Ethical Research Involving Children

Ethical tourism research involving children.

Canosa, A., & Graham, A. (2016). Ethical tourism research involving children. Annals of Tourism Research, 61, pp. 219-221.

Abstract: There has been considerable recent interest concerning children in tourism research, with studies arguing that children’s voices have often been neglected (Carpenter, 2015; Poria & Timothy, 2014), particularly in the areas of family tourism (Schänzel, 2010), holiday experiences (Small, 2008) and children as members of host communities (Buzinde & Manuel-Navarrete, 2013; Canosa, Wilson, & Graham, 2016). Such debates mirror the discourse around children’s participation in research in other applied fields, although Tourism Studies has been slow to engage. While the absence of children in Tourism Studies may be attributable to the methodological challenges faced by researchers (Khoo-Lattimore, 2015), we suggest that assumptions about children’s competency, along with per- ceptions about the ethical complexity of involving them, likely pose greater barriers and deterrents. In this research note, we draw attention to the established interdisciplinary field of Childhood Studies (Prout & James, 1990), and a recent major international ethics initiative (Graham, Powell, Taylor, Anderson, & Fitzgerald, 2013), to highlight some of the evidence upon which tourism researchers might build in progressing high quality and ethically sound research involving children. (This article was published in Annals of Tourism Research, on-line © Copyright Elsevier 2016).