Note about sampling and research involving children
Mathilde Guntzberger, consultant
Child focused research
Sampling methodologies should be adapted according to 1. the objectives of the research 2. The level
of support the organisation leading the research is able to provide to researchers (experience in
research) 3. the profile and capacity of researchers themselves.
For most pieces of research involving children as respondents (child focused), the choice of
methodology can be quite vast, with a possibility to use both using quantitative and qualitative
research methods.
Qualitative approaches (which can be combined with quantitative methods) are good for exploring
questions that you don't already know the range of answers for, going deeper into issues, allowing
respondents to decide where the discussion/research will go, etc.
Standard cross-sectional surveys (quantitative approaches) are appropriate when you want to have
a quantitative estimate of levels of indicators (e.g. % of children who experienced abuse, % of children
who know where to seek help, etc.). This is typically what is used if you want to compare baseline
levels to endline.
Sampling refers to how you choose respondents. Sampling for qualitative research is essentially
different from sampling for quantitative research. When sampling for quantitative research,
researchers usually have in mind the representativeness of the sample, to be able to make
generalizations about the population. In qualitative research, the aim, however, is not generalizing, but
explaining the phenomena as comprehensively as possible.
In quantitative research, aiming for representativeness means sampling children from a list (either
household based or school based). Obtaining a list of children from schools (sample based on
clusters, the cluster being the school) can be easier than from the entire population.
Research with excluded groups:
Research involving groups such as street working/living children cannot be handled through normal
household surveys which exclude homeless persons. Most of these children remain on the move from
one place to another during daytime, and sleep outside buildings at night. This makes it difficult to
survey them with normal sampling procedures. Specially designed street children surveys are needed
to collect the relevant information. A purposive or convenience sampling approach is often needed
such as snowballing.
Child-led research
Research with children means that the leading organisation look carefully at planification and
considers all ethical parameters so that children are not exposed to harm through the research
process. Research by children requires even more consideration as it exposes further children (not
only as participants in research or respondents but as researchers themselves).
Involving children in quantitative research involves many risks including that of being sent to areas
selected “randomly” and therefore potentially dangerous/ unsafe for them. Also, it is not advisable that
children are engaged as researchers in which the process for selecting respondents is difficult to
understand as well and can potentially lead to bias. Child friendly methods should be used so that
children are meaningfully participating in all steps of the research (since they are recruited as
researchers themselves and therefore taking an active role). For security reasons, sending off children
to randomly selected areas and households would require a strong level of adult supervision (basically
one adult accompanying each child) which is not always possible depending of the financial resources
the organisation has.
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Sampling schools is a good and safe option (pitfalls: however you won’t have a representative
sample from all the population and you also miss all other excluded groups such as out of school
children, street involved children and children living with a disability for eg. ) when the local context
allows it and when it doesn’t disrupt schooling of children researchers, which is not always possible.
You have to take into consideration that a research takes usually at least 3-4 days training and piloting
tools and 3-4 days data collection as well as 1-2 days final workshop for analysing data etc
Sampling method used for Child Safety Report Cards
Depending on the local context and when the organization doesn’t find appropriate to sample schools
so as not to disrupt children researchers schooling, it is possible to find an alternative way, a targeted,
convenience sample with some eligibility criteria (you can use social network or quota sampling) is
appropriate. Careful consideration should be given to how to best group children to obtain quality
results (homogeneity vs. diversity within groups).
Involving a non-probabilistic sample of children, this method has to be explained bearing in mind that
no inferences beyond their sample are possible. However, studies with non-probabilistic samples (e.g.
quota sample, purposive sample) are still valuable as they can be very informative, and also point to
the children beyond the sample who most probably have very similar socio-demographic
characteristics to those included in the sample. It is okay to conduct such studies as long as the aim is
not for statistical inferences from the samples to the population. The researchers operate only within
descriptive interpretations.
LQAS
LQAS is another sampling strategy. It is not a separate research methodology in terms of having
different questionnaires or data collection tools. LQAS is basically the same as the cross-sectional
survey except you select a very small sample size (19 per research area, neighborhood in your case).
This means that children researchers would also be sent on their own to randomly selected places
and households, which is not advisable for security reasons, unless you have the resources to have
them paired up with adults.
However, this is a good sampling strategy, provided that you work with a team of adult researchers.
This small sample size allows you save a lot of time and money on data collection.
There is obviously a trade-off. Because your sample size is so small, you are very limited in the
conclusions you can draw. If you do a standard survey with a larger sample size, you will be able to
make a point estimate (% of children who feel safe in x neighbourhood) with a reasonable level of
confidence (+/- 5 percentage points around your estimate, for example). With LQAS, your small
sample will only allow you to answer whether the area is above or below a specified cutoff level. All
you can say is this neighborhood is high performing or not high performing according to your indicator.
This is useful for identifying areas that are very problematic in order to prioritize where to focus efforts
and resources.
Useful resources:
LSE FAQ How do we sample children for qualitative research ?
http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/eukidsonline/bestpracticeguide/faq/faq-9.pdf and
http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/eukidsonline/bestpracticeguide/faq/faq-9.pdf
ILO, 2008. Sampling for household-based surveys of child labour.
http://www.ilo.org/ipec/Informationresources/WCMS_099362/lang--en/index.htm
Save the Children, 2012. Child led data collection. A guide for young people
to learn how to do research and creative positive change. http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.se/library/childled-data-collection-guide-young-people-learn-how-do-research-and-create-positive
Save the Children 2004. So you want to involve children in research? A toolkit supporting children’s meaningful
and ethical participation in research related to violence against children.
http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.se/library/so-you-want-involve-children-research-toolkit-supportingchildrens-meaningful-and-ethical
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