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Young people are crucial to research — how can they be paid fairly?

Children and teenagers bring unique value to research as advisers and participants — raising ethical and practical issues about how best to compensate them.
By
  1. Nicole Anne D’souza

    1. Nicole Anne D’souza is a postdoctoral fellow in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.

  2. E. Kay M. Tisdall

    1. E. Kay M. Tisdall is professor of childhood policy, in childhood and youth studies, Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.

  3. Silvia Maria Battaglia

    1. Silvia Maria Battaglia is a doctor of law in the Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Canada.

  4. Mónica Ruiz-Casares

    1. Mónica Ruiz-Casares is a professor in the School of Child and Youth Care, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, and an adjunct professor in psychiatry and social work at McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

Young people have become increasingly involved in research in recent years — whether in relation to social and environmental issues, health and well-being, education, economic development or policy and advocacy. Several major funders, such as the US National Institutes of Health, UK Research and Innovation and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, have focused on adolescent health in their calls for research, for instance.

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Nature 637, 789-791 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00072-9

References

  1. Bradbury-Jones, C. & Taylor, J. Int. J. Soc. Res. Methodol. 18, 161–173 (2015).

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  2. Ozer, E. J. Child Dev. Perspect. 11, 173–177 (2017).

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  3. Tisdall, E. K. M. & Cuevas-Parra, P. Learning from Child Activism: Stopping Child Marriages in Bangladesh and Ghana (World Vision International, 2022).

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  5. Mduluza, T., Midzi, N., Duruza, D. & Ndebele, P. BMC Med. Ethics 14 (Suppl. 1), S4 (2013).

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  7. George, L. in Handbook of Research Ethics and Scientific Integrity (ed. Iphofen, R.) 675–691 (Springer, 2020).

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Supplementary Information

  1. Methodology for the figure 'The rise of studies involving youth'

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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