WITHDRAWN: Using the in My Shoes Computer-Assisted Interview to Understand Young Children’s Perspectives

Introduction: Children’s views are often neglected in research and policy, and recently the importance of identifying age-appropriate ways of hearing the voice of the child and understanding their perspective has become increasingly recognised. Children's perspectives provide important evidence across a very wide range of preventive strategies, both in identifying targets for prevention, and in evaluating interventions. The In My Shoes computer-assisted interview for children aims to facilitate understanding of the child's views, experiences and emotions across the wide range of settings they encounter, both in the family and out of home, and with different people. In My Shoes was originally developed with the support of the UK Department of Health and Department for Education and is used in practice and research settings in the UK and Scandinavia.

Methods: All components of the interview are evidence based and the design and representations used in each module have been guided by consultation with children. In My Shoes uses a range of visual material, animation and audio prompts to facilitate a three-way conversation between the child, interviewer and computer.

Results: Recently published research has compared accounts of events described by the child when interviewed using In My Shoes with video recordings of their experience of clinic visits. This has provided evidence for the validity of the accounts that children give of real-life experiences using the approach. This study compared In My Shoes to a US best practice forensic interview for children. A further recently published qualitative paper on very young children living with a parent with a serious mental illness demonstrates the ways that In My Shoes can facilitate children in describing their experiences of family life, their views of themselves, including the likelihood that they will themselves develop disorder, perceptions of their parents’ symptoms, and adaptations that family members make to accommodate these. The approach has also been used in assessing children’s experience of pain.

Conclusions: In My Shoes facilitates and empowers children, including the very young, in describing experiences, providing a useful tool to aid the understanding of the child's perceptions, perspectives, emotions and relationships across a wide range of settings and contexts. The opportunities to use this computer-assisted interview both in planning and evaluating interventions can help to identify perspectives that are otherwise difficult to obtain. The proposed session will demonstrate the interview, show examples of interview material and provide opportunities to discuss potential uses.