Poster #92 - Children’s Experiences with Participation in Research on Interparental Conflicts

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Family Context & Processes

Integrative Statement

Aim: To identify the most harmful aspects of interparental conflict on child adjustment, family relationships must be investigated from children’s own perspective. Still, most previous studies have relied solely on parental reports. A reluctance to involve children is based both on methodical and ethical considerations. Research with children raise ethical concerns that require specific consideration, especially when they are asked about sensitive topics. The aim of this poster is to increase the knowledge-base on how children can be involved in research on interparental conflict in ways that are methodologically and ethically justified.

Methods: Data are collected from the ongoing Norwegian Dynamics of Family Conflict-study, where 1600 will participate. About 600 families have been recruited to the study thus far. The families are recruited from family welfare centers across Norway, and parents and children both from families with parents living apart and with parents living together are invited to participate. Children aged 7-11 years are interviewed by trained interviewers, whereas they aged 12-15 answer an electronic questionnaire. Interviews and questionnaires contain structured questions about family relationships and wellbeing with a particular focus on interparental conflicts. By the end of the interviews and questionnaires, the children report to what degree answering the questions evoke emotional reactions (anger/sadness/distress); are relevant for their situation and; contribute to a feeling of helping others. These answers will be investigated in relation to age, child wellbeing, child-perceived level of interparental conflicts, and family structure.

Results: Preliminary results (first 82 participants) showed that answering the questions made the children feel important, contributed to a feeling of helping others, and that the questions felt relevant to their situation. There was a tendency for these statements to be more true for children living in intact families than children from dissolved families. Whereas 48.8% reported that they felt upset by answering the questions, 51.2% did not. No relationship was detected between conflict levels and children’s reactions to answering questions, indicating that answering sensitive questions about family relationships do not affect children exposed to high levels of interparental conflicts more than other children. By March 2019, results from a larger sample will be available, enabling more nuanced investigations. The findings will be discussed in relation to child age, wellbeing, family structure and parental conflict levels as potential indicators of child vulnerability. They will also be discussed in relation to data collection method (i.e. interview versus questionnaire). The findings will be of importance to guide future research projects on how to involve children in ways that do not compromise their wellbeing and which aspects should be particularly stressed in considerations on whether children should participate in the research or not.
Graphical presentations of the findings will be provided, fitting the poster format.

Authors

• Maren Sand Helland, Norwegian Institute of Public Helath
  Presenting Author

• Maria Larsdatter Morbech, Norwegian Institute of Public Health
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tonje Holt, Norwegian Institute of Public Health
  Non-Presenting Author