2-090 - Addressing the decrease in access to child and adolescent research participants: Creative solutions and considerations

Session Type: Conversation Roundtable

Integrative Statement

The increasing demands for academic accountability and safety within the nation’s school systems have imposed severe limitations on the efforts of developmental researchers who study school-age students. Schools present a venue in which many children and adolescent participants may be obtained. However, conducting research within public and increasingly, private schools, is often hindered by the multiple tiers of school system permission necessary before researchers are allowed to ask parents/guardians to permit their child’s research participation. Often, researchers must receive institutional review board approval from the school system in addition to that awarded by the researchers’ institutions. It is not unusual for this approval to take several months, and receiving it is no guarantee that school superintendents or school principals will grant researchers access to their schools’ students. These hurdles have negative ramifications for developmental research in school settings although this research likely has direct and indirect benefits for the students in them.
This conversation roundtable will consider the issues involved in gaining access to school-age participants, such as identification of alternative data collection venues including the running of educational day camps, successful strategies for conducting intervention and longitudinal studies within schools and for developing partnerships with school administrations and faculty. We also will consider strategies for developing successful IRBs for work within school and alternative venues in which data collection among school-age participants might occur.

Sub Unit

• Methods, History, Theory

Moderator

• Fran C Blumberg, Fordham University

Panelists

• Joshua L Brown, Fordham University

• Peter A Ornstein, Univ of North Carolina

• Alexandra Gottardo, Wilfrid Laurier Univ

• Celia B Fisher, Fordham University