I was wrong! In recent User Experience Benchmarking training sessions in New York and San Francisco, I explained Usable Products Company's strategy on conducting research using under-18 participants. I stated definitively that as long as they were legal to work, parent permission was not required. Technically, that statement is true; however, “legal to work” means that work papers for children aged 14 – 17 have been signed by parents.

Our Mobile Search User Experience Benchmark study includes four under-18s out of each suite of 20 interviews. I was curious, so I looked up the information at the New York State Department of Labor web site. We also looked at market research web sites, which were less helpful. Rather than ask under-18 respondents to see work papers, we decided to stay on the safe side and get parent permission.

We created a fast, easy, electronic strategy to gather and nearly guaranty credible parental approval, in seven easy steps:

1. Filter our existing panel for respondents aged 35 – 55.
2. Prepare an Under-18 survey, with the first entry fields requiring the parent’s full name, email, and telephone number.
3. Ask panelists with children aged 14 – 17 to forward the survey link to their children.
4. After harvesting data from the Under-18 survey, cross-reference and verify Under-18 parent information with the 35 – 55 panel.
5. Email verified respondents’ parents a PDF permission form.
6. Require parents to fax or mail the signed permission form.
7. Schedule Under-18s by calling the parent.

We went a few steps further: The parent permission form included fill-in fields that enabled the parent to permit his or her child to attend alone or only with parent in tow. If the signed form was faxed, the original was required when the child arrived for research, if the parent did not require their own presence. When parents are present, we allow them to watch interviews from the observer side of the one-way mirror.

We prepared a background with "Under 18" in large type that we use during interviews with children. Why? Child privacy laws! Rather than ask the parents to permit our use of the still images and video, we decided to omit Under 18 videos and stills from our studies, instead using icons to represent the child respondents with quotes. The background is there in case we accidentally harvest a child’s video, so that the analyst pulling the video clip doesn’t accidentally include a video clip of a child in the report. Note: the image used in this blog entry comes from a study for which we did receive parental permission to use the child's likeness.

Once I realized my error, I decided that a thorough process for parental approval made the most sense. With electronic surveys, email, and the fax machine, even the seven steps above don't take too much time or effort, and the fax and original form paper trail provides us with ample tracking information to protect the safety of our under-18 respondents.