Surveying Children: Legal & Moral Issues
Posted by Vovici Blog on Mon, Jan 17, 2011
Conducting market research with children raises important legal and moral issues.
Ray Poynter, for instance, argues that product research with children should be declared unethical by the industry associations. “Do we really want MR to be associated with trying to get children to eat more junk, drink more junk, or to pester parents into buying things that might not be affordable?” Some countries, such as Sweden and Norway, ban or severely restrict television advertising to children, while countries such as the United States have little or no regulation of marketing to children. So the first question you must ask yourself when designing a survey targeting children is whether the work is something that you will be proud to be associated with.
Almost no one would disagree with the value of social-research surveys, such as those covering family health and wellbeing, but such surveys raise their own moral issues. If a child reports being physically abused, which authorities will you contact and how?
No wonder that many researchers avoid surveying children at all. For those who do survey children, it’s important to comply with all industry regulations and national and local laws. Organizations such as BVM, CASRO, ESOMAR, MRS and SYNTEC publish and enforce guidelines for researching underage respondents. The norm is to seek the consent of a parent or guardian prior to inviting the child to take the survey. If an adult agrees that the child may take the survey, he or she is then encouraged to monitor the child while they answer the questionnaire. The legal age to research children online without parental consent varies by nation.
Dr. Agnes Nairn, co-author of Consumer Kids: How Big Business is Grooming Our Children for Profit, touched on some of the issues involved in conducting market research with children in her presentation to the Festival of NewMR. She notes that children have developed their own methods of dealing with parental consent. Dr. Nairn quotes one child she researched: “On all of my addresses, I’m 20. If you want to go on a website, you lie about your age.” She quotes research that indicates that 69% of 9-17 year olds resent parents monitoring their online activities, and 63% of 12-19 year olds hide online activities from parents. “Lots of kids have an extra email account called ‘mebeingmymom@gmail.com’ so that they can give themselves permission to take part in sites that they shouldn’t,” Dr. Nairn said. “Don’t accept email consent – call the parent. If you talk to someone on the phone, it is easier to tell if you are talking to a 10-year old or a 40-year old. Remember, it’s not enough for the parent to give consent. The child has to give informed consent too. If you make an incentive too great, you take away the ‘voluntary’ part. Offering a girl all the lollipops she can eat isn’t voluntary consent but bribery.”
In the United States, COPPA classifies children as under 13; in the United Kingdom, the MRS code classifies children as under 16; and the United Nations classifies children as under 18. Since even the legal definition of a child varies by trade group, country or NGO, let alone the rules regarding personal information, it’s important that you have a lawyer carefully review your research plan before you survey one child.