This is the summary of a research protocol constructed as part of the Radda Barnen project "Children’s perspectives on their working lives", originally published in 1998. It provided the framework for local investigators carrying-out the initial study with 50 groups of working children in diverse occupations in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, The Philippines and Central America.
• The protocol was designed to inform popular assumptions about the impact of work in children's lives with evidence on children's own perception of their situation;
• The protocol is applied in ways sensitive to the local circumstances of working children, and their preferred ways of communicating their experiences;
• The protocol can be adapted to provide systematic, detailed accounts of specific occupational situations in ways that can inform context-appropriate interventions
