Adapting Testing to the Cultural Context
Disclaimer: as I stressed in the premise, there is not one rule that works everywhere. Specific examples can inspire people that are testing in the countries I refer to below, or in similar conditions, however, three on four of the settings where I have tested were high-income, and all of them were urban and centered around a University
- not a very good representation of the real big world.
So, what I really mean with the below examples is to show the extent of adaptation and flexibility that is needed to test successfully in different settings. If anybody gave a rule book for testing, always keep in mind that there is no universal behaviour that will work with participants across settings.
The best sources of knowledge are your observational skills, and inputs from local people. I had to learn it the hard way, just as everyone else.
Italy (Rovereto, Trentino Alto Adige)
I have tested with eye-tracking in Italy during the first and third year of my PhD, with children aged 2 to 5, and teenagers. Also, I am Italian (born and raised). The premises of testing in Italy have not been the easiest in my experience, as I have found that Italian parents are somewhat anxious about children, and that interactions between children and adults that are not part of the family/supposed to take care of them professionally are infrequent, even pre-Covid.
Additionally, the research culture in Italy is limited compared to other countries, and it is seen as something medical/ pathologising. I will always remember my mum telling me that, when I was an infant, some researcher called her from the hospital, asking if she would go in to participate in a research study with me.
“Can you imagine, going all the way and walking into the hospital with a baby? I said no!”
She was still aghast by just recalling that memory, after almost 30 years. Of course, I was already a researcher when she told me that story, calling and emailing parents in the hope that they would think differently than her. But I think that her reaction was pretty typical and can be often encountered when researching in Italy even 30 years later.
So, testing in Italy is not just a matter of figuring out how to do the science, but it includes convincing parents that a researcher is actually a person, and that research has nothing to worry about.
At the center where I was working, I would recruit the parents on their way in/out of activity sessions that their children attended - so just like “Hello! I am the resident PhD student here, do you have five minutes to listen to what I am doing?”. Then, I would basically spend as much time as needed chatting with them, getting to know them before even getting to the research.
Often, this phase worked also as a sort of acclimatization for their child, that was maybe sitting on their lap or playing in close proximity. As I said before, children in Italy are not accustomed to interactions with strangers so it would have been unnatural to address them directly or immediately make eye-contact. I would only talk to the parent, while the child observed me out of the corner of their eye: that’s how the proper first interaction with a stranger happens in Italy, and how the parent-child dyad gets to accept you.
Even if the child accepted me and initiated an interaction, I would always alternate gaze between child and parent as the parent is always part of the interaction (even if passive).
If this first interaction went well, often the parent and child would stay for another 30 minutes to do the study immediately so that they did not have to come back - so I also had to be up and ready to go!
Sweden (Uppsala)
I have tested in Sweden during the second year of my PhD with eye-tracking and EEG with infants aged 5 to 12 months.
I found that Swedish parents were relaxed and generally demonstrated interest in research. On my first day of testing, I was actually shocked because one parent gave me their baby to hold one second after they had met me, and ran to the toilet. If not giving you their child to hold as a first thing, they often put him on the ground to freely explore, so I would always be ready to take the child into my arms, and scan the carpet for small pieces of things to avoid that they picked it up and put it in their mouth.
The good mood of the session depended a lot on the baby feeling like they were free to explore and owned the space. If I noticed that the child was nervous, I would spend some time exploring the room with them, holding them and/or walking around and bringing interesting objects to their attention.
United Kingdom (London)
I have tested eye-tracking and EEG in London during the third year of my PhD, and as a postdoc.
Parents in the UK are similar to Swedish parents, but a little less friendly to you. Children do like to be the center of the attention, so it would work well to kneel down when they enter, and greet them face-to-face.
Parents very confidently put the child on the ground and let them freely explore; I would sit with the child on the ground and play with them, and make all the session extremely playful. Children responded very well to rewards, especially stickers, with which they are obsessed (I think because teachers use them at nursery school as rewards?).
South Africa (Cape Town)
I tested with eye-tracking and EEG in Cape Town as a postdoc.
I had the impression that parents saw research as a sort of medical thing, like “better with than without”. So they expected their children to listen to me (!) and sit still. They would even try to be useful so that I could do what I had to do, and give me hints on how to handle their child at best (for example, they would warn me if they were hungry, or sleepy, or afraid of syringes).
Children would generally be still until the parent was in the room, but would then be easily distracted and uninterested when they left. A way that I found to work was to engage them to the screen with toys. For example, I would drive a toy red car all over the screen to get them to look at it, or place a doll next to them and pretend that she was watching.