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Access and Gatekeeping in Researching Children’s Sexuality: Mess in Ethics and Methods

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Abstract

There is a general idea that research methods help researchers investigate realities “out there”. Recent arguments, however, suggest that research methods are themselves productive, i.e., we can learn about a research topic by investigating aspects and details of the methods used in a research process. The present text investigates methods for gaining access to a research field in a project examining young children’s own (age 9–12 years) notions of sexuality. The article explores how and by whom the issue of children and sexuality is enacted as sensitive when trying to negotiate access to the research field. A whole variety of actors are involved in enacting children’s sexuality: institutions, groups of people, individuals, images, and architectural arrangements. The analysis reveals relationships in which fears, responsibilities, and the cultural attribution of vulnerability (sensitivity) are negotiated by adults, children, and the researcher.

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Notes

  1. The Swedish Research Council Dnr 2004-2242.

  2. The same material was used in the Swedish and American focus groups. Most of the ads contained texts written in English, which is why the American children were sometimes able to interpret the pictures at multiple levels while the Swedish children sometimes needed help translating the English.

  3. The Swedish part of the study also included two focus group discussions with Swedish parents.

  4. This argument was made by the Swedish organization Riksförbunder för Sexuell Upplysning, RFSU. RFSU is a “non-profit organization independent of party politics, the unions and religion that works for an open, positive view of sex and relationship issues”.

  5. It was assumed that every child had two parents involved in their lives.

  6. The six graders’ parents had been invited to a parental meeting.

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Acknowledgments

I am beholden to Pål Aarsand and Steve Woolgar for their careful reading and helpful comments on earlier versions of the text. I also want to thank the reviewers for insightful comments and the Swedish Research Council for funding Dnr 2004-2242.

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  1. Departments of Thematic Studies—Child Studies, Linköping University, 581 83, Linköping, Sweden

    Anna Sparrman

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Correspondence to Anna Sparrman.

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Sparrman, A. Access and Gatekeeping in Researching Children’s Sexuality: Mess in Ethics and Methods. Sexuality & Culture 18, 291–309 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-013-9198-x

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