The Scottish Government

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Chapters 1 to 3

CHAPTER ONE - INTRODUCTION

This report describes the findings of a short research project commissioned under the Scottish Executive Education Department's Sponsored Research Programme and conducted by Dr Julie Brownlie of the University of Stirling and Rachel Ormston and Simon Anderson of the Scottish Centre for Social Research.

In recent years, an increased focus on children's rights (UNICEF 1995) and a related concern to involve children in decision-making affecting their lives has led to the participation of children - whether in relation to policy, research or practice - being accepted as a 'good thing'. In relation to research, this participatory focus was, until fairly recently, concerned mainly with ways of involving children more effectively as research participants - a concern reflected in the linguistic shift from reference to 'research on children' to 'research with children'. Since the mid-1990s, however, there has also been a growing interest in the idea of research by children and young people [1]: there have been several significant peer-research [2] projects of this kind in the UK and there is a small but growing body of literature on the subject of children as researchers (Alderson, 2001; Jones, 2003; Lewis et al, 2004).

Despite these developments, and the fact that children and young people are amongst the highest users of state services (Hill et al, 2004) and constitute a major focus for policy and research, very little has been written about how young people as researchers could inform government-funded social research either in Scotland or the UK more generally. Instead, most examples of young people doing social research have come from one-off projects, usually funded by the voluntary or charitable sector and involving young people in relation to a specific issue or service (for specific examples, see de Winter and Noom, 2003; France, 2000; Hackett et al, 1996; Saunders and Broad, 1997; West, 1995).

The principal aim of this project was, then, to explore the problems and possibilities of incorporating a 'children as researchers' perspective into the agenda of government social research in Scotland. In addition, it aimed to map existing or current initiatives in the UK, and in Scotland in particular, which involve young people as researchers; explore the views and perspectives of a range of a stakeholders, including researchers [3], research managers, policy makers and young people who had experience of carrying out the research; and to suggest possible ways of reconciling key tensions and developing resources in this area.

The research itself had three main elements: a mapping of recent projects in Scotland and the UK more generally; a review of existing literature relating to children doing research; and a series of qualitative interviews with researchers, policy makers, research managers and young researchers themselves. In total, 5 policy makers, 3 research managers, 11 researchers and 6 young people were interviewed, using a mix of individual, pair and group interviews. These lasted approximately one hour and all were tape-recorded and transcribed for subsequent analysis using QSR. N6, a software package for qualitative analysis.

The report has the following broad structure. Chapter Two sets the issue of children doing social research in the context of broader developments relating to participation, consultation [4] and related research traditions. Chapter Three investigates the main ways in which children and young people are involved in doing research in and outside government. It also summarises the results of the mapping exercise (a fuller account of this is contained in the annex) and looks at key issues emerging from the existing literature about the practical challenges of involving young people directly in the research process. Chapters Four and Five revisit the themes from Chapters Two and Three but from the perspective of whether it might be possible to develop such approaches in the context of government social research and through the specific lens of the interviews conducted for this study. Chapter Six summarises the main themes emerging from the study and highlights possible ways forward for the Scottish Executive in its thinking about children and young people's involvement in research.

Key points from this chapter

· Recent years have seen a growing focus on children's rights and in ways of involving children and young people more directly in decisions that affect their lives. In research terms, this has been reflected in a linguistic shift from talking about 'research on' to research with' and now, increasingly, to 'research by' children and young people.

· But despite widespread commitment to a participatory agenda, a clear policy focus on issues affecting children and young people, and a proliferation of projects outside government giving young people a more direct role in the research process, such approaches have not generally formed a major part of government funded research in Scotland or the UK more generally.

· The principal aim of this project was, therefore, to explore the problems and possibilities of incorporating a 'children as researchers' perspective into the agenda of government social research in Scotland.

· It had three main elements: a mapping of recent projects in Scotland and the UK more generally; a review of existing literature relating to children doing research; and a series of qualitative interviews with researchers, policy makers, research managers and young researchers themselves.

CHAPTER TWO : SETTING THE CONTEXT: BETWEEN PARTICIPATION AND RESEARCH

Introduction

Before looking in any detail at the experience of children and young people doing social research, we want to locate this possibility in relation to two related developments: the emergence of what might be termed the 'child participation' agenda and the increasing significance of a broader tradition of 'inclusive research'.

The child participation agenda - key developments, discourses and debates

Policy, participation and consultation

As noted in Chapter One, an increased focus on children's rights, and a related concern to involve children in decision-making affecting their lives, has led to the participation of children - whether in relation to policy, research or practice - being accepted as a 'good thing'.

Children and young people's participation in decision-making has certainly risen rapidly up the policy agenda across the UK in the past decade. In England & Wales, for example, the participation agenda is at the heart of high-level strategies for children and young people emanating from Westminster (Every Child Matters, the Youth Matters Green Paper), the Welsh Assembly (Children and young people strategy: Rights to Action) and the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister in Northern Ireland (Making it R Wrld 2: Consultation on a Draft Strategy for Children and Young People in Northern Ireland). Following the model provided by the Department for Educationi and Skills (DfES) in "Learning to Listen" [5], which sets out core principles for the involvement of children and young people in the planning, delivery and evaluation of government policies and services, many Westminster departments (e.g. DfT, DCA, DEFRA - please spell these out in full) have produced action plans on involving children and young people in their work. Specific initiatives to support this involvement include the DfES's Children and Youth Board and the Northern Ireland Young People's Advisory Forum, both of which involve a small group of young people in providing regular advice and feedback on policies direct to central government. Young trainers from the National Youth Agency also recently led workshops for 75 DfES staff to help them understand and use participation methods with children and young people.

In Scotland, specifically, public bodies are subject to various legislative requirements to involve children and young people in decisions which affect them. The Children (Scotland) Act 1995 requires a person making a major decision about a child to 'have regard so far as practicable to the views (if he wishes to express them) of the child concerned, taking account of the child's age and maturity' [6]. Other legislation which places more specific requirements on bodies to involve children in public decisions includes the Standards in Scotland's Schools etc. (Scotland) Act 2000, which requires pupils to be consulted on all school development plans, and the Local Government in Scotland Act 2003, which requires that young people and youth work bodies have a say in the Community Planning Process. [7] While these legislative requirements all apply primarily to local rather than national decision-making bodies, the principle that children's views should be taken into account in relation to all matters which affect them closely reflects Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child [8] (UNCRC) and is frequently cited in Scottish Executive guidance on policy and practice relating to children.

At a national level, the Child Strategy Statement, first issued by the Scottish Office in 1997 and revised by the Scottish Executive in 2000, sets out the Scottish Executive's aim of 'child-proofing' all policies that affect children either directly or indirectly, to ensure that they identify and take proper account of children's interests. [9] It suggests that 'taking into account the views of children is one important way of doing this' and, referring to Article 12 of the UNCRC, states that:

Ministers believe that the Scottish Executive should be proactive in obtaining the views of children on matters of significance to them in order to comply with the spirit of the article.

Of particular relevance to this study (given the debate over whether children are better placed to access and represent the 'genuine' voice of other children in research), the guidance states that 'a range of ways of taking the views of children might be needed, with care being taken to ensure that the results of the consultation are not an interpretation of children's views by adults'.

In addition to its Child Strategy Statement, the Scottish Executive's seven point strategic 'vision' for Scotland's children and young people, referred to in many key policy documents and guidelines, [10] includes the aim that children be:

Respected and Responsible. Children, young people and their parents should be involved in decisions that affect them, should have their voices heard and should be encouraged to play an active and responsible role in their community

The Scottish Executive has also supported (financially or practically) a variety of initiatives specifically designed to provide mechanisms for children and young people's involvement in public decisions. These include the Scottish Youth Parliament, Dialogue Youth, the Trojan Project and the Children's Commissioner for Scotland (Further details of these and other initiatives can be found in the annex.).

Voluntary organisations such as Save the Children Scotland and Children in Scotland as well as organisations representing youth workers and young people like YouthLink and Young Scot, also play an important role in ensuring children's views feed into Scottish policy - for example, by conducting research about children and young people's views or co-ordinating their responses to government consultations.

The case for children's participation

The case for participation has been framed in myriad ways (Howard et al, 2002). Cleaver distinguishes between arguments based on 'efficiency' - that participation will produce better outcomes (in relation, for example, to policies, services, citizenship, child protection, the meeting of legal responsibilities) - and those based on 'empowerment' (that it will improve or change people's lives) while, at the same time, observing that the mechanisms for achieving the latter are often 'conveniently fuzzy' (2001: 38). The two sets of arguments are, however, far from distinct: if, as Hill et al (2004) claim, the focus on the gains that arise from the process of taking part eclipse any actual impact or outcome, the resulting sense of disillusionment could have negative consequences for both the individual young person and society.

Described as 'the process of sharing decisions which affect one's life and the life of the community in which one lives' (Hart, 1992:5) and as a 'taking part in making public decisions' (Kirby and Bryson, 2002), participation has come to be understood as a crucial aspect of citizenship and as a human right. It is clear that participation activities are widespread - inclusive of both one-off consultations and young people's ongoing involvement in institutions like youth councils or the DfES Children and Youth Board - and that the range of children and young people involved in participation practices is also very varied. Over the years, different models of participation have emerged, perhaps the best known of which is the ladder of participation outlined by Hart (1992), in which he describes a progression from tokenistic involvement of young people to young people developing projects themselves and sharing decision-making with adults (Wade and Badham, 2001). A note of caution has been expressed in relation to many of these models, both in terms of the need to recognise context - different levels of involvement may be more appropriate in some settings than others - and also the need to ascertain how, and indeed if, young people wish to be involved (Liabo et al, 2002). In terms of the focus of participation outcomes, these can be individual or community-based (Rochas, 1997 in Howard et al, 2002) and public or private. Much of the participation literature refers to participation in relation to public decision-making but it is worth, as Sinclair (2004) does, distinguishing further between participation in relation to (a) particular organisations and services, (b) local or national government policy and (c) the evaluation of or research into these initiatives.

Children's participation: an uncomplicated good?

In the last couple of years, a more critical agenda has emerged in relation to participation generally, an agenda rooted in the unease felt by some over the unquestioning acceptance of how participation is currently framed in the UK (Tisdall and Davis, 2004; Sinclair, 2004):

there is considerable confusion, both about what counts as participation, what participation is for, and exactly how participation impacts on social exclusion (Seminar participants, 2004:103).

This critique has taken a number of forms. There are methodological concerns about the representativeness of many participation practices and, as a result, the validity of some of the claims made by participatory projects, but there are also fundamental questions now being asked - reflected in the above extract - about whether participation has, in fact, had any meaningful impact:

doubts have been expressed about whether children's participation in policy formation actually brings it closer to their lived realities, achieves change or improves the outcomes for them (Hill et al, 2004:83).

While there have been moves to provide standards for statutory and voluntary organisations to assess their practice in involving children and young people (Wade and Badham, 2003), as Kirby and Bryson note, 'anecdotal evidence and untested assumptions about what works' (2002:9) remain pervasive in this area. Although writing in relation to the development field, Cleaver's observation that participation has been reduced to 'an act of faith', to applying certain techniques and avoiding 'divisive' issues of power and politics (2001:36) has, for some, wider resonance. In particular, in relation to young people, there is a concern that the participation agenda has been reduced to ascertaining young people's views as service users. In relation to research, the tendency to justify research with young people only in terms of it having policy relevance could be read in similar terms. Not only does this mean that the broader concerns and interests that inform young people's everyday lives are ignored but, as Walmsley and Johnston (2003) have framed it in relation to the learning disability field, too great an emphasis on service evaluation can channel energy away from challenging existing services and, therefore, away from the possibility of social change. To this extent, participation can come to be experienced less as a participatory than a regulatory process (Prout, 2002). Even remaining within a service orientated framework, however, there are good reasons to look at children's everyday experiences in the private sphere, not least because it is here that young people tend to learn about decision-making (Hill et al, 2004).

But a growing awareness of the need to be critical of the participation discourse, and to be aware that organisations may seek to secure the benefits of participation while avoiding the costs (Mosse, 2001), does not seem - at least in relation to children and young people - to have translated into an 'anti-participation' agenda (Cook and Kothari, 2001: 13). It appears that the commitment to involve young people remains strong, but that part of this commitment is now to reflect critically on the nature and outcome of those same participation practices.

Building cultures of participation

Part of this more critical reflection includes research which suggests that children and young people's active involvement in public decision making works best when participation is built into an organisation and where staff have an opportunity to develop skills to work effectively with young people. Increasingly, then, the emphasis is on building 'cultures of participation' within organisations (Kirby et al, 2004). Such cultures, Kirby et al (2004) suggest, depend on committed senior and front-line staff, formal systems for feeding in young people's views, dedicated participation workers, adequate resources and staff, and good multi-agency and team working. Conversely, Kirby and Bryson (2001) highlight that time constraints, output requirements, formality, bureaucracy and complexity can all act as barriers to participation. Negative attitudes of parents and other 'community adults' might also be a barrier. Wade and Badham (2003) have identified seven standards to help secure sustained and beneficial participation of young people in organisations. These relate to shared values, strategy, structures, systems, staff, elected members and trustees, skills and knowledge, and styles of leadership. For example, key questions for organisations arising from these standards include: Are children and young people involved in developing and reviewing strategies for involving them? Are there structures and systems set up to sustain involvement of a range of children and young people? Are there dedicated people supporting an active involvement strategy? Are staff given training to encourage participation? Is there support to champion all of the above at senior and executive level so that children and young people eventually could hold the organisation to account? These questions offer a useful general context for thinking about stakeholders' views analysed in Chapters Four and Five.

A culture of participation in government: challenges and possibilities

Researchers have also begun to look critically at participation specifically in relation to government structures. Percy-Smith (1998), in thinking about participation in relation to local authorities, for example, noted that negative social attitudes about children's competence, the structure and functioning of authorities (and, in particular, the often paternalistic attitudes of bureaucrats), hierarchical structures and the fact that too few adults receive training on involving young people in decision-making, all contribute to young people's exclusion. He concludes that, in relation to local authorities, there needs to be greater flexibility in funding cycles and reporting structures. Moss and Petrie's work on turning children's services into children's spaces is based on the idea of children's agendas co-existing with adult ones (Moss and Petrie, 2002). These spaces call for fundamental changes so that 'professionals are facilitators rather than technicians and both children and adults are co-constructors of knowledge and expertise'(Hill et al, 2004: 84). They do give examples of moving towards this way of working in relation to children's services - including in Scotland - but, in practice, the barriers described above do still make this difficult to achieve on a wider scale.

Kirby and Bryson (2001), too, have looked at governmental structures and in their report make reference to the Scottish Dialogue Youth model as a way of holding local authorities accountable. They also point out that at a national level, it should be easier for smaller countries, like Scotland and Wales, to co-ordinate various participation initiatives. The Carnegie Young People Initiative recently launched a programme entitled 'Making It Count' - Action Learning for Participation. Through a series of pilot projects, this aims to bring together senior officials from government bodies (UK and devolved administrations) and to support them, over 9-12 months, to develop realistic and sustainable ways of building in children and young people's involvement to their business and strategic planning. [11]

Increasingly, then, the focus emerging from this more critical research on participation, and, in particular, on building cultures of participation, is less on how to involve young people in existing structures and more on how these structures have to change to allow for young people's meaningful involvement. Within the participation literature, debates about how children should participate - whether through adult-orientated projects like school councils, youth parliaments etc. - or through more directly participative projects where children are not acting as representatives of other children but rather as actors trying to shape agendas on their own terms (Hill et al, 2004; Tisdall and Davis, 2004) - are, as will be discussed later, mirrored in the literature on how children and young people should be involved in research. The latter model in which children act more to promote rather than represent children (Tisdall and Davis, 2004) also faces problems relating to inclusiveness and, crucially, because of their potential for unpredictability and departure from the adult agenda, difficulties of attracting funding.

Research as a form of participation

While, as indicated, some of the above literature on young people and public decision-making has relevance for thinking about research by young people, much of it has not engaged directly with this particular issue or more generally with the role of research in the context of policy. Instead, the focus within the policy participation literature has tended to be on consultation.

Nevertheless, if participation is read as any activity which allows young people to influence decision making - at whatever level - then, clearly, research can be understood as one dimension of participation. Clarke et al (2001) suggest that young people's involvement in the doing of research is 'political' exactly because it has the potential to influence policy - to challenge the power imbalances which mean young people often do not have access to policy makers and the policy making process in the way adults do, for example, through voting and membership of decision-making bodies. They also suggest it is political to the extent that it challenges power imbalances between researcher and the researched and the tendency to 'surrender the power to investigate, interpret and report their lives to other groups' (Dyson and Meagher, 2001: 64).

There are examples of research practice by young people that can be more explicitly linked in with the broader participation agenda outlined above, including research taking place within organisations such as local authorities or schools. Flutter and Ruddock (2004), for instance, bring together aspects of the participation discourses discussed above and research practice when, in describing 'students as researchers' projects, they talk about pupil participation ladders where the top rung of the ladder is 'pupils as fully active and co-researchers'. Policy areas, they suggest, that might look different from the perspective of students include truancy, male underachievement and classroom discipline.

Another way in which research by young people can more directly be thought of as a form of participation is where young people themselves carry out evaluations of policy participation projects (Cutler and Taylor, 2003). Kirby and Bryson's (2002) review of evaluations of young people's participation in public decision-making, however, notes that very few evaluations were in fact carried out by young people, though this has to be set in the context of how few evaluations of these projects have taken place in general. At the same time, however, they also note the need for rigorous research programmes to make comparisons across projects and to rely not just on stakeholders' views but also 'objective measures' (2002:55). This is a point which resonates with the methodological concerns, noted above, that have arisen in relation to some participation projects

In Chapter Three, and in more detail in the annex, we outline a raft of small, often one-off projects involving children and young people as researchers in the UK. These are usually funded by voluntary agencies or local authorities and are focused on issues relevant to national or local policy such as young people's health or housing needs. In practice, however, while these projects may shape local practices, the relationship between research and government policy - regardless of whether or not it is adults or young people who are doing the research - is often far less direct and linear than Clark et al's (2001) account above appears to imply. There are many examples of policy that have little to do with research and a great deal to do with politics, and also evidence of a relationship between research evidence and public policy which varies across policy areas. In short, as Davies et al note, policymaking is rarely a 'clearly defined event or explicit set of decisions' (2000: 15) and instead is often far more diffuse and complex, involving parties in and outside of government. While the premise of evidence based (or even 'informed' or 'aware') policy foregrounds a particular understanding of what constitutes reliable and valid research and relatedly, who counts as a credible researcher, in practice, policy makers look to research to serve a number of functions - ranging from providing 'robust evidence' to a more diffuse 'insight' role. [12] While there might be talk of 'methodological hierarchies' (Davies et al, 2000: 7) informing the government's approach to research in the context of evidence based policy, therefore - and an assumption that research by children and young people comes fairly low down this hierarchy - in practice, it is unlikely that only one research methodology is in fact drawn upon.

Young people as researchers, however, need to be located not just in relation to research contexts inside government but also in relation to the broader research traditions which exist outside. We conclude this chapter by looking at these traditions and some of the issues they raise for children as researchers.

THE 'INCLUSIVE' RESEARCH TRADITION

While children and young people's involvement in the 'doing' of social research can be seen as an extension of participatory research approaches 'with' children, these practices are also linked to other social research traditions including - but not exclusively - emancipatory, user-led and feminist research. This history of 'inclusive research' (Walmsley and Johnson, 2003), while containing significant differences both of degree and kind - most notably in relation to the question of control (Turner and Beresford, 2005) - points to two themes which have influenced some people's (though by no means everyone's) thinking about why young people should be involved in research. These themes are the importance of creating social change - of research being 'useful' for those involved - and of research being an empowering process involving those affected by the research. Debates in relation to these themes are present in current discussions about research by children and young people: for example, about how to 'resolve the tension between research which is academically rigorous, acceptable to funding organisations and publishable, and research which is of use to the people who are subject to it, which is relevant to their needs and can inform and promote social change' (Walmsley and Johnson, 2003: 9).

The 'participation versus rigour' debate

While the recent re-packaging of participatory research approaches as 'citizen research' [13] can be collapsed within the broader participation agenda, drawing on the case of children as researchers, Dyson and Meagher describe the dilemma of attempting to conflate the two: 'the research process has inherent within it certain quality demands which some (perhaps many) young people find difficult to meet. The more fully they are involved in research, therefore, the less likely it is that the research will meet those demands adequately' (2001:65). They query, given the technical nature of the research exercise, whether young people are further disempowered by researchers demanding they have these skills and/or by researchers only involving those who are most like adult professional researchers.

Responses to the 'participation versus rigour' debate

One response to this dilemma, and one which Dyson and Meagher support, is to have a 'partnership' between young people and professional researchers. The Children's Research Centre (CRC) at the Open University, however, starts from the premise that such partnerships are rarely equal in practice and that research training should remain key to young people carrying out research. (A fuller description of the work of the CRC can be found in the next Chapter.)

Most adults need formal training to carry out empirical research. It seems to me that the barrier to children carrying out research is not their age but their lack of research skills - so why not teach them? (Mary Kellett in Rix, 2004)[14].

The argument here is that giving young people research skills affords us access to children's knowledge - 'in the sense of what it is like to be a child, it is children who are the experts' (Kellett in Rix, 2004). More than this, however, the CRC argue that research skills training is vital to young people being able to identify their own research agenda.

The starting point for others, however, is to question the assumed tests of 'good research' - the meaning of validity/reliability - and, therefore, the need for traditional research training. Clark (2004) notes that a key feature of participatory research is that there is less emphasis on objectivity as community participants are involved in analysing their own reality. Others have gone further, suggesting that engaging young people in research can be seen as a political form of action (Alder and Sandor, 1990) and as challenging dominant orientations to research. Indeed, this has been the justification for the involvement of young people in much action research.

Depending on which starting point is taken, adult researchers are likely to adopt different roles. Hart (1992:19) argues that in relation to participative research, the professional researcher's role is one of technical assistance. Others point out that the professional researcher needs to recognise the pitfalls and limitations of the research study so that young people are not set up to fail (Hetzel et al, 1992). For those who focus on the transformative potential of research, there may well be a tendency to underplay the role of the adult researcher and in particular the skills needed to manage both research and support/advocacy roles. Caution has also been expressed in relation to research practice with young researchers about the need to avoid presenting children and young people as more involved in the research than they actually were. Kirby (2004), for example, to compensate for the lack of acknowledgement young people generally are given for their involvement in research, noted how in relation to one study, the adult researcher was described as a 'co-author'. On reflection she concludes 'This was misleading, as it led readers to assume the group (of young researchers) had written all the text and to overestimate their knowledge of its contents'. Supporting inclusive research is a skilled activity. It needs to be recognised as such because if it is not, then there is a danger that researchers are silenced and, as Walmsley and Johnson put it, left almost 'ashamed' of their skills (Walmsley and Johnson, 2003: 191).

'Nothing about us without us': shifting control of the research process

The literature on research involving other marginalised groups has, for some time, debated different research models for including 'citizen researchers' and, as a result, there may be lessons that could be applied to the issues of young people as researchers. For example, Walmsley and Johnson's work on research with and by people with learning disabilities identifies possible models, some of which highlight the need to look beyond the actual doing of the research to the social relations of research production (Zarb, 1992):

the belief that in order to serve the interests of people with learning difficulties all research needs actively to include them is, we believe, responsible for stalling the enterprise as people look for ever more inventive ways to enable people with learning difficulties to 'do' research. What we should be seeking, we argue, is ways of enabling people with learning disabilities to influence, even control, research projects which they have identified as being relevant to them (Walmsley and Johnson, 2003: 221).

While it would be clearly inappropriate to equate the experience of people with learning difficulties to all children and young people in research, there are parallels here for all marginalised groups that can be usefully explored. What, for example, might the emancipatory call within the learning disability field of 'nothing about us, without us' mean for research in relation to young people? For some, re-shaping the social relations of research production means moving towards a consultant/employer relationship. The role of young people's organisations would be central here. Groups would need skills in managing research consultants - but such skills, Walmsley and Johnson argue, may be of more generalisable interest than developing specific research skills. The role of the consultant would be:

examining with them the kind of research they want; the questions they would like to see answered; how they want to use it and what (if any involvement) they want in actually doing it (Walmsley and Johnson, 2003:189)

It is an empirical question whether this model would, as the Children's Research Centre (CRC) approach claims, give young people insight in to how to develop their own research agenda. However, there may well be a trade off here as while the CRC model might encourage young people to develop such agendas, most research that is carried out by children is, by its nature, small-scale, and so unlikely to impact on policy as a result. Tisdall and Davis (2004) ask similar questions about the relationship between adult mediators and children in policy making. Should adults in consultation projects involving young people, for example, be seen as lending skills to enhance young people's status? And are particular ways of working more likely to lead to the desired impact on policy?

Thinking about research by young people in terms of these complexities - and against a backdrop of the critical participatory agenda outlined above - means asking many of the same questions about young people's involvement in research as have been asked about their involvement in policy more generally, not least how young people are getting involved and whether or not it has made any difference? In the next chapter we go on to look at particular ways of involving children and young people in the doing of research. In this chapter, we have argued, however, that to fully understand how children and young people can be involved in the doing of research, we need to locate this practice not only in the context of the broader child participation agenda, but also different research contexts, including the inclusive research tradition.

Key points from this chapter

· Although the notion of children and young people doing research is relatively new, it has clear links to two important other developments: the emergence of the 'participation agenda' relating to this age group; and the broader tradition of 'inclusive' research practices.

· The Scottish Executive (along with a wide range of other public and voluntary bodies) has placed considerable emphasis in recent years on enhancing young people's participation in decisions affecting their own lives. The 'case for participation' tends to draw on arguments relating to 'efficiency' (that participation will produce better outcomes) and on 'empowerment' (that it will improve or change people's lives) - though, in practice, these often overlap.

· But there is an increasing consensus that participation is not an uncomplicated good, and a number of critiques have grown up around issues such as what counts as participation; the dangers of tokenism; and the need to build not just participatory practices but cultures.

· Research by children and young people needs to be seen as potentially contributing to a 'participation agenda', but not as being immune to the potential criticisms of participatory work in general.

· The notion of children and young people doing research is also linked to other social research traditions including emancipatory, user-led and feminist research. Key themes of relevance from these traditions include the 'participation versus rigour' debate and the idea of shifting the locus of power in research relationships away from a professional research community towards the group being researched.

CHAPTER THREE: CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE DOING RESEARCH - EXPERIENCE FROM ELSEWHERE

INTRODUCTION

In the last chapter we situated children and young people as researchers in the context of the wider participation agenda and in relation to broader 'inclusive' research traditions. We turn now to the specific issue of children and young people doing research. In doing so, we attempt to answer three main sets of questions. First, how much of this kind of work is currently being carried out, both inside and outside government? Secondly, what are the main ways in which children and young people are actually being engaged in such projects? Finally, what are the key practical lessons or implications emerging from experience of this kind elsewhere?

examples of children and young people doing research

Overview of the mapping exercise

As part of this study, we conducted telephone and face-to-face interviews with researchers working with children and young people in an attempt to 'map' recent projects which have involved children and young people as researchers. Key features of the results of this exercise are summarised below - a more detailed account of the projects identified can be found in the annex at the end of this report.

Overall, the mapping exercise identified in excess of 50 projects in which children or young people were directly involved in at least some aspects of the research process. These covered a very wide range of subject areas - health (including mental and sexual health), housing, education, social exclusion, disability, family change, substance use and others -and many were focused on children's participation in services and on policies aimed at them. Most of the projects identified were one-off exercises, though there were some examples of children being involved in a more strategic and long-term manner. Examples of longer-term projects include:

· Barnardo's young people's research group, where young people conduct their own research; the groups has also undertaken research for a government department.

· Brighton & Hove young people who have applied for funding to form a Youth Council with an ongoing remit to feed into the work of the local Children's Trust, including by conducting research with other young people.

· The Children's Research Centre at the Open University and the Investing in Children Project, Durham, which both provide ongoing resources for supporting children to design, conduct and analyse their own research projects.

· The appointment by the Scottish Commissioner for Children and Young People of two young (16-21 year-old) participation workers whose remit includes research.

A wide variety of funders have been involved in such projects, including: government agencies like Communities Scotland (in particular, their Scottish Community Action Research Fund) and the Big Lottery Fund; local government bodies (e.g. Children's Trusts/Children's Funds in England as well as Local Councils and Health Boards); voluntary sector organisations (e.g. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Edinburgh Youth SIP, Marie Curie); and government departments (including the Scottish Executive, DfES, DoH, Home Office and DfID. Of the 50+ projects identified during the mapping exercise, 14 received some funding from central government in Scotland or England. However, as discussed below some of these are perhaps better described as consultation, rather than research projects. Government-funded projects identified by this study are summarized in more detail at the end of this section.

Most of the projects we identified involved teenagers (13+) and 'older young people' as researchers. A small number of projects, however, did involve younger children. Perhaps the best known of these is the Children's Research Centre (CRC) at the Open University. The CRC was established following a pilot study in 2002 and trains and supports children aged 10-14 in the design, conduct, analysis and reporting of their own research projects. Children are fully involved at every stage of the research process - from determining the research questions to presenting the results. At the time this study was conducted, over 45 children had received research training through the CRC.

Other projects working with children under the age of 13 years include:

· the Gloucestershire Children's Fund evaluation, which involved 10-12 year-olds in evaluating Children's Fund projects in their area

· a Joseph Rowntree Foundation-funded study involving children aged 8-13 yearsin conducting peer interviews and discussing their understanding of disadvantage and exclusion

· the Children and Youth Board, which consists of 25 young people aged 11-19 and was established by the DfES to feed into their policies, including by conducting research with other children and young people

· Investing in Children in Durham which has involved children as young as 3 and 4 in exploring issues which concern them.

Children were involved in a wide variety of ways in the projects we identified for this study, including developing or determining the research questions, designing materials or data collection methods, conducting peer interviews or other data collection, involvement in the analysis and reporting of findings and dissemination. However, across many of the projects children appeared to be more likely to be involved in an advisory capacity (e.g. commenting on research questions, materials and reports) and in conducting peer interviews, rather than being involved in determining the initial research questions or in conducting detailed analysis and reporting (though see the annex for examples of projects that did engage young people more fully in the research process).

Children's involvement in government social research

As discussed above, the Scottish Executive has produced a variety of documents describing the importance of involving children in decisions and of consulting with them. However, the research team for this study did not find any specific Scottish Executive guidance on involving children in research in any way other than as subjects. The same generally applies to the Government Departments in England & Wales, although it is worth noting that the DfES publication Building a Culture of Participation states that organisations conducting research about issues relevant to children and young people 'may also choose to include young people in commissioning, undertaking and disseminating research projects (e.g. on research advisory groups or as interviewers)'.

The mapping exercise and interviews conducted for this study did, however, reveal a small number of central government-funded research studies which have involved children as researchers in some way.

In Scotland, these included:

· A study on children's experience of disability (Connor and Stalker, 2002) - conducted by the Social Work Research Centre at Stirling University and funded by the Scottish Executive. Two girls with disabilities aged 11 or 12 were involved in this qualitative study as 'co-research advisors'. They met with the adult researchers three times to discuss the proposal, to assist them in revising research materials for young disabled people and to discuss recruiting samples.

· The Cool with Change study [15] - an on-going, three year research study being conducted by the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (CRFR) in collaboration with Scotland's Families and funded by the Community Fund and the Scottish Executive. The study explores the impact of family change on children and young people's lives. Two small groups of 15/16 year-olds who have themselves experienced family change have been recruited to act as consultants to the project. They helped develop topic guides and advised adult researchers on the interview process and ethical issues. It is also hoped that the young consultants will advise on barriers to accessing support and assist in disseminating the findings to other young people.

· A study on services available for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered (LGBT) youth in Scotland - funded by Communities Scotland Scottish Community Action Research Fund and the Scottish Executive (who funded some reporting from the project). The idea for this study, which investigated services available locally for LGBT young people in different parts of Scotland came from LGBT young people themselves. Young researchers were trained by co-researchers at Strathclyde University and designed and conducted much of the research themselves, including assisting with questionnaire design, facilitating focus groups and making video diaries.

· A right to guidance and support in schools[16]- Young people from Article 12 were involved in conducting this Scottish Executive commissioned research, involving a small-scale survey of 45 young people aged 14-17.

· Patient and Carer Experiences teenage advisory group - The Cancer Care Research Centre at Stirling University is undertaking a three-year study on patient and carer experiences funded by the Scottish Executive. They are currently in the first year of this and hope to recruit a teenage advisory group who will help set the research agenda for the next two years of the study.

· The Rural Voices: Action Research Competition - under this scheme, funded by the Scottish Executive, funding was made available for community action research projects lasting for a period of up to 9 months. Several of the projects involved young people in the doing of research, either by themselves or as part of a wider community team.

The mapping exercise also identified several Scottish Executive-funded projects which are more easily classified as consultation or development work but which involved an element of research conducted by young people - for example, the Dialogue Youth consultation event with disabled young people and the development of the 'Talking 2 Ourselves' mental health website. Further details of these are also included in the annex.

Examples of research projects sponsored by Westminster government departments which have involved young people as researchers include:

· Building a Culture of Participation (Kirby et al, 2003) - The DfES funded best practice guidance on involving children and young people cited above was the result of a research project involving young researchers (aged 14-19) working alongside adult researchers to conduct case studies of organizations working with children. The 8 (as the other number references are also in numbers) young researchers were paid as research assistants and were involved in conducting interviews with young people and staff, reviewing the analysis and disseminating the findings to policy makers. The research also involved young people in an advisory group, advising on all the work of the project.

· Children's Fund Evaluations [17] - The DfES' Children's Fund includes the participation of children and young people in the 'design, operation and evaluation of the programme' as one of its key principles. Accordingly a number of local Children's Fund programmes have involved young people in the evaluation of their programmes. For example, the Gloucestershire Children's Fund involved 14 'young reporters' aged 10-12 in visiting local Children's Fund projects, conducting activities, interviews and focus groups with children using the services, interviewing adult members of staff at the projects and reviewing portfolios provided by each project for evidence of children's participation.

· Imprint (evaluation of the Blueprint Drug Education Programme) - the National Children's Bureau (NCB) was funded by the Home Office to record the views of children taking part in the Blueprint drug education programme. One of the methods used for the study was to train young evaluators within the schools to record their own experiences through journals and to interview other children using semi-structured questionnaires. [18]

· Involving children in the Medicines for Children Research Network [19] - The Department of Health has funded NCB for 5 years to ensure the active involvement of children, young people and their families at all stages of the research process in the Medicines for Children's Research Network. The Network is, in fact, primarily concerned with medical research (randomized trials) rather than social research, but we have included it here as an example of the different stages at which government may consider involving children in the research process. According to the NCB website their role will include 'facilitating the involvement of children, young people and families so they can contribute to: setting the research agenda; assessing the feasibility of trial methodology and participants' requirements; determining appropriate outcome measures to use in the trials; designing documentation intended for families, parents and children; monitoring trial progress; publicising trials and informing relevant groups; and disseminating trial findings to both the public as a whole, and the research and medical community'.

MODELS OF INVOLVEMENT

From the mapping exercise and the literature reviewed, it is clear that there are different models for involving young people in the doing of research. These are often confusing, not least because the same term can be used to cover quite distinct practices and, conversely, there can be considerable overlap between apparently different models. Bearing this in mind, two broad approaches to young people's participation in the doing of research are apparent: what might be termed 'child-led' research, and children and young people working as part of a wider research team. The latter involves a whole spectrum of activities and some of these are outlined below.

Child-led research

The defining feature of what might be termed the child-led research approach appears to be that children and young people decide what they wish to research and the role of adults is one of facilitating this process. Others have defined this approach less in terms of the focus of the research and more in terms of where decision making power lies: 'a process of joint enquiry with adults but where decision-making lies with children' (West, 1998: 272).

The Children's Research Centre, for example, sees research decision-making as lying with children and young people and sees its primary objective as empowering young people as active researchers. [20] Another project that describes what it is doing as 'child-led' is the Investing in Children [21] (IIC) initiative set up in Durham in 1997 by local government agencies which provide services to children and young people - including, for example, the health and education departments. Part of the work of this project is to support children and young people to identify issues that are important to them. The young people are then given a budget and adult researcher support to research - in the sense of gathering information about - an issue.

But while both the CRC and IIC might describe themselves as 'child-led', the two projects actually operate in very different ways - notably in relation to the emphasis given to formal research skills training. The CRC sees this as a crucial aspect of empowerment, while the IIC would argue that to impose adult-centric methods and approaches on young people might ultimately be disempowering.

Children and young people as part of a research team: a spectrum of activities

The second broad model emerging from the literature is one in which children and young people are part of a research team but the research focus has usually been decided by adults prior to the involvement of young people in the team. This covers a whole spectrum of practices.

Children as co-researchers

At one end of the spectrum is the notion of children and young people as 'co-researchers'. Again this term is used in a variety of ways, though it broadly refers to research projects with a high level of involvement by young people, but in which the process as a whole is guided or controlled by adults. For example, the research focus may have been identified by adults but young people are involved from the outset in terms of identifying aims and design and have a strong involvement throughout the project (France, 2000). In the HAYS project, the young and adult researchers worked together to design research questions, though Kirby et al (2001) noted that when the young people decided to focus on 'identity', they were encouraged to think carefully about the complexity of this subject and the difficulties involved. The young researchers subsequently decided to focus on educational support needs.

Peer interviewers

Further along the spectrum is a situation in which children and young people may not be involved in all stages of the research but are involved in the conduct of the research - for example, carrying out interviews, either because they are the same age as people they are interviewing and/or they share same life experiences. This is often referred to as 'peer research' by children. In general terms, peer research involves members of a target group researching others from that target group (de Winter and Noom, 2003). In relation to young people, it involves young people taking on the role of researcher in youth -related projects (Phillips et al, 2001). In West's view, however, peer research is 'really a misnomer, both because it is often initiated and resourced by adults' (West, 1998: 272) and also because young people are often only acting in a very limited role as data collectors.

Murray (2006) writes about her experience of using peer-led focus groups with young people. She describes this as 'one of the few research contexts in which young people can speak collectively with no adult present'. To date, she has explored the implications of young people facilitating focus groups with friendship groups without the presence of an adult researcher. Murray argues the peer-led focus groups can lead to fresh insights or to discussion of issues that would not have been discussed with adults present. She recognises that while this form of interviewing may help to address power imbalances between children and adults, there may still be power imbalances within the group between the facilitator and the rest of group. Future research, she suggests, will be needed on the optimum size of peer-led focus groups and the format adopted, as well as on comparing data produced through peer-led and more traditional groups. Again, there is a dearth of knowledge about how young people themselves experience being in groups facilitated by adults or other young people.

Young advisors

Another possibility along this spectrum is an advisory model approach in which young people are not actually directly involved in the conduct of the research but, for example, sit on advisory panels for the project, advising on issues such as accessing hard-to-reach groups, questionnaire design, whether or not to use incentives and, if so, of what kind. This needs to be distinguished from steering group involvement where the young people involved may have a greater say in the direction the research takes.

The spectrum of involvement described above is also captured in Adams and Swain's (2001) distinction between young people as active researchers where they have some degree of control over research process and young people as advisors where their overall control is usually less.

Stages and levels of involvement

Another way of thinking about the nature of young people's involvement is in terms of the level of their involvement in different stages of the research process. The fact that a young person is involved in every stage of the research process does not necessarily tell us about the quality of their involvement including the extent of their control in relation to the research.

They could, for example, be involved throughout in a tokenistic fashion whereas other young people may choose or be asked to only be involved directly in some stages but still have a say in decision-making throughout the life of the project. As Boyden and Ennew (1997:83) note more generally, research is not inherently participatory: it depends on how it is applied. The level of participation children or young people could have as researchers (Laws, 2004; Hart, 1992), can, as we have seen, range from tokenistic involvement, to consultation/advisory models to co-researcher or child-directed research.

KEY ISSUES AND LESSONS

Having looked briefly at some examples of the kind of projects that are being carried out and at the broad models of involvement that these involve, we now turn to the practical experience of such projects and, in particular, to lessons that can be drawn from the literature about studies which have actually involved young people as researchers. In particular, we look at the age of the young people involved in previous studies and at the role that they have played in such projects; at the justifications and rationales that are advanced for involving young people in the first place; and at responses to some of the practical and ethical issues that such projects have faced.

How young are young researchers?

Previous studies have involved a wide age range of young people in at least some stage of the research process. Adele Jones's (2003) Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) work on young people with caring responsibilities in black families, for example, refers to working with young people aged 5 to 16 in the design of this research. The Children's Research Centre at the Open University offers children age 10 to 14 years a research training and the Investing In Children (IIC) project in Durham refers to working with children as young as four. [22] As noted earlier, however, definitions are important in this area, and it is worth noting in this context that the IIC has a broad development/participation remit of which research is only a part. Technological developments, too, have implications for the age range of children involved in the doing of research. The use of videos and cameras, for example, have allowed younger children as respondents to shape research projects according to what they find significant (Clark and Moss, 2001); but these technologies could also be used by children acting as researchers.

In practice, however, most research projects in the UK that have been concerned with involving young people in the research process have - as is the case with participation projects in general (Kirby et al, 2004) - tended to involve older young people, aged 14 and over. The Triumph and Success Peer Research Project funded by JRF, for example, involved researchers aged 15-21 years and this is not untypical (France, 2000). As this chapter makes clear, the mapping exercise carried out for this research found a similar age range in relation to young researchers in the UK.

What do young researchers do?

We discussed earlier broad models for the involvement of children and young people in the doing of research. But in practical terms, what do they actually do, and what have been the main issues in involving them in different stages of the research process? Laws (2004) identifies various aspects of research design that children and young people may have input into, including testing information sheets; piloting research techniques; identifying good methods for reaching hard to reach groups; and deciding about the use of incentives. Coad and Lewis (2004) point out in their review that there is still very little written on children and young people's involvement in analysis and suggest that children and young people could be involved in commenting on or verifying findings. However, they note Mayall's warning that there might be considerable time lapse between data collection and verification of analysis and that children's views may have changed over that period (Mayall, 1996). Children and young people can also be asked to reflect on what they are learning from research as they go along and adult researchers can put ideas in an accessible form and ask for child peer-researchers' views.

For some, the key issue is that without children's input, it is adult voices that dominate the interpretation of research data (West, 1996a; 1996b; Sinclair, 2004). Others, however, are less optimistic about involving children and young people - or indeed any lay person - at the analysis stage (Harden et al, 2000), pointing out that this may require types of knowledge (Mayall, 1994) that lay people do not usually possess. Kirby and Bryson (2002) note that young people often find analysis difficult or boring and Kirby's experience in relation to the HAYS project was that young people were initially involved in coding but were then happy for an adult researcher to take this over. For some, the boredom that can accompany analysis could be deemed detrimental to the participation agenda in general (Berry and Campbell, 2001: 19). Others, however, have found young people able to contribute to projects at a level consistent with academic publication (Barry, 2005) though again there are key issues here about which young people are getting involved in these types of projects.

While some researchers may have questioned how involved children and young people can be at the analysis stage, others point out that if children and young people act, for example, only as interviewers for adults and are not party to the thinking behind the research design and the research questions being addressed, then this can have consequences for the process and practice of interviewing and for the research as a whole (Harden et al, 2000). There are issues here about maintaining young people's motivation to be involved to the point of analysis and beyond - a problem with young researchers in any case as their lives are often busy and in transition - but one which can be exacerbated if the young people do not identify with or have not been involved in setting the research aims (Clark et al, 2004).

Justifications and limitations: arguments for involving young people in the doing of research

The committee emphazises that in many cases only children themselves are in a position to indicate whether their rights are being fully recognised and realised. Interviewing children and using children as researchers (with appropriate safeguards) is likely to be an important way of finding out (Committee on the Rights of the Child (34th session) 2003/5 paragraph 50).

Why involve young people as researchers in the first place? How will research be different if young people are involved? Is it necessary? In considering these questions, it is worth remembering that evaluations of projects which have involved young researchers have tended to be based on the views of the young or adult researchers rather than the people they are researching (Kirby, 2001:75). There remains, then, little or no research on who young people themselves would like to be researched by and even in relation to the young researchers' perspectives there is not a huge amount published (see, however, Kilpatrick et al, 2004; Crane, 2001; Norris et al, 2004; Harding, 2001; Kirby, Wubner and Lewis, 2001). Moreover, as much of the impetus for involving young researchers comes from adults, not surprisingly, the rationale for their involvement is frequently framed in adult terms and focused, as noted above, on improving services, promoting 'active citizenship' or valuing children's rights.

Yet, as Edwards and Alldred (1999) noted some time ago, when looking at why children participate in research as subjects, their views of research are likely to be shaped by what meaning research has for their lives at a personal, local and wider societal level. The same appears to be true for young researchers. Harding (2001) when describing his experience of taking part in a 'Students as Researchers' project identified 'intrinsic values' of the research participation - values that might outweigh whether or not recommendations arising from the research are implemented. However, Sinclair, 2004 and Stafford et al 2003 comment on young people's wish to see action or at least feedback on their involvement and Kirby (2004) notes that as a minimum young people should be given summaries of research and access to full accessible research reports and other research outputs if they want them. Kirby (2004) also strongly advises that young researchers should be given information on how information is disseminated, how findings have been used and if they have not been, an explanation of why that is the case. There is a more general point here which is how we hear/work with children's views about research which do not sit easily alongside the more emancipatory understandings of adult researchers. If children do not share an understanding of research which is informed by a rights discourse, are they to be viewed as unenlightened or as oppressed? We return to this issue of how young people view research when analysing the data from this research project in Chapter Five.

Better research about young people

The key argument presented in the research literature for involving young researchers is that it makes for better research and, therefore, by implication, better policy. There are several strands to this argument. It is suggested that involving young people as researchers makes for research that is richer and more grounded in young people's experiences and perspectives. Saunders and Broad (1997), for example, concluded that the relevance and reliability of their research was increased by involving young researchers and Alderson (2001) describes data gathered by children as 'fuller' and she points to children being useful in terms of identifying what questions to ask and topics to cover. She cites the example of Roberts et al (1995) who were carrying out research with teenagers about accidents and safety. The teenagers had little to say about the kinds of events researchers saw as relevant and so the research team asked the young people what sorts of questions to ask. They responded by suggesting that the team, 'ask us about our scars' (Alderson, 2001). By involving young people in the design of an interview schedule, Saunders and Broad (1997) noted that certain subject areas and nuances (for example the way services were accessed and received) that might otherwise have been overlooked were brought to the fore. To that extent, they argue that using young people as researchers not only accommodates but also facilitates subject diversity in research. Laws (2004), too, in her account of Save The Children's involvement in a UN international study of how to include young people in research relating to violence against children, notes that adults often have less insight into the world of children than they think they have and that children may provide interpretations that differ from those of adult researchers.

This richer, fuller research, in turn, is understood to be rooted in the following advantages of using children and young people as researchers: first, they allow the power differential between the researched and researcher and between children and adults to be redressed (Christensen, 2004). It would be naïve, however, to assume that power is not an issue when young people are researching other young people or, indeed, adults and this is part of recognising that power is an inevitable part of the research process. Second, they increase the possibility of access to other children and young people and, therefore, of the user voice in research. This, of course, depends on the nature of the study - in some studies, young people may not wish to be interviewed by people 'like them' (Laws, 1999; Robson, 2001). Third, they allow for greater understanding of the different language that young people may use (Laws, 2004). Finally, they ease the building of rapport with young people, which some adults, unfamiliar with how to interact with children, may struggle to develop (Punch, 2002). The building of rapport, however, can depend on less obvious identity markers, for example the places where one has lived (see Kilpatrick et al). As Harden et al (2000) note, we cannot assume that age is the key difference between an adult researcher and child respondent, or the only one which matters. There may be commonalities which can override this difference or other differences which may be, in this context, more significant than age. Moreover, as noted, 'matching' cannot necessarily change the inequalities inherent in the interview process. Again there is a dearth of research information about what makes a difference:

There has been little analysis of what characteristics make a good young researcher other than (or even instead of) their youth (Kirby and Bryson, 2002:54).

Increasing the impact of research on children and young people

In research terms, another important potential benefit of involving young people as researchers is that when young people feel a sense of ownership and conviction about the research, presentations by them, at conferences or to local agencies/authorities, can be very persuasive (Kellett et al, 2004). In Tisdall and Davis's (2004) terms, the media's interest in young people is a resource young people can bargain with to achieve 'insider status' in policy terms but it is equally a resource used by governments when wishing to associate their policies with the best interests of children and young people.

Self-confidence and skills for young researchers

Over and above the benefits to the research, there are, of course, the benefits that accrue to the young people themselves from taking part including increased confidence and the learning of new skills (Kirby, 1999). Again these benefits are familiar from the wider participation literature on involving children and young people (Sinclair, 2004).

Limitations

In the last five years or so, researchers have also started to explore some of the possible difficulties of involving young people as researchers. These can be broadly summarised in terms of ethics, financial costs, research relationships and quality issues.

Ethics

There are at least four ethical areas focused on in the literature and these are explained briefly below. First, in relation to confidentiality issues: some young people may be unwilling to share sensitive information with other young people (Kirby, 1998; 2001) and there are also issues around young researchers being fully aware of the need to keep information anonymous and confidential.

Second, avoiding physical and emotional harm to participants: the emotional costs to young researchers arising from the disclosure of private/personal information may be considerable and at the same time there are issues of physical safety both in relation to the researcher and the research subject. There are child protection issues here both in relation to protecting research subjects but also in terms of the information young researchers may be exposed to and how this might affect them. Equally, there are possible consequences for research participants if researchers are not fully informed, for example, about equality issues (see Norris et al's (2004) comment that young researchers with disabilities on a particular project would have benefited from disability equality training, particularly in relation to impairments they did not themselves have experience of).

Third, there are issues to do with informed consent. Young researchers would need to be skilled in understanding how to secure this and at the same time, adult researchers would have to be sure that young people were informed in their consent about becoming researchers in the first place. This, in turn, raises the issue of what age of children should be involved in any young researchers project. Masson (2000), moreover, notes that where children are acting as researchers and not just as sessional interviewers they are effectively acting as employees and, therefore, subject to laws that regulate children's work. The amount of time young people may have to spend on a project, often after school or during holidays is in itself an ethical issue. Do young people actually want to be giving up their free time to do research when they already have busy lives? Moreover, researchers need to keep in mind that young researchers are no less immune to the pressures of deadlines than adult researcher and these are likely to be exacerbated by working in an adult environment:

I felt pressurised to meet and work within the time frame, budget and procedures designed by adults, professionals' organisations. Trying to adjust to all of this did not allow me to fully participate and learn from the project (quote from young researcher cited in Kirby et al, 2004: 20).

Finally, there are ethical issues around how to offer young people a 'fair return' for participation. While there is a need to recognise young people's contribution, the disadvantages of payment, for example, are not just the legal consequences or the possible impact on benefits, but also the pressure the young person may then feel to participate (Howard et al, 2002). Kirby et al (2004) offer a range of formal measures for rewarding young people for their involvement including accreditation, certificates of achievement, letters of reference, joint authorship, vouchers, honorium payment or wage and social activities like outings. Save the Children UK have produced comprehensive internal guides to the financial and legal implications for young people being paid to do research (Save the Children, 2004a and b). An illustration of the complexity of the payment issue is the recent example of young people contributing to an academic book. Here the young people who contributed were being offered £30 book vouchers plus a complementary copy of the book. The National Youth Agency advice to the editor, however, was that young people should not contribute their views for less than £7.76 per hour. The editor of this text noted:

In my view, young people should be able to choose whether or not to contribute their views for less. Indeed, all the young people who wrote postscripts said the payment was not a prime motivation compared to the recognition and self esteem they gained from contributing to an academic book (Barry, 2005: xi).

There is also the issue of how to involve children who face discrimination (Morrow and Richards, 1996; Laws, 2004; Alderson, 1995). Morris (1998,cited in Clark et al 2001) raises the question of the long 'lead-in' times needed for setting up interviews with disabled children. Robson (2001) discusses the problems of involving disadvantaged, marginalised young people in research projects - though, in the case of this study, these problems might have as much to do with the fact that these young people were not involved in the whole project as it was to do with their disadvantaged status. Allen (1998) makes the point that too often it is the articulate and mature children who are chosen to take part. This raises the issue of where young researchers should be recruited from and what the access considerations might be. There are advantages of drawing on young people from existing groups - including time and effort saved in finding new young people - but also disadvantages, most obviously that these existing groups may well be over consulted (Kirby et al, 2004). At the same time, it is important to ask whether representativeness actually matters. As Sinclair (2004) notes, this depends on what the purpose of the activity is

If it is to give generalised representation to the views of children as a whole then it is important. If it is to broaden the range of perspectives that are informing decision making…then statistical representativeness may be of less relevance. Here it may be more important to focus on openness and inclusiveness, particularly the inclusion of more marginalised groups (2004: 112)

While these ethical issues, and their methodological implications are important, it is perhaps worth being cautious about seeing children as so different or special a research group (whether as researchers or as research subjects) that they become 'othered' and eventually excluded from the research process (Harden et al, 2000, paragraph 2.13). Much recent research with children has concluded, after all, that differences between adults and children in research are often assumed because of adult preconceptions of children and because of the structural position of children within society and not because of inherent differences within children per se.

Financial issues

The second set of issues to consider is financial. It takes longer to train, recruit, and supervise young inexperienced researchers than older, experienced researchers. Some recent studies have commented on the need to offer not only research training but also youth support (France, 2000; Kirby et al, 2004). An interesting evaluation of one project that involved young researchers highlighted the importance of young people feeling they had been properly trained and briefed about the research project and in particular about whose responsibility it was to do what (Norris et al, 2004). Although it is worth recognising that young people do research as part of their everyday life at school and that much of the training and support needs are similar to what many novice researchers might also need, nevertheless a key question is what the resource implications of involving young researchers in research - government funded or otherwise - might be.

Research relationships

Thirdly, there could be problems in relation to the research relationships. We have already discussed possible issues of confidentiality and child protection in relation to young people interviewing their peers, as well as issues of whether children and young people necessarily prefer to be interviewed by people 'like them'. A related set of issues arise in relation to whether young researchers are be involved in interviewing adults. Would adults take seriously being interviewed by children or instead feel unchallenged by the experience? And what about the young researchers themselves? Would they feel comfortable interviewing adult respondents? In the HAYs project (Kirby, Wubner and Lewis, 2001) adult researchers interviewed adult respondents as it was felt adults would be more comfortable being interviewed by other adults and that adult researchers would understand jargon and could use professional knowledge to probe further. A young researcher in this project did, however, accompany an adult researcher on one occasion. There was evidence from the mapping exercise for this project that there can be considerable benefits arising from young people interviewing adults. The Gloucestershire Children's Fund, for example, felt that adults working at children's fund projects were much more honest in their responses to the 'young reporters' than they would have been with an adult researcher and that being visited by the children in this way caused a lot of reflection on their practices on involving children and young people (see the annex). Coad and Lewis (2004) make reference to Gettings and Gladstone's (2001) work on using the internet for online interviews and web based questionnaires. While this may overcome some of these age-based issues, this may be at the cost of ushering in other child protection concerns:

In due course, the web context may generate unique situations for children as co-researchers; for example, their status and identity as children could be masked and fluid, enabling 'age-free' identities to be explored (Coad and Lewis, 2004: 41).

Again, there is a need to be clear what the basis of these difficulties are: power imbalances, developmental differences, adult beliefs about child competencies (Punch, 2002).

Ensuring high quality research

Finally, a key issue emerging from practice to date is the question of how to ensure the quality of research carried out by young people. Most research commissioners, whether inside or outside government, are, as we noted in the last section, seeking robust evidence and there are concerns that, whether or not involving children and young people in research actually affects validity, the perception that this is the case might itself undermine the impact of the research (Lewis and Lindsay 2000). Does the fact that research is carried out by young people rather than adult researchers exempt it from the same degree of methodological scrutiny? If not, what are the implications for young researchers and those who work with them? These questions take us back to the understandings of research being worked with by those inside and outside of government. We explore these further in our analysis of data for this project in Chapter Four and Five.

In this chapter we identified, through the mapping exercise, some of the key features of the UK projects which have recently involved children and young people in the doing of research. In particular, we noted that many of these studies were concerned with services and policies aimed at children and young people and many were one-off projects which tended to involve young people aged 13 and above. While government - at local and national level - was one of the sources of funding for such projects, there was, in fact, little or no government guidance or policy about how best to involve children and young people in research other than as research subjects. In this chapter, we also identified from the existing literature, the range of models and rationales for involving children and young people as researchers as well as highlighting key areas for debate within the literature about this practice. Some of these areas - ethics, finances, research relationships and quality assurance - are revisited in the next two chapters.

Key points from this chapter

· The mapping work carried out as part of this study identified a proliferation of projects involving children and young people in the doing of research. With a small number of notable exceptions, these were mostly one-off projects, and many were based within voluntary and community organisations. Most also involved young people aged 13 and over, though a small number worked with younger children.

· Overall, there were few research projects funded directly by central government departments, though a small number of such examples do exist (both in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK). These often involved children and young people in a relatively limited advisory capacity.

· Two main models of involvement can be identified: 'child-led' projects and children as part of a bigger research team. The former gives primacy to issues of empowerment and control of the research process; the latter involves a spectrum of involvement from children and young people as full 'co-researchers', to 'peer interviewers' or simply 'advisors'.

· Justifications or rationales for involving children and young people in the doing of research include the notion that it leads to better research (and hence to better policy-making); that it increases the impact of the research; and that it empowers young people by building skills and self-confidence.

· Other key issues emerging from experience from elsewhere of children and young people doing research include ethical questions, relating to confidentiality, risk of harm, financial recompense, and power in research relationships; and the recurrent question of how to balance young people's participation with the need for high quality, reliable data.

[1] The term 'children and young people' is used in this proposal to broadly refer to people aged 18 years and under. The lower age range of children who might be involved as researchers is not specified, as this is one of the issues the study aims to explore.

[2]A definitional note: 'peer research' can be understood as members of one target group researching others from that target group (De Winter and Noom, 2003). Peer researchers, therefore, tend to share similar experiences and status (Kirby, 1999), including age. Participatory research involving young researchers is where children and young people are involved in designing and/or conducting a piece of research. This research may involve peers but need not necessarily do so.

[3] While the label 'researcher' is used in the report, some of the respondents were not academic researchers but were involved in research as part of a broader development remit, for example, within children's organisations.

[4] There is a more detailed discussion of the meaning of these terms throughout the report. However, a brief outline of how they are broadly used in this report is useful here. While, as Hill et al (2004) note, participation can be understood as 'the direct involvement of children in decision-making about matters that affect their lives (…) consultation is about seeking views' (83). Although it has the potential to take the form of a dialogue and, therefore, enable participation, consultation can also become 'a substitute for participation in that decisions are made without the direct involvement of children' (2004:83). In relation to social research and consultation, while they may have features in common, for example, they may share similar methods of data collection and analysis, in practice, social research often involves greater concern with issues of reliability and validity.

[5] CYPU (2001), Learning to Listen: Core Principles for the Involvement of Children and Young People.

[6] Children (Scotland) Act 1995 Part 1, Section 6.1.b

[7] At the time of writing (January 2006), the Scottish Executive was consulting on advice about how to best involve children and young people in Community Planning - http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/11/17164834/48351

[8] Article 12 states that 'States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.'

[9] Scottish Executive (2000), Child Strategy Statement - available at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library3/social/css-00.asp

[10] E.g. references in The Scottish Executive's draft budget for 2006-7 - link http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/09/06112356/24066 and A curriculum for excellence - link http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/education/cerv.pdf

[11] See http://www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/cypi/our_work/organisational_change/making_it_count.

[12] Sanderson's (2002) distinction between instrumental and practical rationality in evidence based policymaking is relevant here. Young people doing research might be seen as a contribution to the latter, in other words as a way of generating insight, shifting perspectives and helping to assess not just 'what works' but what constitutes appropriate policy and practice.

[13] 'Mori gives 'power to the people' as it launches its participation unit'. Research Magazine 27/5/2005. Accessed at http://www.research-live.com/index.aspx?pageid=30&newsid=1013

[14] Interview with Mary Kellett by J. Rix The Guardian 23/3/2004:2

[15] See CRFR website for details - http://www.crfr.ac.uk/Research/coolwithchange.html

[16] Summary available at http://www.article12.org/rights/Guidance%20Survey.htm

[17]See http://www.ne-cf.org/localevaluation/evaluator_reports_list.asp?section=000100010009 for Local Evaluators Reports

[18] See http://www.ncb.org.uk/projects/project_detail.asp?ProjectNo=305

[19] See http://www.ncb.org.uk/projects/project_detail.asp?ProjectNo=340

[20] See http://childrens-research-centre.open.ac.uk/

[21] See http://www.durham.gov.uk/durhamcc/usp.nsf/pws/investing+in+children+-+IIC+Information+Page

[22] http://www.durham.gov.uk/durhamcc/usp.nsf/pws/investing+in+children+-+IIC+Information+Page

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