Interviewing Young Children: Explicating Our Practices and Dilemmas

Abstract

Qualitative research studies have demonstrated that very young children can provide important insights into their daily lives and health experiences. Despite the shift to include children’s perspectives in research and document principles related to good data collection with children, there has not been a parallel move within the scholarly community to lay bare the practical challenges inherent in conducting interviews with children. In this article, the authors consider the degree to which well-known standards for qualitative research apply to research interviews with young children. They make practical recommendations that build on existing theoretical work about the conduct of qualitative interviews with young children.