Difficulties in Collecting Data From Children Aged 7–12

Introduction

The purpose of this study is to investigate the potential problems during the process of data collecting from children between the ages of 7 and 12 in a foreign language context due to several reasons. First of all, in the broadest perspective, data collection from children seems a problematic, complex and difficult area regarding their cognitive, linguistic and social development when compared to data gathering from adults in an educational context. For instance, within the scope of the foreign learning process, it is evident that data collection is a considerable problem as they have not completed their language proficiency regarding not only in the target language but in their native language. Additionally, it is obvious that the level of their social development may constitute a barrier to collecting data. The level of their cognitive development may be another problem regarding clarifying the aims of research activities, introducing the ethical issues, carrying out experiments and motivating them. The second reason is that while the numbers of children enrolled at primary and secondary schools increases gradually at not only at national but at a global scale, research on children mainly concentrates on adult learners. Specifically, in the Turkish research context, research on educational issues mainly use adult participants due to practicality and logistical issues. However, it is clear that there have been radical changes in education systems all over the world, while research activities remain too limited to reach conclusions in terms of children in realistic and natural education settings. Thus, within the scope of examining the difficulties during the process of data collecting from children between the ages of 7 and 12, first, this section briefly introduces the rationale behind the study. Then, the paper presents a brief research synthesis on the issue. Finally, an overview of the research is presented regarding the conclusions of the studies reviewed.

Collecting data from children is a potentially challenging area, considering that large gaps exist in the related literature due to the lack of research on the problems regarding data collection from children (Mauthner, 1997). What is more, participants in scientific studies are generally chosen from the adult population and adolescents, while children are neglected (Scott, 2008). However, while children were thought of as untrustworthy sources of data before the 1990s, it has started to change and gain importance due to shifting children’s role from passive recipients to the informed participants (Davis, 2007). In other words, today, this shifting paradigm demonstrates that children are essential for obtaining rich and relevant data (Mayaba & Wood, 2015). This shows that methods and scales should be carefully designed and planned. In addition, special attention should be given to children’s psychological, cognitive and social developments during research. On the other hand, the number of studies on data collection from children is quite limited. For instance, certain factors such as children’s limited lexical competence, difficulties of gathering data and their limited attention span have remained untouched research areas. Moreover, the related literature lacks research on methods and techniques to collect data from children and the properties that make children different from adults in the research process (Einarsdóttir, 2007; Punch, 2002). The most considerable point is that it is not possible to carry out research in regard to providing research context and developing research tools and settings without answering the question of what problems are encountered during data collection from children. To conclude, collecting data from children today is still a complicated field and requires research in terms of the problems encountered (Punch, 2002).