What we did

We used a range of qualitative methods within a case study design, talking to children and their families at home, watching them and video-recording them as they showed us their homes and toys and played (including playing digital games) and asking them to share their own data with us, including videos and photos  they took themselves. 

For us, adopting an ecocultural approach meant that we weren't just interested in children’s digital play - we wanted to understand how it connected with other aspects of their everyday lives. 

Adopting ethnographic approaches meant that researchers were actively encouraged to deviate from particular research activities to better reflect what they felt to be appropriate in each family context. 

It also meant that children and their families themselves often played a role in shaping how research visits were carried out and that researchers were not detached observers during the data collection, but were involved in the practices they were studying and made detailed field notes following visits, which were included in the analyses. 

In our study, a semi-longitudinal approach meant that researchers made multiple visits to families over a period of time, attempting to notice things that stayed the same or things that changed over a modest period.

In total, 240 research visits were made to 50 families in 4 countries, across 14 months. Two stages of fieldwork involved 25 families each, playing two different games (World of Goo and LEGO Builder's Journey). Field visits followed a similar structure, lasting 90 to 120 minutes. Participants were selected to ensure diversity across a range of factors, including age, sex and gender, socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity and disability/ non-disability. 

The study was designed to be delivered as similarly as desirable in each country, whilst paying very close attention to specific geopolitical differences and sensitivities and individual participant needs. As such, there were some particular differences in the approach, research tools and use of technology. 

More information about how we carried out the research can be found in the full research report. We will also be making all of our research tools available via ORDA (the online research data repository from The University of Sheffield). More information on accessing the research tools will be available here in the near future.