain informed consent for research participation. This paper explores how social researchers in the UK are navigating this tension and whether there is any scope for innovation through the use of technologies in how children and young people provide informed consent to take part in research. We conclude there is a need for the co‐creation of research information with children and young people and greater transparency by sharing creative solutions.     

Qualitative Health Research with Children

The authors of this article identify and discuss some of the practical and ethical issues of qualitative research with children. The problems are illustrated through a research study about children's experience of asthma, and the way in which they perceive and interpret their condition. It is shown that social research with children has inherent difficulties relating to access, ethical and developmental issues. Researchers do not only have to gain parental permission but also want the child to enter the research voluntarily. Because of the children's stage of development and the asymmetrical relationship between researcher and informants, adequate safeguards and awareness of these problems are essential.     

What Can We Say Regarding Shared Parenting Arrangements for Swedish Children?

ABSTRACT

Joint physical custody (JPC) refers to children living alternatively and about equally with both parents after a parental separation or divorce. The practice has been debated in relation to child well-being because of the frequent moves imposed on children and the potential stress from living in 2 homes. This study describes the background to the high frequency of Swedish children in JPC and the results from research on Swedish children’s well-being in this living arrangement. Children in JPC report better well-being and mental health than children who live mostly or only with 1 parent. No Swedish studies have found children’s health to be worse in JPC than in sole parental care from child age of 3 years and beyond. The existing literature cannot, however, inform us about the mechanisms behind the findings. The risks of selection effects into living arrangements are plausible. For this purpose, longitudinal studies are warranted.     

Parental Involvement with Children at School, Home, and Community

Previous research has focused on examining the effects of parental involvement on children’s academic achievement. Less attention has been placed on exploring types of parental involvement from parental reports. This study combines in a single analytic framework predictors from earlier studies with parent-based reports of involvement in three venues: home, school, and community. We examine two categories of predictors: social and economic resources, and parent perceptions and experiences with child’s school. Using data from the Parent and Family Involvement Survey, analyses were performed for White, Black, and Latino parents. Consistent with previous findings, our research finds that minority parents are less involved at their child’s school than White parents. No ethnic differences in home or community involvement were found.     

Consent requires a relationship: rethinking group consent and its timing in ethnographic research

ABSTRACT

Activist groups in ethnographic research re-negotiated our Ethics Committee’s expected order of securing consent before data collection, demonstrating the importance of researchers taking time to build relationships first. Although the Ethics Committee expected us to obtain group consent, the literature provides little guidance on how to do this. We developed a Memorandum of Understanding to summarize what forms of participant observation each group agreed to and how we would reciprocate. In this article, we (re)conceptualize consent, using analogies to consent in social contract theory and sexual relations to offer a critical perspective on what constitutes consent. We argue that taking time to build relationships before expecting research participants to consent and replacing informed consent with a negotiated agreement is a more ethical approach. We advocate for Ethics Committees to expand the meaning of ‘informed consent’ and review its timing, especially for ethnographic research with groups.     

Responsibility and Privacy — Ethical Aspects of Using GPS to Track Children

With GPS technology, children can be monitored 24 h a day throughout their childhood and teens. In spite of the advantages in terms of safety and security, there are ethical problems with this. In this article, some of these are discussed. First, the concept of parental responsibility is explored and discussed in the context of GPS and children. Second, against the background of psychological research, it is argued that it is not conducive for children's sense of responsibility to be constantly monitored. Third, the question whether children have a right to privacy is discussed. It is concluded that due to the considerable uncertainty concerning the effects of constant monitoring as well as the ethical problems discussed, we ought to adopt a cautious attitude to using GPS to track children.