Why Won’t They Listen to Us?

Abstract

This article discusses the need for authentic social research with children given the fact that increasingly such research is being relied on to inform social policy which profoundly affects the lives of children. Authentic research is operationalized in this article as that research which gives power and voice to child research participants and which provides insights into their subjective world. Such research allows the children to a degree to be ‘subject’ or ‘collaborator’ in the research process rather than simply study ‘object’. Giving power and voice to children in the research context involves issues of research methodology and opportunities to contribute to research agendas and ethics guidelines such that the need and right to be heard is better met. Empathetic understanding in research with children as a byproduct of combining quantitative approaches with the phenomenological perspective is also discussed.