Doing Mental Health Research with Children and Adolescents
A Guide to Qualitative Methods
- Michelle O'Reilly - University of Leicester, UK
- Nicola Parker - University of Chester, UK
Researching child and adolescent mental health can be a daunting task, but with the right practical skills and knowledge your students can transform the way they work with children and young people, giving them a ‘voice’ through their research in the wider community.
Michelle O'Reilly and Nikki Parker combine their clinical, academic and research expertise to take your students step-by-step through each stage of the research process. From first inception to data collection and dissemination, they’ll guide them through the key issues faced when undertaking their research, highlighting the dilemmas, challenges and debates, and exploring the important questions asked when doing research with this population.
Providing practical advice and strategies for dealing with the reality of conducting research in practice, this book will;
- Provide your students with an overview of the theories that underpin methodological choice and the value of using qualitative research.
- Guide them through the planning stage of your project, clearly outlining important ethical and legal issues.
- Take them through the most popular qualitative data collection techniques and support them with their analysis.
- Help them write up their findings and demonstrate how research evidence translates into effective clinical practice.
Supported by helpful hints and tips, case examples and definitions of key terms, this highly practical and accessible guide throws a lifebelt to any students or mental health practitioner learning about the research process for the first time.
Whilst our students (of applied educational psychology) do not focus directly on 'mental health' per se - we tend to consider wellbeing - there are elements of this book some students may usefully be guided to
Ethics is efficiently dealt with and, whilst the Planning chapter does not fit our situation perfectly, there are helpful reminders there too.
Data analysis is understandably dealt with briefly and students would be well directed elsewhere for detail; the chapter on reflection and reflexivity has some useful points, though I'm not too sure about 'How to be reflexive'.
A very engaging text for those of our students who might want to examine issues of mental health as part of the undergraduate research study. A welcome contribution.
Excellent, a good user friendly publication, - I have already recommended it to students.
This book is such an easy and intuitive read. The authors have produced a text that will enable students and practitioners to have greater awareness and appreciation of the complexities of undertaking mental health research with children and adolescents. Whilst not adopted as a core text, I shall be recommending it to colleagues and students on both our Undergraduate and Postgraduate courses.
