MRS Conference: The Dangerous Session for Boys (and Girls)

Tuesday afternoon kicked off with a session on researching children's buying behaviour, with speakers mapping out some of the minefield it represents, before a highly-informed audience. Teresa Lynch reports.

Agnes Nairn, Affiliate Professor of Marketing, EM-Lyon Business School joined Barbie Clarke, MD of Family, Kids and Youth for a paper on the importance of ethical behaviour when involving young people in research. Nairn mentioned early on that children love to participate, and it is the conflict between this and the need to protect these vulnerable members of society that lies at the heart of the researcher's dilemma. The concept of 'Voluntary Informed Consent' had to be paramount. Clarke followed this up by pointing out how easy it was for the researcher to cross this line by accident: for example children may feel pressurized to take part because they are being asked by an adult that they see in the role of a teacher, or because they have been incentivized by a reward that depends on long-term participation.

She followed this up with the startling assertion that at any time one in five children could have mental health issues, meaning that any reasonable sample would include some of this group. She also mentioned the danger of accidentally revealing children's identity, or that of their families by using social media methods which involved pictures (such as screen grabs), or the chance of them downloading Trojans or giving away GPS data. She finished by detailing the results of some research her organisation had done on children who had taken part in research, showing that 26% felt the questions were 'too personal', 27% felt they 'had to answer' and that 16% 'didn't understand what the survey was about'.

Catriona Ferris, Customer Insight Manager at Unilever, then spoke about how dependent clients were on researchers to guide them through the maze of standards and rules. Ferris made the case for research as a 'Firewall' between the clients and the children they needed to interrogate, amusingly highlighting her own problem with (young, male) executives who were barely capable of looking after themselves by way of cooking, cleaning or other domestic skills and certainly who had no experience of being concerned for children's welfare.

The Q and A session was testimony to the fact that the audience for this session consisted of a high percentage of children's researchers, and included informed discussion of the issues and a suggestion that there should be some form of qualification for researchers who conduct these studies.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.