Understanding Child Participation With 3–5 Year-Olds Across Professional Boundaries

Child health researchers are increasingly aware of children’s rights to express their views and to be heard in all matters affecting them, as expressed in article 12 in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This includes research, but it is unusual for young children to be involved as co-researchers in health research. Child-facing professionals and researchers sit on experience-based knowledge and practical skills, which could inform young children’s involvement in research. We investigated perspectives and conceptualisations on child participation, for the ages 3–5 years, among professionals and researchers outside of the health sciences, by interviewing fifteen informants. We present the findings on three levels; meta, meso and micro . The interviewees described child participation as something that forms the basis for the practices they performed, independent of their profession; we theorized this as understandings of child participation on an overarching meta level , where active child participation both becomes an ‘established ideology’, and something difficult to put into words and describe. What also united the interviewees was their description of foundations or prerequisites for participation to take place; we theorized this as understandings of child participation on a meso level, where descriptions of the need for building relations with the children, the importance of space and place, and the focus on child-centred activities were common themes. Finally, the interviewees described methods that they used in meetings with children; this is theorized as understandings of child participation on micro level , categorized as methods for understanding children’s worlds, methods for engaging children in conversations and methods to ensure children’s consent. We discuss these understandings of child participation to untangle if they represent a child perspective or children’s perspectives . In the longer term, this knowledge will serve as the conceptual basis for a guide to children’s meaningful involvement in health research.