INFORMED CONSENT
Informed consent in research among minor children means in practice
firstly that consent is needed from parents or guardians. If consent from
adults is required first, however, certainty of choice from the children can-
not always be guaranteed because children are subject to sets of power rela-
tions, such as in school or at home (James, Jenks, & Prout, 1998,p. 187).
Hence, it is possible that the child consents because of fear of sanction.
In my view, children are capable actors and hence able to make an
informed decision. Moreover, most children did not have parents or guar-
dians. However, neighbours, family members or volunteers were sometimes
involved in the lives of these children. Although I did not ask their permis-
sion directly, they did serve somehow as ‘gatekeepers’, as they frequently
introduced me to the children. As Xhosa culture is very hierarchical, it is
possible that children agreed to participate in the research because I was
introduced by an older person in their community.
In order to make sure participation was voluntary, I viewed consent as
acontinuous process, and mostly it worked as follows. The first time I met
the children I would briefly explain the research and introduce myself to
them and ask them to tell me about their living situation and the composi-
tion of the household. If the composition of the household was suitable for
the research, I would tell them more about it. This entailed explaining that
my research was about children in situations like theirs, that I wanted to
learn from their experiences about how they dealt with difficulties in their
lives, that no help should be expected to come from the research, that
participation was and remained voluntary and that they could stop partici-
pating if they wanted to and that information was confidential. I would
ask if we could make an appointment for the first interview. In this way
the children had a chance to think and talk to others about it. At the start
of the first and following interviews, I always asked if they still wanted to
participate in the research. The children always decided when and where
the next meeting would take place. At each meeting I would ask them if
they felt like talking to me, or whether they felt too tired or were occupied
with other things. This way, I thought that if they did not feel like talking
to me they could say that they were busy with homework, for example.
Occasionally children cancelled our appointment for that reason, and we
made a new appointment. I did not use a consent form as the quality of
the consent is more important than the format (for more discussion see
AAA, 2009).
68 DIANA VAN DIJK