Involving Children in Oral Health Research: Are We Doing Enough?

Objectives: Background: Recognition of children as social actors in their own right has provided the momentum to propel policy towards research ‘with’ children and to the gradual acceptance that children can be more than objects in research, they can be co-researchers. Despite increased involvement of children as participants, it is still relatively rare for children to initiate and drive a research project in oral health research.

Aim: To determine existing methods used to engage with children in order to develop and shape research design and ideas.
Methods: Systematic review: Electronic databases (Medline Ovid ,Scopus and Web of Science) were searched for literature on the involvement of children (aged 4-12) either in the design of the research question, or in development of the methods. Data was abstracted from the papers using a specially designed form by two researchers
Results: 2231 papers resulted from the literature search. 34 resulted from manual search in related journals, 23 by looking at the references while the rest are those found in the databases. After going through the title and abstract, only 157 were related to the subject. Of these, only 4 were categorized as research by children of 12 years and under. Methods designed to engage participants were focus group in two of the studies (90% of the total children involved) then interviews and diaries respectively
Conclusions: Very few studies involved children in research. Of the studies we found there was no evidence as to what was the most appropriate method to engage children in research process