Using video vignettes to evaluate children's personal safety knowledge: methodological and ethical issues.
OBJECTIVE
The study aimed to assess children's personal safety knowledge by seeking their responses to video-delivered simulations of child maltreatment.


METHODS
In seeking to do this, methodological and ethical difficulties were encountered. These arose during several phases of consultation, the refinement of an interview protocol to be used with the vignettes, and during discussions over the ethical integrity of the research.


RESULTS
Using visually graphic vignettes to probe children's personal safety knowledge proved to be methodologically difficult and ethically problematic and controversial. The main objections to the approach were that it could harm participants, and that parents needed extensive information about the study to exercise "informed consent."


CONCLUSIONS
The study demonstrated the nature and extent of negotiations that were needed to "push the boundaries" of evaluation research to develop more valid, authentic and complex ways of accessing children's thinking about personal safety concepts and strategies.
Johnson
B
B
Centre for Research in Education, Equity and Work, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia.
D000184:Acting Out; D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002649:Child Abuse / Q000517:prevention & control*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004989:Ethics; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012106:Research; D012574:Schools; D013021:South Australia; D014741:Video Recording