[Air-L] youth and online recruitment and interviews

[Janet Salmons, Ph.D.]

Erica,

This is an important topic and your study could make a real
contribution. But...I know that my institution's IRB would not approve
the study as you have described it. If you are interviewing youth
under 18, parents must consent. I am curious about why you think
parents would not give consent? Personally, I think parents want to
protect their kids from bullying and their perspectives might be an
interesting complement to the youth interviews and add more depth to
your study.

A suggestion: you might want to stick with one social media site, to
simplify your process. You will also need to make sure that your study
does not violate the user parameters of the community-- for recruiting
or for collecting data..

This site may be of interest: http://www.ncjj.org/irb/index.asp

Also, you might find chapters in Cases in Online Interview Research
(2012) of interest.
- Chapter 3. Case: Stranger in a Strange Land: The Challenges and
Benefits of Online Interviews in the Social Networking Space Allison
Deegan
Allison discusses issues and challenges of a study that involved
interviews conducted in Facebook using chat, with young (but over age
18) participants.

- Chapter 4. Case: Interviewing in Virtual Worlds: An Application of
Best Practices	Jonathan Cabiria
Jon was able to convince his IRB to allow (adult) participants'
avatars to "sign" the informed consent, in a study about LGBT
experiences in virtual worlds as compared to "real" worlds. He offers
his insights into finer points of protection of digital
representations of human subjects.

(The book is on Amazon, print or Kindle, as well as other booksellers.)

I'f be happy to chat with you if you want to contact me off list.

All the best,
Janet

Janet Salmons Ph.D.
Core Faculty, Capella University School of Business Doctoral Program
and Vision2Lead, Inc.
Site- http://www.vision2lead.com
Follow Twitter at #einterview
Now available as Kindle e-books: Online Interviews in Real Time and
Cases in Online Interview Research
PO Box 943
Boulder, CO 80306-0943
jsalmons at vision2lead.com