• Question: Can Children's mental health be difficult to study and ethically be problematic?

    Asked by anon-183905 to Tom, Owen on 7 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Owen Jones

      Owen Jones answered on 7 Nov 2018:

      Hi Charlie,

      Studying anyone’s mental health is difficult but you’re right in thinking it’s more problematic among young people. We do have ethics committees who have to approve our research projects. This ensures consitency and ethical values are maintained across the research field globally. We have safeguarding measures in place that mean we refer children for support if they; score highly on a wellbeing / mental health test, or declare something concerning or distressing to us.

      Generally speaking, questionnaires and surveys are ok if they aren’t too invaisive. If we’re planning to conduct interviews and gain some deeper insights into individual circumstances, then more ethical issues need to be addressed and managed.

    • Photo: Tom Gallagher-Mitchell

      Tom Gallagher-Mitchell answered on 12 Nov 2018:

      as owen stated there are ethical guidelines for researchers to follow which we abide by, but obviously young people are important to so we do need to involve them in research and how we approach this. For example in my own work on resilience in young people, we are using technology to make it easier for students to engage with, but have used focus groups and feedback throughout and modified things in the projects based upon this.

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