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The Winding Road to Accessing the Voices of One Thousand Schoolchildren : A Nexus Analysis of Collecting Data for a Survey

Palviainen, Åsa,Räisä, Tiina

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This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ The Winding Road to Accessing the Voices of One Thousand Schoolchildren : A Nexus Analysis of Collecting Data for a Survey © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published version Palviainen, Åsa; Räisä, Tiina Palviainen, Å., & Räisä, T. (2022). The Winding Road to Accessing the Voices of One Thousand Schoolchildren : A Nexus Analysis of Collecting Data for a Survey. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 66(5), 793-807. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2021.1939137 2022 Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=csje20 Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csje20 The Winding Road to Accessing the Voices of One Thousand Schoolchildren: A Nexus Analysis of Collecting Data for a Survey Åsa Palviainen & Tiina Räisä To cite this article: Åsa Palviainen & Tiina Räisä (2021): The Winding Road to Accessing the Voices of One Thousand Schoolchildren: A Nexus Analysis of Collecting Data for a Survey, Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, DOI: 10.1080/00313831.2021.1939137 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2021.1939137 © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 22 Jun 2021. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data The Winding Road to Accessing the Voices of One Thousand Schoolchildren: A Nexus Analysis of Collecting Data for a Survey Åsa Palviainen and Tiina Räisä Department of Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland ABSTRACT This article describes a nexus analysis of the lengthy, complex process of negotiating access to schools for a research project surveying 1,002 children (aged 9–12 years) about their digital and language practices. The analysis distinguished layers of adult-centered gatekeeping, each of which needed to be tackled in sequence. Bottlenecks particularly arose at the gatekeeping stage, in which superintendents of schools decided whether to grant research access to schools. Factors facilitating the research process included the hybrid data collection design, the procedures for obtaining parental consent, and the active collaboration with the children themselves. A significant discourse emerged among school stakeholders about research fatigue, a discourse that researchers need to take seriously. The implications for future school-based survey data collection involving children are discussed, particularly how collaboration between researchers and school stakeholders can be improved. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 9 September 2020 Accepted 7 May 2021 KEYWORDS School-based research; survey research; children’s rights; gatekeeping; research fatigue 1. Introduction In Finland as many as 97% of children in Grades 5 to 9 have access to a smartphone, and most of them have their own phone (Smahel et al., 2020, p. 141). Smartphones are among the tools employed by family members to manage their daily activities, facilitated by messaging applications such as WhatsApp and SMS (Taipale, 2019). However, despite the central role that digitallymediated communication plays in many families nowadays, we do not fully understand the opportunities and affordances that digital technologies offer, and how languages are employed through digital applications. As researchers, we wanted to hear at first-hand the voices of children on these matters, so we turned to primary schools to collect survey data. The survey was a first step in a larger, comprehensive ethnographic project that examines family language and technology practices in Swedish-speaking, Russian-speaking, and Polish-speaking communities in Finland. 1 We decided to turn to schools for our data collection as the school setting has shown itself to be efficient: a large number of participants at the target age can be reached, contextual factors are known, and sampling procedures can be kept under control (Kristjansson et al., 2013; Ólafsson et al., 2013). For this purpose we developed a mixed-mode (de Leeuw, 2005) type of survey –an app installed on iPads that were brought to classrooms by the researchers –which required cooperation (Wanat, 2008) with a number of primary schools in Finland in order to succeed. As © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access articledistributed underthe terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. CONTACT Åsa Palvianen asa.palviainen@jyu.fiDepartment of Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä, P.B. 35, FIN-40014, Finland 1 What’s in the App? Digitally-mediated communication in contemporary multilingual families across time and space (Academy of Finland, 2018–2022). SCANDINAVIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2021.1939137 our target population was children of families in which Swedish was used daily, we turned to Swedish-medium rather than Finnish-medium schools. Purposive sampling (Ólafsson et al., 2013, p. 32) of schools was applied to make possible a rich description of the practices of this group. Eventually, 15 schools distributed across a wide geographical area participated in the study and the researchers met with a total of 1,002 schoolchildren (Grades 3–6; ages 9–12 years). 2 The data collection, from the survey questionnaire design to finally meeting the children in their classroom, lasted for one year, and the process was winding, complex, and at times frustrating, owing to the many layers of safeguarding involved. The aim of this article is to make clear the different steps and negotiations with gatekeepers that were needed in order to access the schools and children for research. It gives an overview of the entire complex data-collection process, using nexus analysis. Nexus analysis examines a social issue and can be used for any ethnographic study of discourse (Hult, 2015; Scollon & Scollon, 2004). We identify the actions and artefacts involved in the research process, as well as the major bottlenecks (hindering or complicating the process) and facilitators (enabling the process). The results of the nexus analysis lead to a discussion of the potential implications of this case for other researchers and contexts. In the following, we will first review the literature on gatekeeping and building trust in school settings, as well as questionnaire-survey data collection with children. Then follows a description of how we designed our survey study. After this we introduce the nexus analysis and its results, with a particular focus on the actors, phases and discourses that finally led to our gaining access to and engaging with the key actors, the children. 2. Gatekeeping, Protection, and Gaining Access to Schools Many layers of safeguards and stakeholders must be taken into consideration in order to gain access to school settings, i.e., to obtain the necessary authorization to enter a site for the purpose of enrolling research participants (Rice et al., 2007). This can be a complex process, involving many gatekeepers, including ethics committees or organizations, and in school-based research also parents, principals and teachers, who need to make informed decisions on whether to grant access to classrooms (Clark, 2011; Wanat, 2008; Water, 2018). As gatekeepers simultaneously serve to protect research settings and participants and function as intermediaries between researchers and participants (Clark, 2011; Wanat, 2008), it is important for researchers to take into account and respect gatekeepers’concerns (Wassenaar & Singh, 2016). Working respectfully means the creation of trust and credibility so as to both demonstrate the benefit and relevance of participation and reduce costs and the risk of harm, and it helps ensure that the research is of a high standard (Clark, 2011; Powers, 2007; Wassenaar & Singh, 2016). The development of mutual respect and trust, the clear communication of expectations as regards research involvement, the timing of the research, and the presence of fewer gatekeepers and organizational layers, all serve to enhance research participation (White, 2012). Wanat (2008) also notes, however, that building relationships with gatekeepers and negotiating access is an ill-defined and unpredictable process. Identifying the lines of communication in order to obtain approval for school-based research and being aware of who exactly must approve the proposal are crucial to the success of a study, and yet these lines of communication and the number of gatekeeping layers vary considerably between districts and institutions (Rice et al., 2007). Furthermore, the “chain of negotiation”(Valentine, 2008) in which the relationship is built up between researchers and stakeholders can be a long and painstaking one. Madge et al. (2012, p. 422), who conducted a large-scale school-based survey study in the UK, reported that “[n]egotiating access to schools was often a lengthy and sensitive process. Making and 2 Finland has a parallel Swedish- and Finnish-medium education system. Nation-wide, there are 220 Swedish-medium comprehensive schools (grades 1-9) with 35,587 enrolled students, compared with 1,996 Finnish-medium comprehensive schools and 524,360 students (Statistics Finland, 2019a,2019b). 2Å. PALVIAINEN AND T. RÄISÄ maintaining contact involved school visits, telephone calls and emails, many of which did not elicit any response.” In Finland, there is no centralized or standard protocol regarding whom one must approach to obtain permission to conduct school-based research. Finland has a uniform, 9-year comprehensive school system, in which most schools are jointly financed by the state and local municipalities. While there is a joint national core curriculum, local authorities –municipalities and the individual schools therein –have extensive freedom to draw up their own curricula, as long as they are based on the national framework. Moreover, although the administrative structure may vary from one district to another, each usually has a position corresponding to a superintendent of schools, who is responsible for the activities of the schools in that municipality or district. 3 School principals and teachers have a lot of autonomy. The procedures for obtaining research permission and gaining access to schools in Finland may therefore vary between individual stakeholders, schools, and districts (c.f., Rice et al., 2007). Many researchers have critically examined the tendency of parents and teachers to make judgements on behalf of children (Coyne, 2010; Felzmann, 2009; Valentine, 2008), and for adult proxies “to stand in for and provide second-hand accounts of children’s experiences, understandings and expectations”(Carter, 2009, p. 860). In their latest ethical guidelines for research with human participants, the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity stresses the agency of the child and states that “[a] child should be able to influence matters concerning themselves to the extent commensurate with their level of development”(TENK, 2019, p. 52). During the process of getting access to the voices of the children in our survey, trust, i.e., developing positive expectations regarding the actions of others (van den Berg & Keymolen, 2017, p. 194), turned out to be a key issue. This relationship of trust had to be developed between the researchers and the gatekeepers (Clark, 2011), and between the researchers and the children. The process also included building trust in technologies, processes, and the data protection measures taken (European Parliament, 2019; Milkaite & Lievens, 2020; TENK, 2019). We also had to make clear our respect for the child’s right to freedom of expression (United Nations General Assembly, 1989). 3. Questionnaire Survey Data Collection with Children Children are the experts on their own lives and their experiences need to be the starting point for research (Ólafsson et al., 2013; Water, 2018). Using survey questionnaires provides valuable information about the target child population as long as they are planned age-appropriately and carefully (Ólafsson et al., 2013). In the EU Kids Online project (Smahel et al., 2020), which examined the online practices of 25,101 nine to sixteen-year-old children from 19 European countries, the national teams employed a variety of methods for the survey data collection. While one of the national teams used an online survey, the others had the children respond to questionnaires either in school or in their homes, using computers, tablets, notebooks or paper and pencil, and assisted, interviewed or instructed by trained researchers, administrators or their teachers (Smahel et al., 2020, pp. 14–15). Online surveys have the advantage of reaching a large population in a short period of time and automatically sending the collected data to a data server for analysis (Evans & Mathur, 2018). Surveying online does, however, bring with it sampling problems and the risk of low response rates (Evans & Mathur, 2018; Lefever et al., 2007). Moreover, in our specific case, linking to an online survey on the Internet was not regarded as a feasible alternative because our survey was targeted at minors, which presents its own ethical and practical problems (Hokke et al., 2018). To achieve the best outcome in terms of effort and results, we therefore developed a mixed-mode (de 3 These superintendents have different titles, depending on district and organization, but the most common ones are bildningsdirektör (Swedish) and sivistys(toimen)johtaja (Finnish). SCANDINAVIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH 3 Leeuw, 2005) survey type: a digital questionnaire was designed with Webropol software and loaded onto iPads. Then, the field researcher (and a research assistant) took a number of iPads into the classrooms, so that the children could enter data on-site. By touching and typing on the screens, the children responded to questions such as “How old are you?”,“Who are the members of your family?”,“What languages and apps do you use in your family?”, and “With whom and how do you use these apps?”. The questionnaire was available in Swedish, Finnish, and English, and took an average of 10 min to complete. The data entered was automatically exported to a protected data server and available to researchers as MS Excel spreadsheets. As Ólafsson et al. (2013, p. 39) point out, it is absolutely critical to follow the ethical guidelines provided by the country where research is being carried out, as well as find out whether parental consent is necessary in order to involve the children. Ethics approval for the full project was obtained in connection with the grant application, but as a further safeguard, we consulted the Data Protection Officer at the university where the project was based before starting the survey data collection. Although potentially sensitive information was being sought from children concerning their digital and language practices, the survey did not collect or process any personal data that could identify either the individual or the school. Therefore the General Data Protection Regulation (European Parliament, 2019) did not apply. For this type of survey-based research involving a large number of minors, the ethical guidelines of the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (TENK, 2019, p. 53) state that it is sufficient to inform parents about the research so that they can refuse their child’s participation in the research if they so desire. This is referred to as passive parental consent (Felzmann, 2009). Our study required us to inform all the individuals involved –including the children themselves –about the research in adequate, ethical, transparent ways. 4. Methodology: Nexus Analysis Procedures In order to unpack the complexities involved in the entire data collection process and to recognize, identify and map the crucial objects, participants and discourses in these, we employed nexus analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004). The activities included talking, writing, documenting and visualizing (Scollon & Scollon, 2004, p. 177), and the materials on which our analyses were based included a range of artefacts and documents: (a) printed or electronic MS Word documents (such as letters of invitation, privacy notice letters, and letters giving parental consent), (b) e-mail correspondence with stakeholders, (c) written notes about phone calls with stakeholders, including the dates of contact, (d) research permit application forms (digital and paper), (e) the electronic survey (developed with Webropol software) and survey data output (MS Excel spreadsheet), (f) the researchers’own written fieldnotes and photos taken during the school-based fieldwork, and (g) Messenger conversations between the field researcher and the PI. The data was organized (e.g., e-mails were put in chronological order) to make it possible to trace trajectories, stages and processes. Social action occurs at the intersection of the historical bodies (lived experiences) of the participants, the interaction order between them, and the discourses that mediate that action (Hult, 2015). This means that the researchers as analysts “are themselves part of the nexus of practice under study, the analysis is in itself transformative …[and] a form of social action”(Scollon & Scollon, 2004, p. 9). As participants engaged in the nexus under study, both as actors in the fieldwork and as analysts of the entire process, it is therefore crucial for researchers to be aware of and establish their zone of identification (Scollon & Scollon, 2004) and for us to acknowledge our role in this social action. Nexus analysis is carried out through a three-stage process (Scollon & Scollon, 2004, pp. 152– 178). In the first stage –engaging with the nexus –the social actions and actors are identified. On the basis of the materials collected, we identified a time trajectory for our study with four main phases, each of which was characterized by distinct actions, actors and artefacts (mediational means) (Hult, 2015). After this stage comes navigating the nexus, in which discourses are mapped 4Å. PALVIAINEN AND T. RÄISÄ and circumferenced. At this stage of the analysis we focused on the most significant cycles of discourse connected with the later stages of the data collection process, which required interaction with the school stakeholders (the superintendents, principals, teachers, parents and children). In doing this we identified the mediated actions in which school access was being “produced, ratified, or contested”(Scollon & Scollon, 2004, p. 159). First, we mapped three significant cycles of discourse that contested, challenged or slowed down school access, then we mapped three cycles of discourse that ratified, facilitated or enabled access to children’s voices in the school setting. The third and final step of a nexus analysis is changing the nexus. In this step, links and discourses are opened up, ultimately leading to new social practices. In our discussion and conclusion we discuss the implications of our findings and what can be learned from this case. In the following we present the results of the three-stage analysis: first, the engagement with the nexus; second, the navigation of discourses within the nexus; and third, a discussion of the implications and how the nexus can be changed. 5. Findings 5.1. Engaging with the Nexus: Identifying Actions, Actors and Artefacts The study process, from the start of the survey design to the in-classroom data collection, lasted for one year. Following the principles of nexus analysis, the identification of central actions, Table 1. The survey study and its phases (planning, school contact, and data collection) from November 2018 to November 2019: actions, actors, and artefacts. Phases Timeline Actions Actors Artefacts I Preparations November– March Designing and piloting the survey, data protection measures. Principal investigator (PI), project team members, research assistant (RA), technical support staff, teacher, parents and children of one school class, host university data protection officer, translators. E-mails, computers, iPads, Webropol (electronic survey software), MS Word documents. IIa Establishing Contact April–May Formulating research information and sending invitation letters to principals, contacting gatekeepers for access. PI, principals, superintendents of schools. E-mails, MS Word documents. Summer break June–July IIb Establishing Contact August– September Contacting gatekeepers for access, applying for research permits. PI, researcher, superintendents of schools, principals. E-mails, notes of phone calls, electronic and paper application forms, electronic application forms, MS Word documents. III Organizing the School Visits October Accessing schools, formulating parental information and consent letters, practical planning and collaboration with school staff, technical and travel preparations. Researcher, principals, teachers, parents, RA, technical support. E-mails, notes of phone calls, MS Word documents, digital information letter, Wilma messages, iPads, Webropol software. IV Classroom Data Collection November Visiting schools and collecting data in classrooms, automatic data transfer to research server. Researcher, RA, principals, teachers, children. Car, iPads, Webropol software, sheet with app icons, data server, MS Excel sheets. SCANDINAVIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH 5 participants and mediating artefacts (Hult, 2015) led to a timeline with four major and distinct consecutive phases (Table 1). The first phase –Preparations –was devoted to designing the digital questionnaire and confirming the data protection measures. The principal investigator (PI), in collaboration with the data protection officer of the host university, cleared all the measures needed for data protection and compliance with the host university’s data protection protocol, GDPR, and TENK (2019). The questionnaire was piloted in one local school. The following phase –Establishing Contact –was devoted to getting permission to access the schools: the principals and superintendents of schools in thirteen school districts were contacted and, upon receipt of a positive response, the researcher and the PI sought and obtained research permits in accordance with the requirements of each district. In the third phase –Organizing the School Visits –the research team had gained access to fifteen schools and a researcher was in close contact with staff, primarily via email, to prepare and coordinate the school visits and to inform the parents. In the final phase – Classroom Data Collection –the researcher and one research assistant (responsible for the iPads and for handling technical issues) went on the road for three weeks, visiting sixty-three classrooms across a wide geographical area. This was the first time the researchers met the targets of the study – the children. 5.2. Navigating the Nexus: The Significant Cycles of Discourse In the following stage of the nexus analysis, in which the significant cycles of discourse were mapped, we identified three that we refer to as bottlenecks and three as facilitators. Each of these is discussed in turn below. All the empirical examples of data provided in the text are translated from Swedish (or Finnish) into English. 5.2.1. Bottlenecks 5.2.1.1. Inconsistent Lines of Communication. The gatekeeping phase of the study turned out to be more challenging than anticipated. Research access to schools may be granted through a range of procedures: by an individual school, by a school district, or after an established research review process (White, 2012). Through a process of trial and error, we encountered variants of the aforementioned three main procedures, in addition to a multitude of different practices in how they were realized on the ground. In our first attempts (Establishing contact IIa; see Table 1), the project leader approached the school principals in two urban districts by e-mail, explaining the research aims and inviting the schools to participate. In one of the districts, permission was granted (albeit after several reminders) by the school principal (there was only one school in that district), whereas in the other district the principals re-directed us to the superintendent of schools. On contacting the superintendent, we were asked to go through the research review process of the city in question and make a formal application. After this experience, we decided to approach the superintendents of schools first, rather than the principals, in each district (Establishing contact IIb in Table 1). We soon learned that written contact via e-mail was inefficient and rarely elicited any response. We therefore also called them by telephone. Despite –or perhaps because of –the technologically-dense, digital era in which we are often said to be living, traditional phone calls turned out to be the most efficient way of initiating the process of collaboration and negotiating access to the schools. Numerous attempts to contact different stakeholders and administrators were made –the correspondence included more than one hundred emails and phone calls, with a vast number of stakeholders – but this persistence was necessary in order to make any progress (Madge et al., 2012; Powers, 2007). The key question was, then, not only whom to contact, but also how to contact them. 5.2.1.2. Reluctance to Participate in Research. Although the contact with superintendents of schools and principals was positive, overall, insofar as we eventually gained access to most schools, 6Å. PALVIAINEN AND T. RÄISÄ some principals declined to take part. The reasons for this reluctance to participate could be identified as either research fatigue, relative cost, or a failure to perceive any benefits in participation. Research fatigue appears when individuals or groups have become tired of research and are reluctant to engage with it (Clark, 2008). This has been reported as being particularly common in school settings, as staffreceive an ever-increasing number of requests for participation from students and researchers alike (Clark, 2008; Felzmann, 2009; Kristjansson et al., 2013; Lefever et al., 2007; Madge et al., 2012; Powers, 2007). One of the principals we talked to said they had had previous experience of poorly planned research, which had led to hesitation about participating in future research. The fatigue may be felt particularly in relation to survey-based research (Evans & Mathur, 2018; Keusch, 2015), as illustrated in the following example: The [superintendent of schools] says that he has talked with principals in the district and they think there are too many surveys: “we’re tired of questionnaires, we also question the value of the outcomes of all these questionnaires.”[Written notes after a phone call.] Engaging with research participants comes with a variety of costs, such as putting extra demands on stafftime or other resources, and the disruption of normal school activities may also be considered too high (Clark, 2011). Some principals we contacted declined to participate because they had participated in a stream of student project surveys and mandatory screenings carried out by national and local school authorities over the past year and they were exhausted. One superintendent of schools, who declined to grant research access after having first consulted the principals in her district, explained her decision: “The schools are so busy right now and as their supervisor I have to listen to them”[e-mail to researcher]. Engagement in school-based research should be beneficial for the target group, for example, helping to develop teacher skills, promote improved academic outcomes or support other aspects of the curriculum (Clark, 2011; Powers, 2007; White, 2012). Our project only indirectly addressed teaching issues, as it focused on contemporary digital and language practices within families. One superintendent of schools whom we contacted during the first stage of recruitment wrote us: We [support] research and surveys of different kinds, but the starting point [for a research proposal to be approved by our district] is that it is of major significance to our schools [—]. Your research is, in my opinion, somewhat beyond the scope of our teaching, even if the role of the family is important for the school. [E-mail from superintendent of schools to PI.] This meant that we needed on the one hand to better acknowledge the tough situation in schools and, on the other, to put more effort into communicating the benefits of participation and the significance of the research for schools in our subsequent contacts with gatekeepers. 5.2.1.3. Complex Protective Measures. When starting to make our actual applications for research permits, we found a huge variety of different practices in the field. One of the districts we approached had a formal procedure for obtaining research permits that was more complex and time-consuming than the others. The instructions available on the district’s Internet pages were relatively clear, but the forms to fill out and the mandatory documents to be submitted were intended for supervised student projects rather than fully-fledged academic research projects. This complicated rather than eased the application procedure and required extra correspondence between the research team and the officials. The questionnaire in the presentstudy was designed to ensure anonymity (Lefeveret al., 2007). No identifiable personal or school data were collected and GDPR requirements did not, therefore, apply (European Parliament, 2019, pp. 27–30), nor was active parental consent required (TENK, 2019). This one school district did, however, state in their official policy for all types of school research – including survey research in which no personal data is collected –that parents must give their active consent in order for the research to go ahead: this means that parents have to explicitly authorize their child’s participation in the research by signing a parental consent form before children can be SCANDINAVIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH 7 seriously listen and adapt to this. Our study showed a considerable variety in experiences of and orientations toward research collaboration from one district to another. The reasons given for granting or denying access to researchers should themselves be researched more systematically in order to foster mutual understanding and to enhance collaboration in this area in the future. In order to improve co-operation between the research community and schools, advisory bodies to which both educational representatives and researchers could turn might serve as an intermediary and provide practical and ethical guidelines and standardized protocols –and minimize misconceptions on both sides. One of the most important insights of the current study is how rewarding and easy collaboration with children can be when we show them respect, give them power to decide on their contribution, and show interest in their life-worlds and conditions (Coyne & Carter, 2018). As Dempsey et al. (2018, p. 10) state, “children are the experts in being children, and adults, no matter how hard they try, are not children, and do not have the same actions, behaviours or concerns as children.” Any research with children and young people means balancing their rights to protection with their rights to participation and to be heard. On a final note, this research process and data collection took place in 2019, before the Covid-19 crisis arose. The crisis has shown how the very topic of the survey –digitally mediated communication –has become crucial, not only for communication within families but also for educational purposes and for linking school and home. Disclosure Statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). Funding This work was supported by Academy of Finland: [Grant Number 315478]. ORCID Åsa Palviainen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2778-2834 Tiina Räisä https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5634-3630 References Carter, B. (2009). Tick box for child? The ethical positioning of children as vulnerable, researchers as barbarians and reviewers as overly cautious. International Journal of Nursing Studies,46(6), 858–864. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. ijnurstu.2009.01.003 Clark, T. (2008). ’We’re over-researched here!’exploring accounts of research fatigue within qualitative research engagements. 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