[Air-L] Work with young people

Deller, Ruth A R.A.Deller at shu.ac.uk
Mon Feb 27 05:31:31 PST 2012


I'm wondering what people's recent experiences have been in terms of working with young people online - particularly around issues of ethics (e.g. anonymity, consent).  I'm about to start researching an online fan community that is not teen-only but does have a large number of teen members, many of whom are involved in 'high' levels within the fandom (e.g. moderating forums, running popular blogs).  I know, like with all teens online, that for some of them their parents are fully aware of their participation, whilst for others their parents don't have a clue what they get up to!

The research (planned to be a wide-scale anonymous survey initially, with follow-up in-depth interviews and participant observation with a smaller number of participants) could exclude the teens altogether, or I could just involve them in the survey rather than the follow-up, but as they are a crucial part of the community I'm looking at it would be a shame not to involve them purely because it was ethically 'difficult'.

Ruth




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