A guide offers guidelines on ethical action in research with children and teenagers who are victims of violence
Lecturer Noemí Pereda, director of the Research Group on Child and Adolescent Victimization (GReVIA) of the UB, led and coordinated the Guía Práctica para la Investigación Ética en violencia contra la infacnia y la adolescencia to guide, give information and guidelines on ethical actions in research with children and adolescents who are victims of violence. This is the first publication in Spanish with such features, and thanks to the collaboration with the Federation of Associations for the Prevention of Child Mistreatment in Spain (FAPMI), is a free resource for all researchers who wish to check it.
Lecturer Noemí Pereda, director of the Research Group on Child and Adolescent Victimization (GReVIA) of the UB, led and coordinated the Guía Práctica para la Investigación Ética en violencia contra la infacnia y la adolescencia to guide, give information and guidelines on ethical actions in research with children and adolescents who are victims of violence. This is the first publication in Spanish with such features, and thanks to the collaboration with the Federation of Associations for the Prevention of Child Mistreatment in Spain (FAPMI), is a free resource for all researchers who wish to check it.
Pereda explains the need of having such a guide: “Researchers who do research with kids and adolescents who are victims of violence come up with doubts that many times cannot be answered by bioethics committees, because they do not have experts of these topics among their members. In addition, there are important mistakes detected from an ethical perspective in some studies with kids who are victims -which have been published in Spain”.
The guide proves a clear and easy tool which includes the answer to many doubts any researcher working in this field should consider before starting a study, as well as a series of methodological questions to take into account. It dedicates a long chapter to the knowledge and consent: we should consider whether kids have participated voluntarily in the study, whether they have been properly informed and whether they have given their consent. It stresses we should value all consequences of the study, and should study the damage the study can cause to the kids and teenagers as well as the benefits it may bring. Last, it analyses the concept of privacy and confidentiality, and gives clear guidelines on how to end the study properly.
The publication was presented yesterday as part of an activity in the The Centre for Legal Studies and Specialised Training (CEJFE), and counted on the participation of -apart from Noemí Pereda- other experts in this field such as Antonio Andrés Pueyo, director of the Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology of the UB; Carme Tello, director of the Catalan Association for Abused Children (ACIM), and Marc Cerón, head of Investigation and Training in Criminal Enforcement of CEFJE.
Noemí Pereda graduated in Psychology at the UB in 1999 and obtained her PhD in Psychology from the same university in 2006. She is tenured university lecturer of Victimology at the University of Barcelona and teaches at the bachelorʼs degree on Criminology, as well as in postgraduate studies and master studies in several Spanish universities. She majored in the field of victimology of development and child-adolescent victimology, with an outstanding work on the field of sexual child abuse. She collaborates as advisor in the European Regional Office of the World Health Organization in the study of child violence in our country and participates in training tasks and advice in different professional schools, city councils and other official institutions and non-governmental associations such as Save the Children, Vicki Bernadet Foundation and RANA Foundation.