Abstract
Research for street children and homeless begins accurate numbers. Once the objects of the study are clear we need to establish a valid procedure for choosing a random sample. One model is based on what is used for peripatetic groups. This begins with a clear definition of households, mapping high and low concentrations and taking a random sample of the map sectors. Potential problems include time of day the data is collected, who the data collector is, the difficulty of using standardized tests, and the importance of translation and back translation.
Another model, the Sao Paolo Count, begins with compiling a list of places where street children congregate. Then dividing the city into sectors where the subjects are found and organizing walking routes so they are all counted. Potential problems include double counting and that only a limited amount of variables, like gender and age, can be counted.
The count-recount method is based on sampling wild animals that were tagged, released and recaptured in two or more random samples. Lists of subjects from several different sources are scanned for repeating names. Multiple data collectors walk the streets that are identified as having populations. They asked the children to give their names, and other demographic information. They repeat the process. The results depend on the honesty of the responses.
Validity is research on children in street situations is problematic. The population have developed good skills in saying what they think wants to be heard. They lie about their ages, family back grounds, and reasons for being on the street, etc. Know that these children are likely to be experience subjects. It is helpful to multiple data collectors with different demographic characteristics (gender, age, expatriate vs. local, etc).
Expatriate researchers of street children should be accustomed to the host country, and work with host country researchers. They should know the basic values and belief systems of children in street situations, and proportionately sample sub groups, and compare data to show if children in street situations are worse or better off than their counterparts. Know that these children are likely to be experience subjects.
The best methods for research with children in street situations includes projective techniques such as open-ended sentence completions, human drawings, drawings of mental maps, photographic diaries, and performance related information. The mental status exam is introduced as guided observational tool. It is important to triangulate methods, avoid questionnaires or other paper and pencil tests that ask direct questions.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child asks researchers to involve, inform, and consult with children in any area of research. In participatory Action Research (PAR) children take over many research functions previously used only by adults.
A lack of longitudinal studies makes it difficult to know how they function as adults. There are research problems associated with the researcher collection and understanding of the data. Data should be put into the context of local culture and history. There are also ethical considerations, including the question of giving money.
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Notes
- 1.
Hecht (1998) notes that the national movement of street children, which thrived as a political interest group in Brazil in the 1990s had, in fact, very few street children involved.
- 2.
They are grouped by disability and age. The conditions in these institutions are far below standard care for nutrition, cleanliness, and over-crowding. They all combine to cause extreme stress.
- 3.
One thousand five hundred of them will commit suicide. One reason for the suicides is that while the Russian people love children, orphaned children are symbols of suffering and victimization and thus a cognitive dissonance is set up, and suicide is one way of escaping the pain caused by it (Fujimora 2005).
- 4.
The ages were from 10 to 24 and the vast majority were male (Alteena et al. 2010). Hyde, ( 2005) studied young people in Los Angeles from 18 to 23 years of age. The sample was split evenly between men and women. Repeated studies in Denver, Colorado between 1998 and 2005, showed a 55% increase in the number of homeless youth (D’Alanno 2005). Yet, there is no way of knowing if this change was an actual increase, a political distortion, or a research artifact.
- 5.
Running away is against the law in all states in the USA (and in most countries in the developed world). Thus these adolescents will become law breakers; albeit of a particular offense because they have not reached the age of majority (between 16 and 21 years of age depending on state statute). These are called status offenses and include such acts as being out late at night, drinking alcohol, having sex, being truant from school and of course, running away.
- 6.
This also placed an enormous strain on traditional foster care systems.
- 7.
While there were street children in Rwanda as early as the 1980s, their numbers were few and their origins could be accounted for by work-related rural to urban migration. In this they were typical of other African street children.
- 8.
The mean age of the 290 children sampled was 14.2 years. The older children were on the streets longer than the younger children. And the older children were significantly more likely to have experienced the death of their mother. Nearly 90% first came to the streets after the genocide of 1994. They found no significant differences with regard to the reason for going to the street based on whether their father or mother were alive. What was significantly different was their mental health when viewed pre-genocide and post-genocide.
- 9.
This off and on distinction started in 1985 when Peter Taçon of UNICEF coined the phrase (Taçon 1985).
- 10.
See also Koller and Hutz ( 1996) on how differences in definitions cause confusion in results.
- 11.
Thus, Cosgrove’s criticism (1990) that street children are defined with reference to where they hang out, not by common characteristics of a collective group. And Rizzini et al. ( 2007) questioned whether what was being called a street child corresponded to either a clearly delimited social category or a perfectly homogeneous psycho-sociological unity.
- 12.
By checking in on the choums at various times they were able not only to collect demographic data, but also to assess the stability of who lived where. There were times when they would see a couple of boys in one place for a few nights and then see them in another place. This movement was not only within Nairobi, boys often left Nairobi for the coast or Western provinces and then returned.
- 13.
Klein et al. ( 2006) in studying European gangs (and some from the USA) found that there were several advantages to using the cultural comparative approach. Some of these were using the same data collection methods, common sample procedures, and having and resolving conflicts among research teams to arrive at a consensus cross-cultural view point.
- 14.
It has also been recommended to follow kids as they leave day care programs or the parks to the streets where they hang out (Aptekar 1988; Kilbride et al. 2000). In Kenya, Aptekar and Ciano ( 1999) report on the advantage of having an older street child at their side. In any event, the public nature of the street conversations might keep them limited to acceptable and gender-sensitive topics (Kovats-Bernat ( 2006). While Kovats-Bernat is unable to talk freely with street girls, particularly about sex, Mtonga ( 2012) was able to do so. Presumably, the issue is not one of gender, but that Kovats-Bernat is an expatriate while Mtonga is a Zambian interviewing Zambian children.
- 15.
There is, for example, no study about love relationships of children in street situations. Although bonding and intimate relationships are not reducible to sexual intercourse; the focus on the latter, especially sexual abuse, in the media but also in academic research, is also a part of to the social construction of the street child’s stereotype.
- 16.
Aptekar wants to thank Phillip Fucella, University of California at Berkeley, for his rich editorial comments on counter transference.
- 17.
Swart ( 1990) in South Africa and Ennew ( 1994) in her international review mention a similar phenomenon; the problems of having middle class people who have inherited middle class prejudices about children in street situations collecting data. Note that the middle class people are often not expatriates but people from the local culture who come from a different social class.
- 18.
On the other hand, Hutz and Koller ( 1999) show that giving to children can lead to unreliable data; the result of street children fighting to be interviewed more than once in order to get more than one payment.
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Aptekar, L., Stoecklin, D. (2014). Research with Children in Street Situations. In: Street Children and Homeless Youth. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7356-1_4
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