Towards a sociology of 10–12 year olds? Emerging methodological issues in the ‘new’ social studies of childhood

Abstract

This article reports on an analysis of 320 empirical research articles published between 1993 and 2010 in three of the leading 'childhood' journals. The study looked to establish the potential samples used in accounts of empirical research studies with children; and to explore the methodology employed. The first part of this article outlines why a consideration of the ages used in childhood research is worthy of investigation. This addresses technical, methodological and epistemological dimensions of the area. It then goes on to discuss the results of our investigations. The guiding question was 'who are the children in the social study of childhood?', and the authors conclude that there is an over-focus on a particular age group.

Meet the good child. ‘Childing’ practices in family food co‐shopping

“…Even though, in recent years, there has been a turn toward more ‘child‐centric’ approaches (Banister and Booth, ), in research regarding matters involving children there is still a strong tendency to avoid including—particularly—young children's voices (cf. McNamee and Seymour, ), and in studies where both parents and children are included, often mainly parental voices dominate (exceptions are Ruckenstein, ; Jayne and Valentine, ). In this study the context is families’ food shopping practices where there are obvious needs to create change because of increasing obesity and overweight rates among children (Wang and Lobstein, ) as well as adults (Doak et al ., ).…”

A Humanistic Approach to Understanding Child Consumer Socialization in US Homes

“…Yet the opportunity to understand the meaning of consumption practices, to witness the actual behavior in the marketplace, to view the multiple contextual influences and lived experiences of consumer socialization can sometimes be lost with solely experimental or survey approaches. Although causality and correlational relationships are gained with quantitative methods, the external validity, the richness of data, and the view of child as an active participant and not merely a research object (McNamee & Seymour, 2013) provide new ways of understanding consumer socialization. Studies of young consumers should allow for more qualitative, experiential methods of data collection (Rubenzahl, 2011).…”

“…Just as important, many studies of childhood and consumption focus on children at the older end of the age spectrum, from elementary school on, and not on preschoolers (McNamee & Seymour, 2013). And yet very young children represent a desirable demographic to marketers (Hill, 2011) with TV channels and websites like BabyTV.com aimed at children three and younger (Shields & Johnston, 2008).…”

Os desafios da pesquisa ética com crianças

“…Nesse sentido, a literatura tem enfatizado a adoção de métodos participativos, centrados no interesse das crianças (Lange & Mierendorff, 2009;McNamee & Seymour, 2012;O'Kane, 2000). A esse respeito, Prout e James (1990) têm sinalizado a adequação da etnografia, por reconhecer e possibilitar a participação da criança na construção dos dados da pesquisa.…”