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1 – 10 of over 2000
Article
Publication date: 25 January 2021

Nicola Yelland and Clare Bartholomaeus

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the research methodology literature that arose out of the (new) sociology of childhood and the UN Convention of the Rights of the…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the research methodology literature that arose out of the (new) sociology of childhood and the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (1989) with regard to conducting ethical research with children rather than on children. In particular, this article reflects on the development of a method (learning dialogues).

Design/methodology/approach

Learning dialogues were designed to enable children to share their responses to prompts about specific aspects of their lifeworlds. This was one method used to produce the data corpus which also included a large-scale survey, classroom ethnographies and (video) re-enactments of children's lives after school.

Findings

The piloting of the learning dialogues took place in several iterations and a particular form was used for the main study. The original idea and development of the learning dialogues highlights they were both a rich source of data that complemented the other data sources in the study and an activity that children indicated that they enjoyed. The authors discuss the practicalities involved with adapting a qualitative method to different settings and to projects with large numbers of children.

Originality/value

The conceptualisation of the learning dialogues as sources of personal documentation about aspects of children's lifeworlds was unique to this research. In thinking about the learning dialogues as one source of data within a broader project, the research aimed to be more inclusive of all participants in contributing to the findings produced in the project.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 21 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 2003

John Barker and Susie Weller

Over the past ten years, geographers have contributed to the growing body of interdisciplinary research developing new ways of undertaking research with children. Traditional…

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Abstract

Over the past ten years, geographers have contributed to the growing body of interdisciplinary research developing new ways of undertaking research with children. Traditional research methods which do not directly involve working with children, such as the large scale observation of children, have been criticised for carrying out research on rather than with children. Instead, drawing upon the increasingly important children’s rights movement, researchers have been developing inclusive and participatory children centred methodologies, which place the voices of children, as social actors, at the centre of the research process. In this paper, we draw upon two ongoing postgraduate geographical research projects with children to reflect upon our own experiences of adopting children centred research methodologies. We also critically evaluate our own use of different innovative children centred research techniques, such as photographs, diaries, in‐depth interviews and surveys.We also highlight the importance of considering the impact of the spaces in which we conduct our research.

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 23 no. 1/2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 November 2009

Anna Sparrman

The purpose of this paper is to understand, from children's perspectives, the commercial marketing strategy of selling breakfast cereals with “insert toys” targeted at children.

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to understand, from children's perspectives, the commercial marketing strategy of selling breakfast cereals with “insert toys” targeted at children.

Design/methodology/approach

The study is based on four focus group interviews conducted with 16 children (8‐9 years of age) concerning 18 different breakfast cereal packages. The theoretical framework integrates childhood sociology, critical discourse analysis and talk‐in‐interaction. This theoretical and methodological combination is used to show how children, in local micro settings of talk, make use of the discourses that are available to them to produce and reproduce social and cultural values about marketing with “insert toys”.

Findings

The present findings suggest that, from children's perspectives, “insert toys” are constituted by cultural and social patterns extending far beyond the “insert toy” itself. For example, the analysis shows that it is not biological age that defines what and how consumption is understood.

Research limitations/implications

The focus group material provides understandings of marketing strategies and consumption practices from children's perspectives. When the children talk about children and adults, hybrid agents of the “child‐adult”, the “adult‐child” and the “childish child” are constructed. These hybrids contradict research that dichotomizes children and adults likewise children's understandings of consumption based on age stages. Accordingly, age is rationalized into an empirically investigated category rather than being used as a preset category set out to explain children's behaviours.

Originality/value

Analysis of the focus group interactions shows that the way the market and marketing as well as children and adults are talked about is crucial to understanding children's and parents' actions as consumers.

Details

Young Consumers, vol. 10 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1747-3616

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 6 September 2011

Madeleine Leonard, Martina McKnight and Spyros Spyrou

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the six main articles which represent the special issue on “Growing up in divided societies” and to locate the articles…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the six main articles which represent the special issue on “Growing up in divided societies” and to locate the articles within a framework of children's experiences of divided societies.

Design/methodology/approach

The article reviews the main methodologies employed by authors of the six articles and evaluates how these methodologies contribute to debates on researching children and young people's everyday lives.

Findings

The paper presents the core findings of the six articles and discusses these in relation to core themes, methodologies and policy implications.

Originality/value

The authors argue that there is a dearth of research on children and young people's everyday lives in politically contested societies and the special issue responds to this vacuum.

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 31 no. 9/10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 June 2005

Emma N. Banister and Gayle J. Booth

We discuss the use of creative qualitative techniques for research studies focusing on young participants and encourage the development of what we term a “child‐centric” approach…

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Abstract

Purpose

We discuss the use of creative qualitative techniques for research studies focusing on young participants and encourage the development of what we term a “child‐centric” approach. We hope that by sharing our experiences we can help move forward the discussion of child‐centric approaches and methods, providing a useful starting point for researchers considering conducting qualitative research with children, and food for thought for those experienced at researching the lives of young consumers.

Design/methodology/approach

We begin our paper with a general overview of approaches to childhood as a social category, discuss methodological approaches to research with children and review the literature that informed our methodological approach. In the second part of the paper we focus on an empirical investigation, outlining a methodology with which we sought to embrace children's active participation. Our qualitative approach incorporates the following: quasi‐ethnographic methods; interviews; projective techniques and photography.

Findings

It is suggested that by shifting our research focus from a top‐down perspective into one that embraces childhood as a culture in its own right, we can greet children within their own language, using terminology they understand, and ultimately providing the context for a more fruitful and exciting data collection process. Our research design was effective in providing children with a voice with which to relate their experiences, and in this way we saw ourselves as facilitators, letting children tell us their own story in their own words.

Originality/value

We argue that it is only by recognising and taking on board some of the recommendations that have emerged from the debate concerning research with children that consumer researchers will discover a fuller appreciation of the participants we seek to understand. Lessons from this approach can also be fruitfully used to enhance the experiences of research involving participants other than children who should also benefit from more participant‐centred research designs.

Details

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, vol. 8 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1352-2752

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 November 2009

Daniel Thomas Cook

The purpose of this paper is to offer a selective and necessarily truncated history of the place and use of qualitative approaches in the study of children's consumption in order…

5630

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to offer a selective and necessarily truncated history of the place and use of qualitative approaches in the study of children's consumption in order to provide some depth of understanding regarding differences between and commonalities of approaches employed by academic market researchers, social science researchers and, to a lesser extent, market practitioners.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper examines key research statements about children's consumption beginning in the 1930s to ascertain the underlying conception of the child informing the work.

Findings

It is argued that there has been a displacement of psychologically oriented, developmental conceptions of the child with sociological and anthropological conceptions resulting in an acceptance of the child as a more or less knowing, competent consumer. This shift has become manifest in a rise and acceptance of qualitative research on children's consumer behaviour by social science and marketing academics as well as by market practitioners such as market researchers.

Research limitations/implications

Methods – here qualitative methods – must be seen as enactments of theories about conceptions of the person, rather than simply as neutral tools that uncover extant truths.

Practical implications

Attending to how one “constructs” the child may usefully inform debates about the harmfulness or usefulness of goods and messages directed to children.

Originality/value

This paper helps in understanding the long history of children as consumers, how they have been understood and approached by market and academic researchers interested in consumption and various ways conceptions of ‘the child’ can be used.

Details

Young Consumers, vol. 10 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1747-3616

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 November 2013

Pascale Garnier

The aim of the research is to emphasise the role of material culture, and especially the role of objects related to physical activities, in children's socialization. It involves…

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of the research is to emphasise the role of material culture, and especially the role of objects related to physical activities, in children's socialization. It involves children's bodies but also symbolic meanings and values which introduce children to the universe of sport's consumption.

Design/methodology/approach

The research is grounded on the construction of a system of objects related to children's physical activities in France. The production of a corpus of objects involves a methodological circle where the choice of the objects goes together with a reflexive analysis about the operations of categorization of objects. The analysis of objects require both technological and semiotical approaches.

Findings

In the context of globalization and commodification of childhood, but also of the globalization and mediatization of sports, the research shows that objects for children's physical activities are inscribed in a double transformation: sportification of children's games and childification of sports.

Research limitations/implications

The research focuses on material culture and does not investigate children's uses of the objects for physical activity and does not determine the process of their conception and design.

Practical implications

The paper emphasises the difference between two faces of children's physical activities: spending calories and the development of motor skills and interpretative competences linked to sports' culture and children's mass culture.

Originality Value

In contrast to the work done on food and digital culture, the field of children's physical activities and sports is not as well researched. This is especially the case for the objects designed for children and this research is one of the first in the field in international literature. It constitutes also the first attempt for including this topic in the worlds of children's consumption.

Details

Young Consumers, vol. 14 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1747-3616

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 13 February 2007

Vebjørg Tingstad

This paper seeks to report from a qualitative study of the global television concept Pop Idol with the aim of evaluating children's and teenagers' involvement as consumers, both…

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper seeks to report from a qualitative study of the global television concept Pop Idol with the aim of evaluating children's and teenagers' involvement as consumers, both in their roles in purchasing goods and services, and being targets for well‐designed promotional activities.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on content analysis and interviews with children, the paper analyses the dynamics between marketing strategies, program content and child audiences.

Findings

The paper discusses how young consumers distinguish between two “regimes of truth” in the television concept: first the creation of a superstar, and second the broader phenomenon that Pop Idol represents, which is mainly about creating consumers through participation.

Originality/value

The paper contributes to acknowledging children's perspectives and childhood as not only valuable but necessary to inform consumer research, since children are deeply and unavoidably enmeshed in consumption in fundamental ways.

Details

Society and Business Review, vol. 2 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-5680

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 September 2006

Giorgia Doná

This article contributes to emerging discussions of child participation in general, and in research with migrant and displaced children specifically, by examining the involvement…

Abstract

This article contributes to emerging discussions of child participation in general, and in research with migrant and displaced children specifically, by examining the involvement of children as research advisors in two projects: a study of foster care for separated children in Rwanda, and an analysis of the conditions of children outside parental care living in institutions and communities in Bangladesh. The comparison highlights the importance of conceiving participation as a research strategy, and advocates a ‘methodology of participation’ that considers varieties of participation and varieties of social change. Teaching research methods to children acting as advisors enabled them to understand what research is and to learn about the lives of other children, while contributing to decision‐making processes in selecting questions, participants, interpreting findings and making recommendations. Children's input into research contributes to overcoming essentialist conceptualisations of children in difficult circumstances, and moving to viewing these children as social actors embedded in complex relational processes. At the same time, involving children in an advisory capacity considers them as active participants in the research process, as they are in social life.

Details

International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care, vol. 2 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1747-9894

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 3 August 2010

Ciara Smyth and Samia Michail

The recognition of children and young people as active agents, not merely passive subjects, has become a cornerstone of much research undertaken in the social sciences over the…

Abstract

The recognition of children and young people as active agents, not merely passive subjects, has become a cornerstone of much research undertaken in the social sciences over the last three decades. Reflecting on research with young carers, this paper describes the research techniques employed to actively engage these children and young people in order to gain insight into their experiences of providing care. It concludes with a discussion of the benefits and disadvantages of the research methods, and the issues of ethics and consent.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 10 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

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