Maybe you are interested in having your school participate in our research, or maybe you consider giving permission for your child to participate in a study that will be carried out at his/her school. If so, we can imagine that you would like to have some more information about our project and the way we conduct our research.

Research as a purpose, conducted following official guidelines

First and foremost, it is important for you to know that our project only has scientific purposes: our studies are not commercially driven. Before we begin with our research, we always have to receive permission from the “Ethics Review Board” of the University of Amsterdam. This board judges whether the research we intend to conduct is in agreement with the Dutch ethical guidelines for social scientific research.

Consent: first from schools, then from parents/caretakers

When the Ethics Review Board approves of our study, we cannot yet start our research right away. At this point, we first make sure that schools who want to partake in our study get all necessary information about the study procedure. Only after the school board has officially agreed to participate in our research, we ask permission from parents/caretakers. We send them an e-mail with elaborate information about the goal and procedure of the study in question. We also make sure that parents/caretakers know exactly what will happen with their child’s research data, and in which way we guarantee the privacy of the children. A child can only participate in our research if both the school agrees to participate and the parents/caretakers have given their permission.

Children’s consent: voluntary participation

When we start a study, we first tell children what they can expect when they decide to participate. Children may always decide not to participate in case they don’t feel like it. We always ask children once more whether they really want to join the study right before we start the study. Only once we are completely sure that a child wants to participate in our research, data collection can truly begin. Sometimes, children say they want to participate, but halfway through the study indicate that they would like to quit. This is never a problem, and we do not ask children why they prefer to quit. Children can always quit, without any consequences. At the end of a study, we always tell children what the research was precisely about and explain to them what robots actually are. This way, everybody learns something new.

Privacy first: data confidentiality

We treat all research data fully confidential and in agreement with European privacy regulations. All data are stored on protected servers or in protected archives of the University of Amsterdam. Moreover, all research data are anonymized: we save these data in such a way that nobody will be able to trace them back to specific children.

Do you have other questions? Or do you want your school to participate in our research? In both cases, we look forward to hearing from you. You can find out how to reach us on our contact page.