ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on what human rights mean for research with children. It begins by documenting the emergence of the idea of rights-based research with children, outlining the methodology that underpins the approach. The chapter argues that rights-based research ensures that both the process of research and the results are ethical, scientifically robust and respectful of children. The impetus for the development of rights-based research with children was the submission of the first reports to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) Committee in 1992, particularly information that fell outside the conventional health-education-psychology-demography nexus, was insufficient for monitoring the CRC. Rights-based methodology demands that researchers consciously confront the assumptions held about children. Age-based categories underpinning childhood are problematic for research. Gender analysis is rarely a feature of research with children, and the way in which gender shapes children's lives tends to be given scant consideration.
