Dear Headteacher,
I am writing to you concerning an exciting online research project I am conducting with children which can be completed from home and outside of school time. My name is Dr Rumandeep Hayre and I am a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham working with Dr Melissa Colloff and the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council. We are working in partnership with Operation Encompass, a charity dedicated to supporting children who are victims of or have been exposed to domestic abuse. Environments of domestic abuse are largely prevalent in children and, in many instances, they are the only witnesses to such events. Increasing numbers of children each year who are witnesses or victims of crime, are providing memory evidence in criminal proceedings and this is often the first direct experience a child has had with the police.
We are running an online research study which explores metacognition and memory development in children to help inform legal decision-makers (i.e. police officers) of ways to evaluate the accuracy of child testimony. I am writing to ask for your help in informing parents/carers about our study, either via letters (which I can send to you), text and/or your school newsletter.
What is the research about?
We hope to explore an important aspect of memory – metacognition – to understand if children are aware of when their memories are accurate or not. We have already run two studies with children which showed that asking a child to rate how sure they are with their memory recall and also certain facial/vocal gestures are good indicators of metacognition. We hope to further understand these findings in children aged 4-11 years (Reception to Year 6). This information will benefit police training for evaluating the validity of child testimony.
Study Details
Aim
We are running an online study investigating if confidence and specific facial/vocal gestures inform us about children’s metacognition (i.e. being aware of memory).
Who
We hope to invite 120 children from Reception to Year 6 to take part across the UK.
Procedure
The study is run online via Zoom (following all university security protocols) outside of school (after school, weekends & holiday periods) so that we do not impose on lesson time. Children will be accompanied by a parent/carer throughout the study. They will be asked to watch a short video clip (i.e. person making breakfast) and then answer some memory questions. Each child will be recorded so that their gestures can be analysed later. Parent/carers will be made aware of this and will be asked to give consent before running the zoom session. Children will be provided with a £10 Amazon e-voucher (see our webpage: https://tinyurl.com/ChildMemoryStudy).
Ethics
This study has full ethical approval by the UoB Ethics Committee and all researchers have a valid DBS. All data collected will be kept confidential, used for research purposes only and stored in compliance with GDPR guidelines (see our Privacy Notice: https://tinyurl.com/MemoryPrivacyNotice).
Impact
We will use this study to develop a police training video and co-create practice guidance for assessing the accuracy of child testimony with experts (i.e. Operation Encompass, National Crime Agency Advisors etc.). This study will be submitted for publication to globally-renowned journals and presented at academic conferences and all schools who have helped this research will be acknowledged.
What can you do to help?
Please see our letter and newsletter/text advert for parents/carers at this link: https://tinyurl.com/MemoryResources.This information provides details about the study to allow parents/carers to decide on whether they consent for their child(ren) to take part in the task at home.
We would be extremely grateful if you could distribute our letter to parents/carers who have children in Reception to Year 6 either electronically or we are happy to send you paper letters via post (please let us know if you would prefer this option). We have also provided information on our study to include in your school newsletter.
We would like to stress that we welcome your insights and we are happy to present the research findings to staff. We will of course share the findings throughout.
If you are happy to distribute the letter to parents (electronically or paper-form) or require any further information, please do get in touch by email (child-memory-study@contacts.bham.ac.uk).
Yours faithfully,
Dr Rumandeep Hayre & Dr Melissa Colloff