Children as Experts in Research and Assessment Design: A Participatory Approach to Evaluating Children and Young People’s Legal Capability

Abstract

This paper reports on a co-design process adopted with children and young people when developing a situational judgement test (SJT) for use in a project that aimed to develop children’s legal capability via game-based learning. This paper details how children and young people’s expertise was incorporated into the design of the SJT and how their contributions were balanced alongside that of other research partners. We discuss the challenges that arose as a result and how we navigated this process. We emphasise the importance of centring the children’s contributions in the context of this process. We argue that adopting a ‘children-as-experts’ method is effective at creating relatable, relevant, and understandable SJTs for use with children.