Elizabeth Bichard PhD candidate/nurse, Institute of Health and Social Care, London South Bank University, London, England
Stephen McKeever Lecturer in nursing, Department of Nursing, School of Health Sciences, University of Melbourne School of Nursing, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Jo Wray Health psychologist, senior research fellow, Great Ormond Street Hospital NHS Trust: Great Ormond Street Hospital For Children NHS Foundation Trust, Centre for Outcomes and Experience Research in Children’s Health, Illness and Disability (ORCHID), London, England
Suzanne Bench Director of nurse led research, Chief Nurse Office, Guy’s and Saint Thomas’ Hospitals NHS Trust: Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London, England
Why you should read this article

• To learn more about virtually interviewing children and young people

• To understand the ethical implications of using virtual interviewing to collect data

• To appreciate future directions and further research required to establish evidence-based research practices with children and young people

Background Societal use of digital technology rapidly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Face-to-face services converted to online provision where possible. This affected many nurse researchers.

Aim To explore conducting research interviews online with children and young people (CYP) about sensitive topics.

Discussion This article considers digital inclusion, as well as ethical issues surrounding safety, support and consent, along with choosing tools for collecting data. It also presents a discussion of physical proximity in qualitative interviews with this population and its role in data quality. The authors investigate benefits in the context of researchers’ personal experiences. They acknowledge the disadvantages of conducting interviews online and discuss ways to mitigate these.

Conclusion The advantages for researchers include cost-effectiveness, time-efficiency and greater geographical reach of participants. However, CYP’s perspectives are unknown and the specific ethical issues of using this method with CYP need careful consideration.

Implications for practice More research is needed to examine virtual interviews from the perspectives of CYP as participants. Virtual acquisition of consent and assent should be investigated to standardise good research practices.

Nurse Researcher. 30, 4, 39-46. doi: 10.7748/nr.2022.e1857

Correspondence

bichare2@lsbu.ac.uk

Peer review

This article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and has been checked for plagiarism using automated software

Conflict of interest

None declared

Permission

To reuse this article or for information about reprints and permissions, please contact permissions@rcni.com

Write for us

For information about writing for RCNi journals, contact writeforus@rcni.com

For author guidelines, go to rcni.com/writeforus

Already subscribed? Log in OR Unlock full access to RCNi Plus today Save over 50% on your first 3 months Your subscription package includes: Unlimited online access to all 10 RCNi Journals and their archives Customisable dashboard featuring 200+ topics RCNi Learning featuring 180+ RCN accredited learning modules RCNi Portfolio to build evidence for revalidation Personalised newsletters tailored to your interests Subscribe RCN student member? Try Nursing Standard Student

Alternatively, you can purchase access to this article for the next seven days. Buy now

Or