Welcome to the Youth Play Online Study!

This site will help explain to interested participants- both young people and their parents- what the study is all about.

You can see to the left a number of downloadable PDFs. They explain in age-appropriate terms the goals of the project as well as the rights of study participants.

This project is a part of my PhD dissertation research, where I am looking at the activities and practices of young people aged 8-15 in online spaces, particularly those in which they play, which can range from online games to virtual worlds to social networking sites. I am also interested in talking to parents about their perspectives on online spaces for youth, including their feelings of hope and anxiety, which tend to be inspired by new technologies, especially for young people.

If you are interested in participating, or have any questions, please contact me, Alison Harvey (the Principal Investigator), at alison1h (at) yorku.ca. You are under absolutely no obligation to participate if you contact me, and can withdraw from the study at any time. More study information is available below.

I must receive permission from a parent or guardian for youth participation, so I would ask that only adults contact me by email.

Thanks for your help!

Study information:

I would ideally like to spend about 2-3 hours with each participant, so that they can become relatively comfortable with me and my questions. I am however flexible in how these interviews are conducted, and can come for more than one session if that is more convenient.

There are no incentives for participating in this project, and I foresee no risks or benefits to participants.

Your decision to not participate or to withdraw from participation will not affect your relationship with York University, now or in the future.

This project and its findings are entirely confidential and anonymous. Confidentiality will be provided to the fullest extent possible by law. I will assign all participants a blinded number, and will use pseudonyms in my dissertation. All names and identifying information will be coded, and personal information and coded information will be stored on different hard drives in a secure location that is off-campus.

Participants have the right not to answer questions. Any participant can withdraw at any time, and if a participant does chose to withdraw, all data generated as a consequence of their participation will be destroyed. If you have any ethical questions, you can contact the Manager of Research Ethics (contact information below).

This research will be reported in my doctoral dissertation. The goal of the doctoral student is to disseminate research, and thus chapters of or even the entirety of this project may be published in print or online journals or books geared towards children’s culture researchers, social scientists, and media theorists.

The data generated from this research will be stored in the blinded coded files until the dissertation was been successfully defended and passed at the University. Upon successful completion of the dissertation, the data (both personal and coded) will be deleted in its entirety.

This research has been reviewed and approved for compliance to research ethics protocols by the Human Participants Review Subcommittee (HPRC) of York University. If you have any questions, you can contact the Principal Investigator, the Graduate Program Office, and the Manager at the Office of Research Ethics at York University (contact information available in the informed consent documents ).

Some sample questions I might ask after observing play include:

-Do you normally play with friends you know from school or the neighborhood, or with friends you meet in online spaces?
-Are the people you chat or play with typically boys or girls?
-What kind of activities do you prefer engaging with in these spaces? What do   you like about them?
-What other spaces do you like to engage with? Have you ever played Webkinz, Club Penguin, Whyville, or Neopets? What do you like or dislike about these spaces?
-What do you like about the appearance of the space, including the character    design?
-How did you come to choose your own avatar?
-What do you think of other avatar choices?
-Do you ever create items in these spaces?

Some sample questions I might ask parents/guardians include:

-How do you feel about your children’s media habits?
-What type of Internet service do you have in the house? How long have you and your child been online?
-What habits do you encourage and which do you dissuade?
-What sites/technologies/practices cause you anxiety or alarm, if any?
-Do you employ any kind of child safety software on your computer? Do you supervise their computer use? Is your computer password protected?
-Are there particular websites that you encourage your child to visit? Are there rules around which sites your child may not use?
-Do you buy your children computer games or software as gifts? What about Webkinz?
-Do you have any reservations about online play for youth?
-Do you feel that the dangers of online media like virtual communities and video games in the media are overstated, or legitimate?