Hi,
I do most of my research in school settings so I guess it might be easier for us to reach children, but I will try to answer your questions.
– How to find undocumented children to survey, as they stay at home alone and parents try to hide from locals?
In find them in schools or through community organizations who are working with refugees and immigrant families. We also work with leaders from different communities. That helps a lot.
– How to get data from children themselves, as there are several language and cultural barriers to approach them directly?
We never did that with children because children in our samples attend schools so they often understand the local languages (French or English in Canada), but with parents, we translated our consents forms and questionnnaires in different languages. We also work with research assistants who knows several languages.
– How to apply locally standardised questionnaires to them or their parents?
Before starting our data collection, we try to pilot our questionnaires with a smaller sample to make the appropriate validation. This allows us to set up some norms for different subgroups of immigrants.
– How to protect their human rights as research subjects at all times? How can we make sure we never affect/offend them?
This is hard, but usually, we work closely with community organizations and leaders. We ask these people to have a look at all our instruments before data collection. This allows us to make sure our questions are clear and culturally relevant. This also allows us to detect if we ask questions that can offend people.
I hope my answers will help you. Do not hesitate to contact me again if you have other questions. We will submit a grant proposal in September to study différents facets of immigrants children and families health and well-being. If we have the grant, we will also work on health issues so we will get greater experience on the topic.
Hi,
I do most of my research in school settings so I guess it might be easier for us to reach children, but I will try to answer your questions.
– How to find undocumented children to survey, as they stay at home alone and parents try to hide from locals?
In find them in schools or through community organizations who are working with refugees and immigrant families. We also work with leaders from different communities. That helps a lot.
– How to get data from children themselves, as there are several language and cultural barriers to approach them directly?
We never did that with children because children in our samples attend schools so they often understand the local languages (French or English in Canada), but with parents, we translated our consents forms and questionnnaires in different languages. We also work with research assistants who knows several languages.
– How to apply locally standardised questionnaires to them or their parents?
Before starting our data collection, we try to pilot our questionnaires with a smaller sample to make the appropriate validation. This allows us to set up some norms for different subgroups of immigrants.
– How to protect their human rights as research subjects at all times? How can we make sure we never affect/offend them?
This is hard, but usually, we work closely with community organizations and leaders. We ask these people to have a look at all our instruments before data collection. This allows us to make sure our questions are clear and culturally relevant. This also allows us to detect if we ask questions that can offend people.
I hope my answers will help you. Do not hesitate to contact me again if you have other questions. We will submit a grant proposal in September to study différents facets of immigrants children and families health and well-being. If we have the grant, we will also work on health issues so we will get greater experience on the topic.
Best regard,
Isabelle Archambault