The Researcher Toolkit and Researcher Resource have been developed to support researchers to include young children in research, particularly children aged 5-8 years of age. While it has been designed to support those who are seeking to include young children in research for the first time, the hope is that the broad range of methods described will also be of value for more seasoned researchers.
It does this by providing a six-step process for designing research and through systematically identifying and describing a range of methods that have been used with young children in diverse contexts around the world.
This Researcher Resource provides academic background about why young children should be involved in research and provides more guidance on each of the six steps to engaging young children in research. For each of the steps guidance is given about what the researcher might include in their research when considering each step. For each cluster of methods an overview is provided to show the range of the types of methods that could be applied with young children, key strengths and weaknesses of these methods and a consideration of the potential contextual, ethical and capacity issues which may arise through the use of such methods
This publication, Steps to Engaging Children in Research is accompanied by a Researcher Toolkit.
