Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Oct 11, 2022
Date Accepted: Jan 26, 2023
Combining outreach and cross-sectional research to gather children’s soil values in Aotearoa New Zealand: Protocol for the Mixed Methods Soilsafe Kids Programme
ABSTRACT
Background:
Soil underpins most terrestrial systems so its degradation should concern everyone. In 2021, Soilsafe Aotearoa surveyed the adult population of New Zealand about how they value soil, particularly values to how they care about and are concerned about soil. Pursuant to this study, Soilsafe Kids (the outreach branch of Soilsafe Aotearoa) developed a combined research and outreach programme to collect a supplemental data set of children’s soil values, so both adults’ and children’s voices can be considered when understanding the implications of different practices and how to care for presently ‘uncared for’ or neglected soils in the future.
Objective:
The programme not only asks primary school students about their soil values but also aims to teach them about soil from many disciplinary perspectives to enhance their understanding and awareness of soil.
Methods:
This article describes the research protocol utilised in this Soilsafe Kids programme. This programme uses surveys (in the form of worksheets), focus groups (introduced as group discussions), and art projects to learn what children think about soil in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. We have received ethics approval from the University of Auckland’s Human Participants Ethics Committee [Ref number: 23556] on 25 March 2022 for three years.
Results:
We have begun recruiting participants and delivering the Soilsafe Kids programme in schools across Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Our data collection is ongoing with final student engagement in the first quarter of 2023. We expect to analyse data at the start of of 2023 and to disseminate results later this year.
Conclusions:
Once this study is complete, we will disseminate final results to the research community, stakeholders, and the local community through conference presentations, journal articles, hui (meetings), on our blog, and in art galleries. We note that although Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland is home to the majority of people living in Aotearoa New Zealand, the Auckland region only represents a small portion of Aotearoa New Zealand’s land, and findings are not generalisable to Aotearoa New Zealand as a whole.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.