Exploring Methods and Guidelines for Child-Computer Interaction Research with Refugee Children

Abstract

There exist many guidelines and methods on how to do Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) research, but very few focusing specifically on refugee children with a challenging background. The complex situations and multiple changes refugee children undergo, including community, culture, schooling, friendships, language, war, displacement, physical violence and even identity, makes them different from children who are not refugees. They suffer learning disabilities, mental health issues, poor physical health, trust issues and overall developmental disabilities. As there are a large number of refugee children in the world, who are displaced and out of school, it is important to help these children using available technology and assess the effectiveness of the use of technology. This paper presents a literature study on available research guidelines and methods for CCI. The literature has been reviewed for guidelines and evaluation methods, starting from more general research with children, moving to more specific research with refugee children, and finally to identify gaps, present common grounds and directions for research with this specific population. The results from 55 articles reveal that although guidelines and methods for research with children can be used for refugee children, special attention and additional guidelines are needed to address specific needs of this group. Further, the review reveals a lack of CCI research and research methods for refugee children and most adapted/new children-friendly research methods are not fully employed in research with refugee children. The results of this review could serve as a starting point for researchers entering the CCI field to work with refugee children.