Using interactive nonfiction narrative to enhance competence in the informed consent process with 3-year-old children

ABSTRACT

Ensuring young children’s competence to participate meaningfully in the informed consent process is a troublesome ethical issue. Evolving recognition of the influence of context and relationship, researcher perspective, and researcher responsibility to provide adequate support has advanced understanding of how this might be achieved. Here, we report the findings of the pilot trial of a new approach that used an ‘interactive nonfiction narrative’ to enhance young children’s capacity to provide meaningful informed consent. This innovative approach employs (re)telling strategies and technology (interactive) to convey factual information about the research (nonfiction) via a story (narrative) to promote participant understanding. Case studies of two 3-year-old boys and their mothers captured participants’ understanding of the informing and consent process. Data collection in the child’s home took place over 11 weeks and included conversations with children and semi-structured interviews with parents on three occasions, together with videos of children interacting with the informing story. We found that children understood many of the key concepts, including the research problem and how they could ‘help’ (participate). Children also understood that they could cease their participation, with one boy exercising his right to opt out towards the end of the study.

KEYWORDS:

• Interactive nonfiction narrative (INN)
• informed consent
• research ethics
• young children

Acknowledgement

The opinions expressed in the article are those of the researchers and should not be attributed to the funding body.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Fiona Mayne has a PhD in early childhood research ethics and participation. She teaches technology education in the Graduate School of Education at The University of Western Australia. Her current research interests concern young children’s research participation and ICTs in pre-service teacher education.

Christine Howitt is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at The University of Western Australia, where she teaches science and mathematics education. Her current research focuses on learning science in informal contexts along with methodological and ethical issues associated with such research.

Léonie J. Rennie is an Emeritus Professor at Curtin University. Her research interests concern the processes, outcomes, and assessment of learning in science and technology, particularly in out-of-school settings.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council Linkage Grant (LP110200756) to Dr Christine J. Howitt and Professor Léonie J. Rennie, in partnership with Scitech and Rio Tinto.