AMANDA HYNAN FINAL THESIS PDF

elatively small decision to make, it had an enormous impact on the data and
illuminated many areas that may have remained hidden if inclusion had been limited
to participants who were independently using the internet and online social media.
3.5.3. Ethical variations
As mentioned previously, an ethical variation was applied for after an approach to
join the project was made by a 14 year old boy in mainstream school. Ethical approval
was granted (Appendix G) on the basis he was capable of making an informed
decision (Gillick versus West Norfolk and Wisbech, 1986), was keen to be involved
and had full parental assent. Historically within the legal view, young people under
the age of sixteen were considered to be unable to make independent decisions and so
parents would take decisions on their behalf. The Gillick ruling (commonly now
called the Fraser guidelines) changed this legal distinction and was incorporated into
the Children’s Act, 1989 (Coppock, 2010). Although applying this is not always a
straightforward legal process, the test considers a child is competent of consent if they
have the capacity to fully understand what is proposed and sufficient discretion to
make a decision regarding their own interests (Morrow & Richards, 1996) and moves
the focus away from chronological age to establishing a precedent for selfdetermination
(Masson, 1991).
A secondary ethical variation was applied for (appendix H). It became clear during
the data analysis that certain alternative data sources needed to be targeted to develop
emerging theory. This is a process specific to grounded theory known as theoretical
sampling and is explained more fully later (section 3.6.3.7.). It was identified that
interviewing key members of staff within educational settings about issues of
implementing the use of online social media and equipment use was required.
3.5.4. Participant information
Despite the challenges outlined regarding recruitment, interest in the project was
healthy. The study involved twenty-five participants aged between 14 and 24 years
(13 male, 12 female, mean age 20.04 years) who use VOCAs (Table 3), two heads of
technology within college settings and a quality assurance manager (Table 3a). There
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