Surveying Children: Administration

There are three main things to consider when administering surveys to children and adolescents: consent and assent of youth and their parents, whether to administer online or via paper surveys, and who should administer surveys and how they should be administered.

Consent and Assent

First, I should stress that you should discuss this with your IRB first. They may have different guidelines. However, what I recommend are usually very conservative guidelines and should pass most IRBs.Ethically speaking, we need to get consent from all participants. When working with vulnerable populations like youth, you need additional oversight to ensure you are protecting their welfare. In the case of working with persons under the age of 18 means you must get parental consent. There can be times when parental consent can be waived, but you should assume this is not the case.However, just because you are working with youth does not mean you should not collect their assent or consent as well. Children, even young children, can and should be provided an opportunity to show a willingness to participate. This means ensuring youth understand the study and what their participation would entail. Only when they are incapable of doing so should assent or consent be waived.

Paper vs Online Surveys

Most research assessing the differences between paper and online surveys has not been done with children. However, it seems to suggest overall that there are little-to-no differences between the two.Therefore, deciding which to use depends on computer literacy and access to computers or tablets. We often assume that Generation Z, also referred to the iGeneration because they grew up with technology, are able to work well with computers by default. We know what they say about assumptions, though, so you first should check whether that assumption holds for your population. Computer ownership and internet connectivity varies widely across the US; individuals of lower income, lower education, or in rural locations are much less likely to have or use a computer or have broadband internet at home.The second consideration is whether there are computers or tablets to use. Obviously, if your program has no access to computers and it is difficult to have participants respond to surveys at home, then paper surveys are your best bet.

Administrators and guides

Lastly, consider critically who is administering the survey. The best bet is for you or someone on your evaluation team to administer the survey, but that can be expensive and time-consuming.Often, we are left with program staff to administer surveys for us. This requires having clear and detailed instructions on how to administer surveys for these staff. Ideally, they would also receive training on how to administer the surveys as well. These guides often explain the purpose of survey administration, why their administration efforts are necessary and how it helps the evaluation and their program, and detailed instructions for what to do to ensure high-quality data is collected.