Speakers
Description
When conducting academic research, scholars tend to focus on the analysis of data that have been collected and on the valorization of the results. A description of the research process is often only mentioned in passing and to the extent that allows other scholars to understand broadly the research processes that led to the research outcomes, usually presented in international journals under the constraint of strict word counts. Much more rare, are academic contributions that treat the research process as the subject of investigation. In this contribution, we shed light on our experiences conducting research on identity-based bullying in pre-and primary school. The project’s uniqueness lies in the fact that contrary to mainstream research on bullying, it included children from the age of 4 to 12, an age group that research often refrains to include due to the multi-layered ethics and challenges involved. We used a wide range of quantitative and qualitative methods adapted to the target group's appropriateness by embedding a children’s rights perspective. To include children more actively in our research endeavour, we sought to understand how the children involved experienced our research, their unique views on the subject, and their recommendations for our next research steps in the project. In what follows, we discuss the multifaced challenges on an ethical and methodological level, detangle the influence of relationships and interactions in school environments and discuss how the children’s right to participate in research projects is not always as straightforward as it seems, especially in quantitative research designs.
Keywords
Voicing children - (pre)primary schools - ethics - methodology
| Please indicate what type of scientific contribution it is | Mixed method study |
|---|---|
| Please also indicate what kind of contribution it is: | Scientific |
