Children – Too Difficult to Research?

Welcome to the wonderful challenging and often frustrating world of working with children!

Historically, market researchers often avoided research with very young children as “too difficult”.  If a product was targeted to a range of ages, a common approach was to talk with older children only.   However, the perceptions and tastes of young children are very different from their older siblings.   With the growth in products aimed at very young children, we have learnt from those who have always worked with them.  

Researchers at the television programme Sesame Street have always looked for new ways to work with pre-school children.  They are the target market for the programme!   These researchers showed that children as young as 18 months old were able to different “bad” and  “good” using a two-point scale in which Oscar was “bad” and Big Bird was “good”.     The ability of a child to attach ratings to something grows by leaps and bounds with age, even ratings of emotions like “love” (think hearts in a jar.)   It is up to the researcher to look for ways to represent those concepts in a way which the child “gets”.

You need to meet them on their own ground, understanding where they are emotionally and cognitively.   They are not mini-adults and one size does not fit all!  If an age group is particularly important to your products, learn to work with them at their level, they will give you fantastic insights into your products!  Trust me, you will have fun!