Seminar 3 – Engaging Children and Young People: Participatory Research Methods and Ethical Complexities

Zoom recording of the presentations  

Simona Di Folco's presentation – Assessing Attachment Representations in Children and Young People

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Abstract

Attachment theory has offered a comprehensive theoretical and research framework of the influence of early human relationships on psychological and social functioning over the lifespan. Over time individuals are considered to develop mental representations of relationships based on their early attachment interactions with their caregivers.

It is assumed that such mental representations are applied in subsequent relationships, that they are relatively stable, and play a pivotal role in psychological and social adaptation. Extensive research evidence suggests attachment is also a potential risk factor for the development of a wide range of psychopathology. However, the predictive power of attachment for psychopathological onset has been found generally weak, downplaying its importance as a causal factor.

To empirically test these assumptions and inform clinical and research practice, valid and reliable attachment measures are still needed. Moreover, over the years concerns have been raised amongst both scholars and clinicians around the high levels of error present in existing attachment measures in childhood, thus hindering the attempts to shed light on the role of attachment in psychopathology.

This presentation will provide an overview of the current debate around attachment measures in middle childhood and adolescence. Moreover, the current lack of research focused on the importance of child-father attachment and the implication of the absence of representation in measurement will be examined.

About Simona Di Folco

Simona is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Clinical Psychology at the School of Health in Social Science, at the University of Edinburgh. She is also a Clinical Psychologist and a qualified Child & Adolescent Psychotherapist.

Simona holds ten years of research experience working with children, young people, and their parents, in clinical and non-clinical settings, across Italy, Sweden, and the UK.

Her areas of expertise are child and adolescent developmental psychopathology, attachment theory and its applications in research and clinical practice.

Simona is extensively trained in a wide range of measures to assess parent-child attachment relationship in the life span. Her main areas of interest lie in research and clinical work with children and young people who experienced trauma and are in care.

Vernon Gayle's presentation – Youth Data, Past Present and Future

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Abstract

The UK leads the world in the collection of nationally representative birth cohort data. These studies have provided enviable data resources for youth studies. The absence of the collection of a new birth cohort in the 1980s sparked the first crisis in youth data. The establishment of the Millennium Cohort Study provided a slow-burn solution to this problem. Unfortunately, valuable lessons were not learned. Once again serious gaps have emerged in the UK social science data portfolio and we are living through a second, and more serious, crisis in youth data.

We argue that administrative data resources provide some useful information but should be analysed with caution because the quality of data can vary. Administrative resources also tend to contain fewer of the key variables required for routine social science analyses. Regional studies have collected potentially useful youth data but tend to be smaller in scale and limited by their geography. We illustrate that data from young people that are collected within household panel studies offer partial solutions in the current crisis.

In this presentation we outline a potential blue print for collecting data on young people that is suitable for contemporary high-quality social science research.

About Vernon Gale

Vernon Gayle is Professor of Sociology and Social Statistics in the School of Social and Political Science. He has substantive interests in education, youth transitions and social stratification. His work involves theoretically informed detailed empirical statistical analyses of large-scale and complex social science and administrative datasets.  This presentation emerges from ongoing work on ESRC Project ES/R004978/1.

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For more details/information, please contact the Childhood and Youth Studies Research Group, MHSES through: Karina Padilla karina.padilla@ed.ac.uk

If you want to write a blog as a response to the first seminar, please contact Karina Padilla- karina.padilla@ed.ac.uk The blog post will be located at the CYSRG blog page.