Abstract
Children with autism spectrum disorders often suffer from poor school inclusion, loneliness, and poor quality of life. Suitable support options for overcoming these risks are lacking, partly because children’s perspectives concerning their support needs are unknown. We need to improve the involvement of children in social research. However, involving children with autism in research is not always simple, and there is scant literature on qualitative methods for addressing challenges related to involving children with unique characteristics such as autism. Children with autism may lack mimetic expressions to reflect their feelings, and they may answer questions very briefly despite having a nuanced perspective on the issue addressed, thus leaving the researcher with few indicators to act upon. Consequently, it can be difficult for the researcher to “read” the child, assess ethical important moments, and adapt the methodology to the individual child. Based on a qualitative study of 22 children with autism in the capital region of Denmark, this article offers reflections on methodological and practical challenges in involving children with autism in research. Matching expectations between researcher and child, staying open to communication forms, and posing precise questions are shown to be important to have insight into the children’s perspectives.
Highlights
Children are increasingly recognized as important agents in the research on children’s everyday lives and wellbeing
There is a paucity of research and methodological literature describing how to involve vulnerable subgroups of children with unique characteristics, such as developmental disabilities including autism spectrum disorders
We will begin the presentation of the study practical findings and learnings with two examples illustrating children autism: some of thewith methodological and practical challenges experienced in this study involving children
Summary
Children are increasingly recognized as important agents in the research on children’s everyday lives and wellbeing. Children are essential receivers of social support, and this is why researchers demand increased recognition of children’s own perspectives in organizing welfare services aimed toward children [5,6,7,8]. In line with this growing demand to involve children in societal planning, the literature on methods and ethics in research on children has expanded over the past decades [7,9,10,11,12]. These children constitute an Societies 2019, 9, 75; doi:10.3390/soc9040075 www.mdpi.com/journal/societies
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