Interviewing children

Abstract

The focus in health-related research on children has shifted from seeking information about children to seeking information directly from them. Children, even as young as three years old, can give graphic descriptions and have excellent recall of experiences related to adverse events, such as illness and hospitalization. Children use scripts as the primary means of anticipating, comprehending, and re-creating real-life experience. The content, timing, number, and structure of interviews will influence the completeness, accuracy, and consistency of children's recall of events. Although at times conflicting, the findings from recent scholarship on children's narrative competence will assist researchers to select the interviewing strategies most likely to yield faithful representations of experience.