Visibilidad

In line with the new sociology of childhood viewpoint, outlined in Chapter 3, children should not be seen as objects but rather subjects of research whereby research with children is emphasised rather than research on children (Hood et al., 1996). Christensen (2004) advocates an approach that explores the social constructions of the terms ‘adult’ and ‘child’ in order to understand that power does not simply reside in people and social positions but in the process of doing research. For Christensen (2004), power is neither fixed to the role of researcher or that of the child being researched but shifts and is shared throughout the research process. The issue of power and how one seeks to redress it in research has strong implications in terms of the methodology and practical approaches adopted. For instance, practical suggestions associated with assuming differing researcher roles (Davis, 1998), employing multiple participatory methods (Morrow and Richards, 1996) and the ways in which data are interpreted (Thomas and O’Kane, 1998) can all go some way towards rebalancing power relations.

A reflexive approach is vital as researchers need to recognise how they view ‘children’, what has informed their views and how their views may facilitate power imbalances and impact on the ways in which research is carried out, including the methods chosen and how data is interpreted (Harden et al., 2000).

James (1995; cited in Morrow, 2008) outlines four ways of viewing and understanding children and links these to the different ways that children are conceptualised in research, which in turn influences the research methods selected, ethical issues and the power balance between researcher and participant. Each of these four views will be briefly discussed.

Firstly, the ‘developing child’ view encapsulates the child as incompetent and unreliable. This is the traditional view that the ‘new’ sociology of childhood strived to move away from and the methods that it implicated, for instance, experimentation within which the power lies entirely with the researcher.

Secondly, the ‘tribal child’ perspective places the child as a competent actor who is entirely autonomous from adults inhabiting a conceptually separate

76 world. The method of choice for those holding this view is participant observation. However, Morrow and Richards (1996) highlight an ethical implication of this view as adult researchers, in trying to inhabit the conceptually separate world of the ‘tribal child’, are being misleading trying ‘to engage with this other world by attempting to suspend their adult status, because they cannot become children again’ (p99). They argue that to try and do so is

‘confusing’ to children and on a par with the deception experienced by children in experiments.

Thirdly, those who adopt an ‘adult child’ view consider children as competent actors but in an adult-centred world. Here the perspectives of the child are sought but these are focussed on their thoughts and understandings of an adult world in which they participate. Therefore, the methods employed when taking this viewpoint are also adult-centric and based on the assumption that children do not differ from adults, for instance, by use of interviews and survey questionnaires. However, the assumption that there are no differences between children and adults raises ethical issues as the difference in terms of social status is never adequately addressed (Morrow and Richards, 1996;

Punch, 2002). From this viewpoint, children will inevitably be asked about (adult) things that they are simply not experienced in, which can perpetuate a view that children are incompetent and unable to understand (Morrow, 2008).

The fourth view as outlined by James (1995; cited in Morrow, 2008) is of the ‘social child’ which accepts that children are comparable to adults in terms of being research participants, as they are competent social actors in their own right, but that they have differing competencies compared to adults. These differing competencies may need to be tapped by using a range of different research methods to enable children to participate fully in the research process.

Proponents of this view have developed child focussed ‘task-based’ methods based on children’s skills such as drawing exercises, storytelling tasks and sentence completion games in order to engage with the ‘diversity of childhood’

(Morrow and Richards, 1996:100) and proponents of such methods believe that, through these methods, power imbalances that exist in adult-child research can be redressed.

77 4.2.1 ‘Child-friendly’ or ‘person-friendly’ research methods?

There is some discordance within the ‘new’ sociology of childhood with reference to the use of different types of ‘child-friendly’ methods to engage children in research. For instance, Punch (2002) notes that it is a paradox to suggest that ‘special child-friendly methods’ are needed if one is, at the same time, arguing that children are competent social actors. However, researchers can take the view that children are competent social actors whilst also accepting that these competencies can be different to those of adults. Furthermore, children are not familiar with expressing their views freely, as often they are controlled and limited by adults and ascribed a position from which they are viewed as incapable and not to be taken seriously (Alderson and Goodey, 1996;

Punch, 2002). The challenge, therefore, is how research methods can be adapted and developed to ‘enable children to express their views to an adult researcher’ (Punch, 2002:325) at the point of data-gathering, facilitating their willingness and enjoyment in participating and, hopefully, leading to a richness in the data obtained. The focus should not necessarily be on ‘child-friendly’

methods to achieve this, but rather on ‘participant-centred’ or ‘person-friendly’

methods (Punch, 2002) that have been chosen as appropriate for the group being studied and are relevant to the field of study. It is important to note that just as children have differing competencies to those of adults, children will also differ in their abilities and competencies when compared to one another. As Harden et al. (2000) point out, an adult researcher may regard a drawing research task as ‘fun’ and ‘child-friendly’ but for a child who does not enjoy drawing and does not feel confident in their drawing ability it will be neither and their participation may then be at risk. Researchers need to be flexible, reflexive and sensitive in terms of how best to involve and include all their individual participants (Davis, 1998).

My own approach when designing the methods of data collection for my doctoral research moved between viewing and conceptualising children as the

‘adult child’ and the ‘social child’. I was keen to explore alternative and participatory research methods and ‘task-based’ activities influenced by Participatory Rural Appraisal techniques (Thomas-Slater, 1995). However, it

78 was also important to me to utilise these methods together with the more

‘traditional’ interview based research method. As Punch (2002:330) notes:

...by using traditional ‘adult’ research methods, such as...interviews, children can be treated in the same way as adults and display their competencies. Thus, they are not being patronized by using only spec ial

‘child-friendly’ techniques.

For my study, interviews were chosen as the primary data collection method, because I felt they were the most appropriate method to elicit views about the subject of sleep from the multiple viewpoints of disabled children, siblings and parents. Specifically, this qualitative approach would explore in-depth the concept of ‘doing’ sleep and the factors that ‘surround, inform, induce and influence’ sleep (Williams et al., 2007:4.5) for children with CP and their family members. However, by also using supplementary task-based activities, I felt the children, and to some degree the adults, in the study would be better supported and encouraged to express their views in differing ways, which is important especially as such methods can provide opportunities for rapport to build between the adult researcher and child participant (Harden et al., 2000;

Punch, 2002). Punch (2002) comments that task-based research techniques can be beneficial to use with adults as well as children, therefore, confirming that such methods should be classed as ‘participant-friendly’ or ‘person-friendly’

rather than ‘child-friendly’.

In line with Harden et al. (2000) and Punch (2002), my view was that a balance between task-based activities and ‘straight forward conversation’, that is interviews, is possible and useful and this, once again, relies on flexibility of the researcher. Specifically, the task-based methods that I used were photographs taken by children, as well as sleep diaries, actigraphy and sleep questionnaires with all participating family members. These task-based methods took place in a two week period prior to undertaking the qualitative interviews and were valuable as they focussed the participant’s thoughts on the subject of their sleep, allowing them to think about and explore aspects of sleep prior to their interview. The photographs, sleep diaries, actigraphs, and sleep questionnaires were used as prompts in the individual interviews which proved

79 very successful as a ‘stimulus for talk rather than as evidence in their own right’

(Harden et al., 2000: para. 2.10). Details about the interviews and the task-based activities will be discussed in Chapter 5.