Ensuring more accurate of responses from child respondents in school based research.

Abstract

The researcher is engaged in a study to evaluate and disseminate an initiative involving a group of designated ‘gifted and talented’ pupils and the Post-Graduate Teacher Training Business Education cohort of the research University. This project is seeking to develop exciting and innovative ways to introduce and teach Business Education to 14-16 year olds. This partnership initiative is being evaluated with a view to drawing up standards/recommendations for a template of future good practice. This paper describes the research, the nature of the data collection, the problems of its interpretation and how the researcher has addressed these issues. In particular, it looks at the issues regarded as problematical when dealing with children and how these might be solved. The paper explores how the researcher tried to overcome certain of these problems and suggests a method of peer involvement by which data collected from children may be made more accurate. This particular study may be deemed to be research on a small scale, undertaken within the general context of the larger research aims. It is specifically to test the theory that childrens’ responses will be more genuine under a particular set of circumstances. There are times, however, when small scale research is appropriate and indeed where it is both desirable and valuable: for example, where a localized problem is identified….(Greig and Taylor 1999:7