This document discusses some of the ethical challenges of longitudinal research with children and families living in poverty. It focuses on applying a lens of care to research relationships, which change over time. Specifically, it explores how gift and care theories can help frame research relationships and examines tensions around reciprocity. The qualitative data from Young Lives reveals diverse expressions of care between researchers and participants as well as changing identities and blurred boundaries over multiple years of fieldwork. Managing expectations of what the research can provide also poses challenges.

1. 2017 AAGE Conference
“Culture, Commitment and Care across the Life Course”
Oxford, 8 June 2017
Young Lives Workshop

2. Table of contents
1. Understanding care from an intergenerational life
course perspective – research design and challenges
Jo Boyden
2. Researching care with longitudinal mixed methods
Patricia Espinoza-Revollo
3. The ethics of longitudinal research
Gina Crivello
4. Using Young Lives research to inform policy
Frances Winter

3. Young Lives Workshop:
“Understanding care from an intergenerational life
course perspective - research design and
challenges”
Jo Boyden
2017 AAGE Conference “Culture, Commitment and Care across the Life Course”
Oxford, 8 June 2017

4. Overview of Young Lives design and data

5. Young Lives
• Multi-disciplinary longitudinal cohort
study that aims to:
 Enhance understanding of childhood
poverty & inequalities in LMICs
 Provide evidence to improve policies &
practice
• Following nearly 12,000 children:
 In Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh &
Telangana), Peru & Vietnam
 Over a 15-year period: first survey round in
2002
• Two age cohorts in each country:
 2,000 children born in 2000-01
 1,000 children born in 1994-95
• Key components:
 Household survey (the two cohorts, their
offspring, caregivers, younger siblings, &
community representatives)
 Longitudinal qualitative research & sub-
studies
 From 2010, school-effectiveness surveys
 Survey data available via the UK Data
Archive)
• Collaboration:
 Partners in each study country & in the UK,
US

6. Conceptualisation and core design features (1)
• Comparative study: common instruments & questions across countries + country-
specific modules
• Ecological life-course perspective: factors shaping young people’s trajectories
over 15 years - early childhood to adulthood
• Inter-cohort comparison: the two cohorts interviewed at the same age but a
different points in time - to track changes in external environment
• Inter-generational comparison: caregivers, the two cohorts & their offspring -
when possible, questions for different generations are matched
• Sample: diverse economically, socially & by location
• Multidimensional view of poverty: caregiver background, consumption,
expenditure and assets, livelihood stability, infrastructure and service access
• Qualitative sub-studies: SRH, early marriage, violence, etc.

7. Conceptualisation and core design features (2)
• Children of the right age recruited in households: though dependence on
household & school attendance not automatic
• Intergenerational interdependence: often essential to household livelihoods
– children are contributors
• Gendered work roles & responsibilities: induction into productive &
reproductive work begins very early, especially in rural areas
• Children’s work: often integrated with adults - their care work attributed to
women
• Children may be breadwinners: also caring for incapacitated adults – parents,
grandparents & others

8. Methodological challenges

9. Methodological challenges
• Children recruited in households: yet children’s mobility between
households is very common – responding to care & labour needs
• Piloting: ensuring instruments are appropriate for diverse languages, ages &
cultural groups without compromising the panel & comparative design
• Maintaining conceptual & analytical coherence: across disciplines,
qualitative & quantitative components
• Holistic conceptualisation of poverty/child development: lack of
depth in any single dimension
• Data quality & frequency: 3-year gap between rounds, limited opportunity
for observation (self-report)
• Tracking & cohort maintenance: partnerships crucial in low attrition

10. Young Lives Workshop:
“Researching care with longitudinal mixed
methods”
Patricia Espinoza-Revollo
2017 AAGE Conference “Culture, Commitment and Care across the Life Course”
Oxford, 8 June 2017

11. Young Lives: 12,000 children in 4 countries over 15 years

12. The quantitative and qualitative components
Qualitative research
4 rounds of data have been collected (2007, 2008, 2011,
2014)
Collected from a sub-sample of 200 children from both
cohorts.
Focus of qualitative research: children’s daily
experiences of growing up in poverty – time-use,
school, work, transitions and hopes.
Methods include: child interviews, caregiver interviews,
group discussions, group activities, data gathered using
creative methods, teacher interviews, etc.
The Young Lives survey
 Multi-purpose
 Three elements:
 Household questionnaire – to main
caregiver
Livelihoods & assets, hh composition,
education & health, etc.,
Caregiver’s well-being, aspirations for her
and the child
+ Time use information
 Child questionnaire – to child after the age
of 8
Children’s wellbeing, education & cognitive
skills, health & nutrition, socio-emotional
skills, etc.
+ Time use information
 Community questionnaire – to
government officials, teachers, etc.
Background information about the social,
economic, and environmental context of
each community

13. Time use data in the Young Lives survey
In the household and child questionnaire
The survey asked individuals how they spend their time on eight different
activities on a ‘typical day’ (Monday to Friday) in the last week
1. Sleeping
2. Care for others (younger
children, elder, and ill household
members)
3. Domestic chores (fetching
water, firewood, cleaning, cooking,
washing, shopping, etc.)
4. Tasks on family farm/
business
5. Paid (remunerated) work on
activities outside of household
6. At school (including travelling)
7. Studying (outside school)
8. Play time / general leisure

14. What we can do with the survey data – some examples
Time spent on unpaid care work , household members ages 5-17 (2016)
Unpaid care work  Refers to care of persons and housework performed within households without pay, and unpaid community
work (Esquivel 2014)
Using information elicited by the caregiver…..

15. What we can do with the survey data – some examples
Time spent on unpaid care work children at ages 12, 15, 19, and 22
Using information elicited by the index child…..
Which girls are more likely to spend more time in unpaid care work? --- Life course
perspective (e.g. experience of family shocks in previous years)

16. Challenges and limitations
Challenges
 Do not account for activities taking place simultaneously
 Recalling precise amount of time spent on activities is a challenge,
especially when activities are broken up throughout the day (esp. for
caregivers reports).
 There can be inconsistencies between accounts of children and of adults
(parents) reporting children’s time-use. Some researchers may opt for
relying on adult accounts as more ‘trustworthy’ but this reflects the
assumption that adults have accurate knowledge of how children spend
their time.
Limitations
 Explore the meaning of care in children’s lives
 Understand the complexities of care within households
 Explore how children experience care
 ….. And how all this varies locally/ contextually

17. Qualitative data on time use
Different tools for eliciting information on time-use with children: their activities,
responsibilities, likes and dislikes, etc. in a dynamic way
Mobility maps
Categorizing activities &
hours spent in a ‘bucket
activity’
Ordering girls’ daily activities
Life course timelines
Week-long diaries

18. What we can do with the qualitative data – an example
Elmer’s family in Peru
Elmer is from a rural village, 3rd of 5 children
- 11 years old: Elmer’s elder brother goes to Lima to
help his sister with childcare in exchange for support
to attend school
- 12 years old: elder sister sent for Elmer to replace
his brother who wanted to return to the village
- 13 years old: the brothers swap again; Elmer
returning to the village, the brother to Lima; parents
move to a different village; Elmer and siblings move
to place where they can access school (3 hour walk
from parents)
- 15 years old: Elmer’s mother goes to Lima to care
for her daughter who was ill – On weekends Elmer
and siblings do work on their parents farm

19. Challenges and limitations
Challenges
 Qualitative interviews are semi-structured, resulting in variation in the
way questions are asked and in the relative depth of exploration across
cases.
 Qualitative interviews found that children’s work is often not
considered ‘work’ by children and families. Children may not see
themselves as ‘carers’ or ‘caregivers’.
Limitations
 Knowledge may not generalise to other people or settings
 Difficult to make quantitative predictions

20. Solution: combine approaches – mixed methods
Justification
 Fit together the in-sights provided by qualitative and quantitative research
 Mix and combine synergies - complementary strengths and non-overlapping weaknesses
(Brewer & Hunter, 1989)
 The product (research) will be superior to a mono method study
Advantages (spec. to our example)
 Words, pictures, and narrative add meaning to numbers.
 Numbers can be used to add precision to words, pictures, and narrative.
 Provide stronger evidence for a conclusion through convergence and corroboration of
findings.
 Add insights and understanding that might be missed when only a single method is used.
But, there are challenges too
 Can be difficult for a single researcher to carry out both qualitative and quantitative
research, especially if two or more approaches are expected to be used concurrently; it
may require a research team.
 Researcher has to learn about multiple methods and approaches and understand how to
mix them appropriately
 Not least: difficulties in publishing mixed-methods research

21. Young Lives Workshop:
“The ethics of longitudinal research”
Gina Crivello
2017 AAGE Conference “Culture, Commitment and Care across the Life Course”
Oxford, 8 June 2017

22. 22
Ethical challenges:
• of longitudinal research
• working with vulnerable children and families in poverty contexts
Research relationships:
• applying a ‘care’ lens to the context of research relationships
• changes in research roles and relationships over time
Focus of the presentation

23. Feminist care theories
• Ethic of care (Tronto 1993, Williams 2001) – care as occurring in
a range of situations and relationships
• Applied as a form of reasoning when facing ethical dilemmas in
research (e.g. Evans et al 2017; Posel 2014; Spiegel 2005)
o Beyond research as a rationale process
o Rather relationships, interdependence, vulnerability, trust
Classic anthropological ‘gift theories’
• Research relationships as ‘gift relationships’ defined by giving, receiving and reciprocating (Mauss
1924)
• Tensions: formal institutional rules, researcher ethical predilections and localised norms and
expectations
Ways for thinking about research relationships

24. • Young Lives is NOT an intervention
• Need to align survey and qualitative
approaches to reciprocity
• Differing views on what ‘reciprocity’ should
be and who it should target.
‘Young Lives teams deal with compensation in ways that reflect local norms about the value
of people’s time, their willingness to undertake research activities ‘for the common good’,
and the reality of poverty and not having the capacity to miss work to spend time talking
with researchers. Some teams pay respondents, including children, for their participation.
Others give gifts as a ‘thank you’.’
(PHOTO: YL researcher discussing nutrition with
community members in Peru)
[V. Morrow (2013:27) ‘Practical Ethics in Social Research with Children and Families in Young Lives: A longitudinal study of childhood
poverty in Ethiopia, Andhra Pradesh (India), Peru and Vietnam’, Methodological Innovations Online 8.2: 21-35]
YL Approach to Research Reciprocity

25. Themed information sheets: nutrition, hygiene and time-use distributed to all Young
Lives households.
[Photos: from left, Vietnam Round 5 reciprocity booklet; Peru R4 ‘Alternatives for
Peruvian Youth’; India wall hanging of county findings]
Sharing findings with families and communities

26. Material Gifts Non-Material Gifts
cash
school supplies
gifts to the school/teachers food
items
drinks, meals
calendars
clothing
toys
books
kitchen items (spoons)
transportation costs
photographs/photo album
information converted to data
time
information
advice
psycho-social affects
space for socialising
social capital
companionship (‘a listening ear’)
visits
status
‘role models’/aspirations
job experience converted to
career capital
Agreed protocols: no personal gift-giving by researchers, no personal return visits
outside data collection periods. But it was difficult to control these ‘off the record’
exchanges.
(Source: Crivello et al 2018, forthcoming)
Exchanges underpinning research relationships

27. Relationship to Young
Lives
Comments on research
closure
Comments_expectations
from YL Respondents’
Comments on
research_quantitative
Comments on
research_relevance,
influence and impact
We anticipated ethics being an important area to capture in the qualitative data,
so coded for it

28. “After all these years…”
Why hasn’t there been any change? (in my household, in the community?)
“You’ve been collecting all this information and the study is ending…”
So, what have you learned? (findings)
What can you tell me about my child?
What advice do you have for my child and for my family?
“When the study ends, will you help my son/daughter …”
find a job, study, migrate
with dowry, land, etc.
Managing expectations across time

29. Researchers torn between the generous impulse ‘to do something’ and the need
to restrain from intervening in families’ lives and in children’s outcomes.
You should have some kind of solution after such a long data collection time. A
lot of research is done on the attitudes of youngsters but in the end it comes to
nothing more than a paper. (Bereket, 20 years old, Ethiopia)
I think we all understand that the families and children have given us too much
(their time, hospitality, patience, trust, friendship, stories of their lives, etc.) and
we have given them back too little. (Researcher, Vietnam)
Imbalanced reciprocity

30. Researchers’ identities were neither uniform nor fixed
• In early phases of the study, they were mistaken for NGO workers, government
officials
Researchers developed ‘on the record’ and ‘off the record’ roles
• ‘On the record’: ‘external expert researching child poverty’, ‘researcher with a
purpose’
• ‘Off the record’: advisor, teacher, role model, family (‘uncle’, ‘auntie’, ‘brother’, ‘sister’)
– these roles became more salient over time
You studied a lot about the children. You are like their family. I’d be happy if you
gave us guidance on how they can grow and improve their lives. (Habtamu’s
father, Ethiopia)
His sharing and awareness made me respect and admire him because at the
moment, I was bearing the responsibilities of a father and sometimes, I was
struggling to find balance and equality in treating the children. (Fieldnotes,
Vietnam)
Blurring of professional boundaries

31. Example: On a return visit in Peru, one of the female
researchers (ET17) had to travel by foot to trace some of the
families to their homes, whereas earlier interviews had been
carried out in a central location in the village.
Through my walk along the slopes and plains in the community to meet
respondents who were ill (2 caregivers), I could feel the endurance of children
to reach to school and health services at the centre. I could also feel the work
and time burden of the female children in the community by having direct
observation of the distances to reach water points, fuel wood fetching places,
and the areas that could probably be risky to female children such as the
River gorge which is just down the residential houses at the road to the
school and centre of the community. (Fieldnotes, Peru)
Developing empathy

32. ‘Care’ was expressed in diverse ways and was mutual – including
from families towards researchers
Example: In Peru, mothers requested female researchers phone them to let them
know they had arrived safely to their accommodation.
Example: In Vietnam, when a female researcher was caught in the rain
The grandfather lent me a raincoat while Lien’s father ran around to find me
a cap, which was touching. I still remember in the past, whenever I needed
to borrow a motorbike and asked the grandfather to help open the gate to
go and submit my papers or to go somewhere, I felt very hesitant because
the grandfather’s family was very careful. But this time, the intimacy was
expressed clearly; all hesitation no longer existed. (Fieldnotes, Vietnam)
Simple expressions of care

33. • The quality of the research depended on the quality of relationships, and these
changed over time in ways we couldn’t predict
• Participants’ experiences of being part of the study varied (many want continued
contact and visits, others not)
• ‘Gifts’ and care were a vital aspect of creating, maintaining (and resisting)
research relationships, and addressing imbalances
• But tensions arose between differing understandings and expectations
• E.g. study protocols, local cultural frameworks, researchers’ sense of what is
personally necessary
• How to counter the ‘imbalance of benefit’ in research?
• Long-term research with vulnerable families may ‘heighten the need for ethical
literacy’ (Neale 2013:6)
• How to close the research relationship after so many years? -- researchers’ guilt;
participants’ sadness, relief, disbelief
Concluding thoughts

34. See Young Lives website on Ethics
https://www.younglives.org.uk/content/research-ethics
Morrow, Virginia (2013) 'Practical Ethics in Social Research with Children and Families in
Young Lives', Methodological Innovations Online 8.2: 21-35.
Morrow, Virginia (2009) The Ethics of Social Research with Children and Families in Young
Lives: Practical Experiences, Young Lives Working Paper 53
Presentation based on two forthcoming publications:
Gina Crivello, Vanessa Rojas Arangoitia, Yisak Tafere, Uma Vennam and Huong Vu
(forthcoming 2017) ‘Saying goodbye’: the ethics and emotion of research closure at the
end of a longitudinal study of childhood poverty.
Gina Crivello, Vanessa Rojas Arangoitia, Yisak Tafere, Uma Vennam and Huong Vu
(forthcoming 2018) ‘We’re like family now’: Negotiating research relationships and
reciprocity in a longitudinal study of childhood poverty.

35. Young Lives Workshop:
“Using Young Lives research to inform policy”
Frances Winter
2017 AAGE Conference “Culture, Commitment and Care across the Life Course”
Oxford, 8 June 2017

36. The long road to making difference
Research
Policy
Real lives

37. … or longer and wider - more like this?
Reproduced from Duncan Green ‘How Change Happens
Figure 12.1 Domains of change
Source: Rao, Sandler, Kelleher and Miller, Gender at Work: Theory and Practice for 21st Century Organizations, (Routledge),
2016.

38. Just boil it down?
• What are stakeholders interested in?
• When is the right moment?
• How to communicate and persuade with our
evidence?

39. Young Lives and policy impact
Opportunities Challenges
 Unique, high quality, comparative
study, linked to MDGs
o Findings are complex, cross-sectoral,
not always surprising.
 Mixed methods o No ‘what works’
 Evidence across different
developmental domains
o Can’t turn on a sixpence to respond to
policy interest in new countries or
issues.
 Data publicly accessible o No extra levers (£/programmes) for
policy or practice change
 Strong in-country leadership & policy
links from Young Lives partner
institutions

40. The Young Lives approach
Three routes for impact –
 Conceptual
 Instrumental
 Capacity
1. Capacity  Disciplinary & context expertise
 Fieldworkers, researchers, partner
bodies, policymakers
2. Research  Cross-disciplinary research,
combining quantitative and
qualitative methodologies
Contrasting contexts.
3. Uptake  Policy relationships
 Networks and alliances
 Publications & presentations
 Data archiving
4. Innovation  New age-appropriate and context-
appropriate tools and methods
 Children’s perspectives integrated
across our work.

41. Example
Working with partners to achieve policy change on
violence against children in Peru
 Important relationship with UNICEF, including with Office of
Research project to study the structural drivers of violence.
 Benefits: Engagement of national teams (Young Lives and UNICEF
country offices) meant closer to national debates (Peru); working
with intermediaries increases dissemination potential
 Challenges: Managing expectations of partners, reacting quickly

42. Children’s care work and policy
 SDG: Goal 5, target 4: recognize and
value unpaid care and domestic work
 UN SG’s HLPWEE: Investing in care=
priority. Recommendations include
• recognize, redistribute and reduce care work
• foster social norms change to redistribute care
• BUT children seen as recipients of care, not providers.
Children’s unpaid care important to families and
children, but can undermine opportunities and
education, and invisible in research and policy.
 Young Lives comparative advantage:
 Time-use data
 Trends over time
 Qualitative data
 What we don’t show:
 magic bullets to reduce care work
 That care work is just a ‘girls’ issue’.
 That care always undermines girls’ education and well-being

43. Find out more
www.younglives.org.uk
@YLOxford
• methodology and research papers
• child profiles and photos
• e-newsletter
• datasets (UK Data Archive)

44. Thank you