Co-Designing Qualitative Interview Methods With Young Children and Parents: Drawing, Pictures, and Puppets

Children have the right to freedom of expression regarding topics important to them via any communication medium.¹ Conducting research on as opposed to with young children fails to fulfil their rights, promoting misconceptions that children are incapable of providing meaningful data. The start of formal education presents many challenges for young children; very few studies have involved children as active participants sharing their experiences. This co-design study aimed to produce, through the involvement of young children, methods for a creative interview package to be used with 4-5-year-olds to discuss the challenges of starting formal education.

Six individual co-design sessions, and three user-testing interviews with young children (aged 3-5 years), alongside one group co-design session with older children (aged 6-12 years), were used to develop and refine methods. Pictures and photo-prompts, drawing activities, and the use of a toy puppet were explored within the sessions, collecting children's verbal feedback and recommendations, as well as the researcher's reflective notes and recommendations from parents. The resulting methods were integrated into a four-stage framework (Exploration, Adaptation, Confirmation, and Evaluation) to curate the final interview methods.

Barriers to children's engagement were identified with some participatory activities, for example cultural and family belief systems that discouraged self-portrait drawings within some communities. Children also engaged more in the interview once they had built a rapport with the puppet, and not only a rapport with the researcher. Pre-made images were sufficient in obtaining more detailed discussion of the children's experiences.

This study resulted in the first interview methods package for young children which has been co-designed with young children. The study demonstrates that young children can be active contributors in designing research if provided with the opportunity to do so.

Children, parents and teachers provided input and shaped the design of this study.