Abstract
Research with children and young people is essential for understanding antisocial behavior and victimization. Likewise, learning about juvenile offenders’ needs and experiences has been a central issue in juvenile justice research. Therefore, criminology needs research with young people. In this chapter, we discuss the ethical and emotional issues in researching with and for children, based on our own experience in the field. We begin by emphasizing that the entire design of an investigation, in each of its phases, must be respectful and careful of children’s well-being, taking a child-centered approach. We pay special attention to how to encourage the voice of young people to be heard and attended to throughout the research process. Secondly, we reflect on how researchers can respond to ethical requirements, such as free participation and anonymity; also, we discuss about emotional work that researchers must carry out. Finally, we collect some lessons learned and good practices to carry out rigorous and respectful research.
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Notes
- 1.
In this chapter, the terms children, minors, adolescents, and young people shall be used interchangeably to refer to participants under the age of 18. When reference is made to research on offenders and according to the age–delinquency curve we refer to children over 12 years of age, who are in the adolescent stage. When reference is made to victims, they may be younger, so we have opted to use the terms children and minors.
- 2.
Prisoners, students, and soldiers are considered captive populations. For different reasons their individual autonomy is limited, and therefore, their capacity for voluntary consent may be compromised (Bonham & Moreno, 2008)
- 3.
- 4.
The International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD) is an international collaborative study on delinquency, victimization, and substance use. Three sweeps were conducted in 1991–1992 (ISRD1), 2006–2008 (ISRD2), and 2012–2019 (ISRD3). More information is available at https://isrdstudy.org
- 5.
Let’s be clear is a collection of accessible documents developed by our research group and directed at juveniles suspected of engaging in criminal behaviors who find themselves involved in judicial proceedings. The purpose is to help familiarise young offenders with the different procedural steps they will be exposed to and their rights at each stage. Further information in this link https://www.uclm.es/grupos/crimijov/transferencia/hablemos-claro?sc_lang=en
- 6.
To see good practices in health context http://iconsent.pilotvalidation.eu/en/teenagers-study/
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In this paper results from a research that has received funding from the National Government of Spain are provided (National R&D Plan: PID2020-118151RB-I00).
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Fernández-Molina, E., Bartolomé-Gutiérrez, R. (2023). How to Do Criminological Research on, for, and with Children and Young People. In: Díaz-Fernández, A.M., Del-Real, C., Molnar, L. (eds) Fieldwork Experiences in Criminology and Security Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41574-6_15
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