Competence in the decision making process in children and young people

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Measuring competence and exploring experiences of being involved in the decision making process in children and young people with long term conditions

• IRAS ID

  167872

• Contact name

  Nina Dunne

• Contact email

  n.dunne@brighton.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  The University of Brighton

• Duration of Study in the UK

  1 years, 0 months, 1 days

• Research summary

  There has been a great interest in children’s rights to be involved in decisions about their care since the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (1989) where it states that every child has the right to make informed decisions. This has been further emphasised by the Department of Health (2003) and the Nursing and Midwifery Council (2008). However this is dependent on the child's competence, and whether they want to be involved. Therefore two issues exist; the child’s perspective of their competence in being involved in the decision making process, and measuring competence.
  There are few studies that have explored children’s view of their competence. Most has been mainly focused on parents’ views, or focusing on the child as a "body" that adults care for, or persons for who care must be taken (Mayall, 1998; Tates and Meeuwesen, 2001).

  Measuring competence is laden with conceptual problems. There are a variety of tools that exist and all differ in their focus and this then can imply that problems of inconsistency may exist. In all 22 scales were found, but none were found that measured competence in children in the decision making process.
  The aim of the study is therefore twofold.
  1. To develop a tool to measure children’s decision making competence
  2. To explore the experiences of children with long term conditions in their involvement in decision making and how confident they feel about this involvement.
  The research project will be a mixed method convergent parallel approach. The qualitative phase will be a grounded theory study to explore the experiences children aged 8 and 12 years have about being involved with decision making about their health and related treatments. The quantitative phase will be a pilot study that will aim to develop the decision making competence scale and inform a full trial.

• REC name

  North West - Haydock Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  14/NW/1434

• Date of REC Opinion

  20 Nov 2014

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion