Voluntary informed consent

Adults

The two central principles of consent are:

1. Whether participants truly feel free to ‘volunteer’ or decline to participate in research.

2. How adult participants or parents/carers of young participants can be informed about the potential consequences of participating in research about and with digital media.

You should ask yourself:

1. What measures have been taken to ensure that adults’ participation is voluntary and informed?

2. What creative and interactive approaches can be used to inform participants about what taking part in the research will involve?

Children

The two central principals of consent with young children are:

1. Whether child participants truly feel free to ‘volunteer’ or decline to participate in research.

2. How child participants can be informed about the potential consequences of participating in research about and with digital media.

When seeking young children’s consent to participate, researchers can never be sure if they fully understand what taking part in research will mean in practice. So, it can be helpful to consider children’s agreement to participate as provisional upon the research unfolding in line with their expectations, and to revisit and renegotiate children’s consent through different phases of research.

You should ask yourself:

1. What measures have been taken to ensure that children’s participation is voluntary and informed?

2. What creative and interactive approaches can be used to inform participants, and would using digital technologies help in this process?

3. Have children been consulted, in ways that make sense to them, about the study aims and conduct, and have their views been taken into account?

Homes

When conducting research with adults and children in the home environment, the trusting atmosphere of home may contribute to children and parents/carers consenting to take part without fully considering the infringement of privacy in their home lives.

Conversely, adults and children may have concerns about allowing a researcher into their home, and need reassurance about what will be involved.

You should ask yourself:

1. In practical terms, how can the concerns of adult gatekeepers be addressed regarding access to the family home and to children at home?

2. Have you discussed boundaries to the research in the home environment (eg where and when data may or may not be collected)?

3. How can parents/carers and children be involved (voluntarily or involuntarily) in research about their home lives?

4. What are the gains and losses of encouraging adults and children to collect data in the family home?

Educational and community settings

When researching in early education and school settings, and in the wider community (eg museums and libraries), it is important to find out about and respect each setting’s own regulations and legal requirements regarding child and adult consent. This must be respected and addressed in addition to the ethical requirements of your research institution.

Schools, preschools, libraries and museums are complex institutions with many children and adults, and with particular power dynamics linked to job roles and individuals’ status within each setting. These power dynamics may mean some adults and children do not feel as though they have a free choice about participating or not.

It is likely that some individuals will not want to participate in a study or be involved in the research, so it is important that they feel free as individuals to opt out.

Sometimes, the research design and data collection process will have to make provisions for children and adults present in data collection moments who are not participants in the study and have not consented to participate in a study.

You should ask yourself:

1. What are gatekeepers’ concerns about informed consent, and how can these be addressed?

2. What measures can be taken to ensure that no participants feel obliged to take part in the research (eg through power dynamics or peer pressure)?

3. Will it be made clear to participants that they can opt out of the research at any time?

4. Will consent be considered as a one-off or will there be ongoing dialogue about the boundaries of what participants have consented to?

Virtual or online

The nature of interaction in online public spaces, such as virtual games, is typically fluid and complex. This makes informed and voluntary consent impractical, and in some cases impossible, as researchers may not be able to verify the identity of all online participants. However, this does not mean that all internet-based research carries high ethical risk.

There are many unresolved issues regarding the relevance of existing ethics frameworks to research about young children’s digital practices. We need to step back to consider how ethics with and about digital technologies are different to established ethics practices.

You should ask yourself:

1. Is the online community a private or public space?

2. How can informed consent be gained in online communities?

3. Can online participants’ identity, age and vulnerability be verified?