Investigating the effects of ICT use with children and young people as research partners
Despite the abundance of quantitative data on the impact of technological transformations on children and young people, relevant qualitative research in the field remains scarce. Utilising participatory methodologies, the EU funded DigiGen project explores under which conditions some children and young people take advantage of ICT while others are negatively affected.
Going beyond the traditional academic rules of producing knowledge
“The most innovative aspect of the project has been the development of our toolkit in collaboration with the digital generation,” states project coordinator Halla B. Holmarsdottir. “The toolkit helped us achieve several of our core goals, with the most impactful being the development of new robust participatory methodologies for including children and young people as co-researchers, co-creators and co-designers.” A secondary goal was to understand the impact of children and young people’s online behaviour and their use of digital devices, particularly at home, for leisure, in education and civic participation as linked to their future world of work and as adult citizens, and to identify at-risk groups regarding health, wellbeing and social participation. Finally, DigiGen explored the conditions of ICT use and impact by accessing the viewpoints of children and young people, their parents, teachers and other stakeholders. “We also developed other tools, such as an app, which allowed us to use an experience sampling method, an increasingly popular data collection method to assess interpersonal dynamics in children and young people’s everyday digital lives in a contextualised in a real-world setting,” adds Holmarsdottir. “Youngsters used their digital devices to answer prompts through a self-reported diary.”
Qualitative research in the high hurdles
The COVID-19 pandemic proved to be a major obstacle for DigiGen, as the global lockdowns began approximately 3 weeks after the team’s kick-off meeting in Oslo, Norway. “Not only did this affect our ability to meet as a team and run, for example, methodological training workshops we had planned, but this also affected our ability to recruit participants through schools and kindergartens,” confesses Holmarsdottir. The training workshops had to be run virtually, and additionally, each consortium partner had to run their own local workshops. As for recruiting participants, especially children and young people, each team needed to make use of its own wider networks, and social media aimed at specific groups. Those teams that were in institutions working in teacher education were able to take advantage of collaboration schools and kindergartens where student teachers do their practical teaching to recruit. This was translated into a partial delay in data collection, and consequently into a lot of work at the end of the project, hence less time for in-depth data analysis. “We are currently working on publishing a book from the project to highlight several of the overall findings, and this will now allow us more time to analyse our findings more in depth and to understand the overall contribution to the field better,” explains Holmarsdottir. The researchers regard their results as most useful to families but also educators as they see these two groups need to work together to support children and young people as competent digital citizens. “Our hope is also that policymakers will understand our findings and will consider several of our policy recommendations, such as the need to support ICT access and competence,” adds Holmarsdottir.
Keywords
DigiGen, children, youngsters, ICT use, technological transformations, qualitative research, participatory methodologies, online behaviour, digital generation