Informed consent, gatekeepers and go‐betweens: negotiating consent in child‐ and youth‐orientated institutions

Abstract

Gaining informed consent from research participants is widely regarded as central to ethical research practice. This article reports on research which sought to identify contemporary practice in this area amongst researchers working in fields where research participants are often constructed as vulnerable within the research process, and where their potential involvement tends to be mediated by institutional gatekeepers. Drawing on telephone interview and focus group data, the article focuses specifically on the experiences of researchers working with children and young people. It highlights the tensions experienced by many researchers between a personal commitment to an ethical framework which seeks to prioritise the agency and competency of children and young people, and the conditions imposed upon them by working within institutional settings where these principles may be undermined. This research suggests that the consent practices of child‐ and youth‐orientated institutions, however much frowned upon, tend to go largely unchallenged by researchers, to the detriment of the rights of children and young people to opt in and out of research on their own behalf.

Acknowledgements

The project upon which this article is based, ‘Informed consent and the research process’, was funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council under the Research Methods Programme, award no. H333250034. We are extremely grateful to all the researchers who have given their time to contribute to the project. A version of this article was presented at the International Sociological Association's Sixth International Conference on Research Methodology in Amsterdam, August 2004, and we are grateful to participants in the ‘Ethics and Social Relations of Research’ stream for their useful feedback. Thanks, too, to the two anonymous reviewers of this article for their comments.

Notes

1. All of the interviews were conducted by Vikki Charles, the project Research Fellow.

2. Specific guidelines on researching children have, for example, been produced by organisations such as the Market Research Society and the National Children's Bureau.

3. In 1983, Victoria Gillick sought a High Court declaration that none of her five daughters could be prescribed or advised on birth control until they were 16. Her application was overruled, then supported by the Court of Appeal in 1984, and finally overruled by the Law Lords in 1985.

4. Alderson and Morrow (2004) argue that only a very controversial piece of research would be likely to reach the courts, in which case researchers would be wise to seek parental consent in the first instance.

5. Conversely, under‐16‐year‐olds have no legal powers to prevent their parents from providing personal information about them for research purposes, even though they may be unhappy about such information being given. Neither is it unusual for personal information pertaining to (identifiable) individual children and young people to be provided by workers within institutional settings without first gaining their consent.