Using video vignettes to evaluate children's personal safety knowledge: methodological and ethical issues

OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to assess children's personal safety knowledge by seeking their responses to video-delivered simulations of child maltreatment. METHOD: In seeking to do this, methodological and ethical difficulties were encountered. These arose during several phases of consultation, the refinement of an interview protocol to be used with the vignettes, and during discussions over the ethical integrity of the research. RESULTS: Using visually graphic vignettes to probe children's personal safety knowledge proved to be methodologically difficult and ethically problematic and controversial. The main objections to the approach were that it could harm participants, and that parents needed extensive information about the study to exercise "informed consent." CONCLUSIONS: The study demonstrated the nature and extent of negotiations that were needed to "push the boundaries" of evaluation research to develop more valid, authentic and complex ways of accessing children's thinking about personal safety concepts and strategies.