Ethical dilemmas in research with children and young people about their social environments

There has been a very welcome recent growth in research directly with and by children and young people, with a wide range of reporting children’s own views and experiences. Research ethics has also recently been receiving a great deal of attention, and there are debates about the extent to which research with children differs from research with other groups. This paper draws on the author’s experiences of empirical sociological research with 12-15 year olds conducted in a deprived town in SE England in the late 1990s that explored children and young people’s social networks and neighbourhoods, and the implications for their health and well-being (social capital). The paper focuses on some ethical dilemmas raised during the research, and concludes with a discussion of broader issues related to dissemination and the policy implications of researc