It's A Young Person's World

This adage has probably never been truer than it is today. More often than not, the success of a product can hinge on how effectively the marketer reaches out to those ages 10 to 34 -- capturing their attention and establishing them as loyal, lifelong customers. As such, The Taylor Group's clients are more interested than ever in knowing what makes kids tick -- and in ever-growing numbers they are turning to research to help figure this out.

Conducting research among kids can be immensely fun, exciting, and rewarding. However, it can also present some major-league challenges -- challenges we, our clients, and our fellow research professionals need to fully recognize and come to terms with. Anyone who thinks they can simply duplicate their approach to conducting survey research among adults in their kids research could be setting themselves up for a rude awakening -- and potentially a legal nightmare.

While there are many challenges involved with interviewing kids, in this entry I'd like to focus primarily on what is perhaps the thorniest and most high-stakes issue -- the legality of interviewing minors online. This is definitely not a good time to be blissfully unaware.

By way of illustration, Taylor conducts an annual, online survey of high school juniors and seniors about their college and career aspirations. When we kicked off this study several years ago, there were relatively few clearly defined limitations governing who we contacted and how, and what we offered them in return for their input. Over time, this has changed radically.

With the evolution of the Internet, the laws and codes of conduct governing its use for survey research have also undergone major transformations. As such, this year we took a long, hard look at whether our approach to surveying high school students was still appropriate. We consulted with legal counsel, experts in academia, and colleagues in the research field. We also requested clarification on AAPORnet (a leading research-industry forum) from anyone who might have insight.

What came of all this? Initially, considerable confusion -- and a bit of panic that we might have to radically alter our approach to this study. Among other things, we were told that to interview anyone 18 or younger online (19, in some states) you have to seek parental permission in writing. We were also told no one under age 18 can be required to abide by "contract terms," such as contest rules governing the disbursement of prizes to contest winners in a prize pool. You name it, we heard it. Clearly, even seven years after the enactment of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), there is considerable confusion within the research community (and even among lawyers) about what you can and cannot do when it comes to interviewing minors online. Sifting through all of this information, we ultimately uncovered the following key details:

• In all cases, you need to secure written, parental permission for all minor children under the age of 13 to participate in an online survey.
• To distribute incentives or prizes to anyone under 18, you may request only his or her e-mail address and use this only for identification and delivery of the promised incentive. You may use that address only once and solely to inform the minor of his/her winnings or to deliver the incentive. Since this does not allow for the collection of physical delivery information, it is in your best interest to make the incentive or prize distribution electronic. Once delivery of the incentive or prize announcement has been made, the minor's e-mail address must be deleted from all databases maintained by the research organization and its affiliates.
• To contact a minor more than once, you must use a so-called multiple-contact exception, for which you will also need to collect the parent's e-mail address(es) and provide him/her with direct notice of your information practices (i.e., privacy policy) and offer an opportunity to opt out. The law prohibits you from using the child's e-mail address for any other purpose, and you must ensure the security of the information, which is particularly important if the contest runs for any length of time.
• If you need to obtain a mailing address and wish to stay within the one-time exception, you may ask the child to provide his/her parent's e-mail address so you may notify the parent if the child wins the contest. In the prize notification e-mail, you can ask the parent to provide the home mailing address to ship the prize, or invite the parent to call a telephone number to provide the mailing information.
• Whether those over 13, but under 18 (19 in some states), are legally bound by contest rules or other eligibility requirements they formally accept in return for the right to participate in an online survey and potentially benefit from any incentives offered is determined by local, not national, law.

I hope this assessment of the laws surrounding minor participation in online surveys will be helpful and time-saving to those reading this entry. The FTC website (www.ftc.gov) has further information about COPPA and related topics. We welcome and strongly encourage replies that expand upon or clarify anything we have said above, and would be interested to hear what impact these requirements might have on other researchers' plans for conducting online research among minors.