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Researching the Lives of Disabled Children

The Process of Participant Observation in Seeking Inclusivity

University of Reading, UK, a.j.cocks{at}reading.ac.uk

Disabled children, especially those who do not use formally recognized methods of communication, are acknowledged to be at risk of social exclusion (Priestley, 2003; Rabiee et al., 2005b), within their daily lives (Sharma, 2002; Watson et al., 1999), and within research (Davis et al., 2000). This research methods article reflects on the author's use of participant observation as a way of ensuring inclusivity in a project that sought to discover the nature of the peer culture of children with learning disabilities visiting specialist social care services. The author explores the achievement of a `leastadult' role (Mandell, 1991; Mishna et al., 2004) in order to gain the trust and participation of the children within highly regulated and supervised settings. The article will also briefly consider the resulting data, which provided a rich contextual account of the nature of children's cultural activity that successfully included all the children observed.

Key Words: communication • disabled children • observation • qualitative methods • specialist provision

Qualitative Social Work, Vol. 7, No. 2, 163-180 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1473325008089628


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