Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Conducting research in primary schools

On Wednesday the 15th of December Graeme Mooore presented at the Postgrad Cafe on Conducting research in primary schools. He gave a reflexive account of issues he encountered in relation to conducting research in a school setting, whilst working as a researcher on the evaluation of the Primary School Free Breakfast Initiative in Wales. The talk was largely based upon sections which Graeme wrote for a paper recently published in the journal BMC Public Health, which describes the design and conduct of the evaluation.
The study was a large scale cluster-randomised controlled trial with an embedded qualitative process evaluation, involving 111 primary schools and approximately 7000 primary schoolchildren. Schools’ participation in the study lasted for a little over a year, and Graeme talked about his experiences of building and maintaining an effective working relationship with schools during this time, drawing on his experiences of what seemed to work, as well as what didn’t. Graeme also be talked about difficulties involved in conducting research with children, covering issues such as consent, data protection, child protection and engaging children in the data collection process, detailing how myself and other researchers on the project dealt with these issues.

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