Children's Experiences of Completing a Computer-Based Violence Survey: Finnish Child Victim Survey Revisited

The involvement of children as research subjects requires special considerations with regard to research practices and ethics. This is especially true concerning sensitive research topics such as sexual victimization. Prior research suggests that reflecting these experiences in a survey can cause negative feelings in child participants, although posing only a minimal to moderate risk. Analyzing only predefined, often negative feelings related to answering a sexual victimization survey has dominated the existing literature. In this article children's free-text comments about answering a victimization survey and experiences of sexual victimization are analyzed together to evaluate the effects of research participation in relation to this sensitive issue. Altogether 11,364 children, aged 11-12 and 15-16, participated in the Finnish Child Victim Survey in 2013. Of these, 69% (7,852) reflected on their feelings about answering the survey. Results indicate that both clearly negative and positive feelings are more prevalent among victimized children compared to their nonvictimized peers. Characteristics unique to sexual victimization as well as differences related to gender and age are also discussed. The study contributes to the important yet contradictory field of studying the effects of research participation on children.