{"id":65124,"date":"2020-04-07T09:20:47","date_gmt":"2020-04-07T13:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=65124"},"modified":"2020-04-07T17:35:34","modified_gmt":"2020-04-07T21:35:34","slug":"brock-team-begins-online-study-of-childrens-experiences-during-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2020\/04\/brock-team-begins-online-study-of-childrens-experiences-during-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Brock team begins online study of children\u2019s experiences during COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It was a news report on the dramatic rise in calls to Kids Help Phone that moved Rebecca Raby to action.<\/p>\n<p>As a researcher with a long history of working with children and youth, the Professor of Child and Youth Studies was concerned, and curious, about how young people are coping with the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>To that end, Raby and her research team of six graduate students have launched their online study of children\u2019s and young people\u2019s experiences at home during the pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cClearly, there are children who are in a lot of distress out there,\u201d says Raby. \u201cBut I suspect we\u2019re also going to hear stories about really cool, compelling things that kids have started to initiate at home with parents, siblings, on their own or online.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Raby and her team are starting one-on-one online interviews this week with up to 30 children and youth from ages eight to 15.<\/p>\n<p>The research team member is asking participants a number of open-ended questions, says Raby. Some example questions include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How are you feeling?<\/li>\n<li>What\u2019s your favourite thing to do each day?<\/li>\n<li>What are you finding hardest about this situation?<\/li>\n<li>Have the rules of your household changed?<\/li>\n<li>How has the situation changed your extra-curricular activities and your job, if you have one?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In two weeks\u2019 time, the team will be doing the next round of online interviews, asking the same questions, and in two-week intervals after that over the next few months. In between the major sessions will be \u201cmini-interviews\u201d to stay in touch with participants, says Raby.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI do think that this is an opportunity for some kids to have extra social contact,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>Raby says she and her team sought to recruit children and youth from a wide diversity of backgrounds and age ranges, adding that the team is still seeking participants from lower income families.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe experiences of children during the pandemic are going to vary so greatly depending on a number of factors, including if they have disabilities, are lower income, the size of their living space, whether they are travelling back and forth between parents,\u201d she says. \u201cAll of those kinds of things can shape what their experiences of the pandemic will be.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Raby says the pandemic has greatly accelerated the team\u2019s research process, and that she&#8217;s been \u201creally impressed\u201d that Brock\u2019s Research Ethics Board has been open to quickly reviewing research applications related to the pandemic.\u00a0As soon as patterns and themes start emerging from the interviews, Raby plans on sharing the findings with media so that the wider public is aware of children\u2019s and young peoples\u2019 experiences right away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI suspect we\u2019re going to learn a lot about personal coping, family dynamics and online peer friendships,\u201d says Raby, \u201cproviding us with a sense of how children are dealing with this difficult situation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Such knowledge might help families by offering ideas and coping strategies arising from the young people themselves, she says, and provide government and service organizations with ideas on how to better support children who are having a hard time.<\/p>\n<p>Down the road, the team aims to publish their findings, partly as an historical record of this time and also \u201cto inform thinking about children\u2019s experiences in social isolation in general,\u201d says Raby.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are children who are in social isolation quite regularly, even in normal life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was a news report on the dramatic rise in calls to Kids Help Phone that moved Rebecca Raby to action. As a researcher with a long history of working with children and youth, the Professor of Child and Youth Studies was concerned, and curious, about how young people are coping with the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":65162,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,188,1,4,5,38],"tags":[2149,8791,8485,522,926,1532,3325,2150],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65124"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65124"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65135,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65124\/revisions\/65135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}