Qualitative Research Forum: Childhood and child health research, and working with children in research.

It is widely recognised that doing child health research requires consideration of the developmental stages children will be at, at their time of participating in a study. Yet children are frequently situated, conceptualised or simply taken for granted as study subjects (passive recipients of intervention) rather than active participants who influence research outcomes. At this seminar we will give a brief introduction to what it means for research to include children as competent, knowledgeable beings. We will give examples of how researchers can adapt their methods and designs to enable children’s capabilities as respondents in research. We will give other examples of how children can help adult researchers design and conduct research. We argue that children’s active participation and involvement in research helps improve internal and external validity, in addition to being covered as a right to participation in the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.