Conducting Research with Children and Adolescents in Clinical and Applied Settings

Abstract

In order to successfully conduct research in clinical and other applied settings with children and adolescents, investigators need to learn to manage a number oflogistic problems that can be difficult to anticipate (Drotar, 1989). These problems include developing collaborations with agency and hospital staff that are necessary to recruit subjects (Drotar, 1993), recruiting and maintaining research participants in studies, and managing problems in data collection, especially those that threaten the integrity of study design. Researchers who work with children and families need to anticipate as many of these problems as possible so that they can either implement strategies to prevent them, which is the preferable approach, or develop data analytic approaches to limit their influence on the quality of their data (see Chapter 4, this volume).