Deepening in the Use of Discussion Groups with Children as Researchers’ Advisers: Strengths, Challenges and Applications

This chapter describes a qualitative technique we refer to as “Discussion Group” (DG), which we have applied to children and adolescents. We argue in this paper that the technique provides an outstanding contribution to understand how they perceive themselves and the world around them. Examples will be provided of how certain kinds of focus groups (FG), organized as DG, have already improved knowledge about subjective well-being (SWB) of 8 to 12 year-olds. It is crucial to state, first of all, that the researchers using this technique assume the leading role of children and adolescents as key informants and active social agents in their own lives. However, we have tried to go one-step forward by intentionally and explicitly changing researchers’ attitudes in order to truly accept children as qualified advisers for research development. Only from such a change—contrary to an adult-centric vision, we believe that it is possible to place children with a voice allowing them to act as protagonists of a research process, in a way that they feel absolutely competent in providing their contributions to adult researchers.