This article notes that an increasing number of researchers are seeking to carry out studies which engage with children rather than use them as passive sources of data. Often there need to be compromises between ideals of participation and requirements of research sponsors. Some of the relevant methodological issues are illustrated with reference to a qualitative study of children's perceptions of their emotional needs and well‐being. The authors describe some of the benefits of combining focus group discussions and individual interviews. Examples are given of a range of techniques that proved helpful.

There has been a recent surge of interest in consulting children and young people about issues affecting them. Research in this area can in the main be said to have been motivated by adult agenda, with little attempt to seek the views of children and young people themselves. This paper is based on what children have said about consultation. They were critical of some of the more widely used methods, largely because they saw them as unrepresentative. The main message from the research is that children want to be consulted if it is done properly, if it is about issues directly affecting them and if they see it as likely to yield results that are likely to benefit them or other young people. Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. The contextThe recent growth of interest in children's participation in civic life, partly reflected in and stimulated by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF, 1995), has led to concern about how to facilitate the involvement and participation of children and young people in public life and in the public policy process.The Scottish Parliament has shared this concern. Built into the foundation documents of the Scottish Parliament were the principles of being 'accessible, open, responsive and develop (ing) procedures which made possible a democratic approach . . . ' (Scottish Office, 1998). Keen to extend these principles to children and young people, the Parliament early in its life, commissioned the research upon which this article is based. It foccuses on what children and young people themselves say about being consulted (Laybourn and others, 2001).There is also a rapidly expanding academic literature on consultation, spanning different disciplines. To date, this research can be said to have been largely motivated by adult agenda (Woodhead and Falkner, 2000;Prout, 2000) and striking by its absence is any attempt to seek the views of children and young people themselves about the relative effectiveness of different research methods and approaches to consulting children (Laybourn and others, 2001). This lack is something we hope to remedy in this paper. MethodologyWe talked to some 200 children and young people aged between three and 18 from across Scotland. We conducted group interviews, with 12 groups in mainstream education, and to ensure representativeness, a further six from more excluded backgrounds.Children were from four Scottish local authority areas, including an inner city area with diverse ethnic population, one prosperous suburban area with a proportion of children from peripheral estates, one school in a small urban area with some rural pupils and one mainly rural school.Groups were organised with children in primary 6 (9-10 year olds), second year (11-12 year olds) and fifth year (15-16 year olds). Children and young people were from a wide range of backgrounds.We also talked to:* One group of very young children * Teenage girls from an Asian Muslim background * A special needs group of ten year olds with learning difficulties * Teenage boys with experien...

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Despite the fact that many children are affected by parental alcohol misuse, both services and research have largely concentrated on adults. Recently, projects have been set up to assist children, but developments have been piecemeal. This article reports on a qualitative study which learned directly from children, their parents and some young adults what they saw as the effects on children of excessive drinking by one or both parents. The most common consequences were distress at witnessing violence to the other parent or to the home; verbal abuse towards the children; feelings of shame; and taking on caring and protective roles. However, the children were not passive victims and usually took active steps to tackle the drinking or modify its impact Those in the sample usually had at least one family member who helped them and was trusted. Nevertheless, many wished they could meet with others in the same position, so they could feel less isolated and learn from each other. The need was identified for access to a network of services with group work, individual counselling, family mediation and educational components.

SUMMARY. Only children are popularly believed to be spoiled, lonely and maladjusted, and few parents in Britain choose to have one child. This article documents existing prejudice against only children and their parents, and contrasts it with the very positive picture given by research. Analysis of data from a large scale survey of 16–17 year olds gives a presentation of the family background of only children in Scotland, and confirms that only children do well. The conflict between popular stereotype and research evidence is discussed, and some possible explanations are considered. The article concludes that the positive research findings on only children should be more widely known