MESHGuides

Evidence

Evidence on the positive impact and effects of digital books is only emerging. We have endeavoured to list where relevant in the text those sources which you will find most helpful when considering this MESHGuide.

We invite colleagues interested in building the evidence base for practice to contact us via enquiries@meshguides.org.

This MESHGuide has been designed to provide evidence on effective use of digital books with early years and primary school-aged children.

In practice, exercising the right to withdraw from a research study may be difficult for certain groups of participants. In particular children may be reluctant to tell the researcher that they do not want to be involved in the project any more, particularly if that person is their teacher due to the power dynamics involved (Alderson, 2004). A related issue may be that the participant may just not want to answer a particular question, but feel obliged to do so.

An issue that arises often for researchers is how much information to provide to participants to enable informed consent to be achieved. The tension arises due to the potential for the information given to participants about the project may result in them saying things or behaving in ways that they would not have done if they had not known this information.

A significant challenge that a researcher faces in the process of gaining informed consent is negotiating access to participants within a particular context where a professional gatekeeper is legally in charge of ensuring the well-being of the individuals they are responsible for within that context e.g. an educational setting. In order to achieve this it is essential that you present an overview of your research clearly and professionally to the professional gatekeeper, demonstrating how you have taken into account all the possible ethical issues that may arise.

The process of thinking through the ethics underpinning your research at the planning stage is very important. However this is only the first stage in the process and actually ensuring that these ethical standards are implemented in your project is what matters in the end, and is what is the most difficult to achieve. Some of the challenges to ensuring that highest possible standards of ethics are explored in this section.

General safeguarding guidelines for researchers working with children or young people published by Sheffield Hallam University include the following advice:

Two aspects need to be considered relating to anonymising research data:

Usually information will be provided to participants in written form and (where appropriate) to gate keepers prior to gaining signed consent. It may also be necessary to provide information orally to ensure that participants understand the implications of becoming involved in the research as fully as possible.

Initially the process of gaining informed consent appears to be a straightforward process, however when you begin to look at what this means in practice there are several issues to think about. Below are some questions to consider when you design the information sheet for the project and plan how you will manage the process of gaining informed consent: