Taking Part while being apart: conducting participatory research with children during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

The paper is a reflective narrative of engaging two school students aged 13–16 as advisors in participatory research in Bangladesh during the COVID-19 crisis. It outlines different ways to facilitate the active engagement of children and young people and include their voices in research. The authors also discuss the benefits and methodological and ethical complexities of engaging children and young people as advisors of adult researchers during the pandemic in a country from the Global South, such as Bangladesh. The findings underscore the need to rethink the traditional view of considering children and young people as vulnerable and passive members of society in times of emergency and explore the scope of involving them as active stakeholders in producing quality research data.

KEYWORDS:

• Bangladesh
• COVID-19
• digital divide
• global south
• participatory research
• student advisors
• student voice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics

This work was approved and supported by the UNSW Ethics Committee, ethics approval number HC200003.