Childhood Diversity and Commonality: Some Methodological Insights

Abstract

An age/developmental based approach is, for example, often incorporated in the methodological design as if it were a ‘natural’ feature of childhood research. Mauthner (1997) for instance argues that the ‘age’ of a child necessarily determines the kinds of research techniques which can be used. Others more unquestioningly take ‘age’ for granted and design their methods to accord with the supposed developmental or cognitive abilities of their study population of children. Thus, as James, Jenks and Prout have questioned: How often do researchers choose an age group simply because they feel that the children will be ‘old enough’ to engage effectively with the researcher’s project, rather than because at that particular age in that particular society children are sharing a particular social, rather than simply, developmental experience?

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