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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

EV0522

Children's rights in school-based mental health research: methodological considerations for qualitative projects

CHILDREN’S RIGHTS IN SCHOOL-BASED MENTAL HEALTH RESEARCH: METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR QUALITATIVE PROJECTS

Children's right to participate in research can be realized by overcoming multiple layers of gatekeeping and using developmentally appropriate methods.

The poster discusses methodological and ethical approaches to safeguarding children's right to participate in school-based qualitative mental health research. The study involved semi-structured focus groups with 28 children aged 7 to 8 years across 3 primary schools in urban, suburban, and rural settings in Northern Ireland (United Kingdom). The recruitment process is illustrated using a Sankey diagram: of the 80 schools contacted, 69 did not respond and 6 declined; of the 5 schools that expressed interest, 2 discontinued communication and 3 participated in the study. Methodological considerations included recruiting participants through schools, parental consent and child assent, capacity-building activities, child-friendly data collection, and giving equal weight to children's views in the analysis. A sample child information sheet is presented as a resource that explains in plain language what research is and why it is being conducted. The authors state that this approach offers benefits in terms of robustness and trustworthiness, the applicability of findings to real-life settings, and equity and inclusion.

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