Hughes, M. & Grieve, R. (1980). On asking children bizarre questions. First Language, 1(2), 149 – 160.
This article was recommended to me by my qualitative methodology professor.
The authors presented five and seven-year-old children with questions that were intended to not make any sense. For example, "Is milk bigger than water?" They found both five- and seven-year-olds would answer the questions, however, seven-year-olds would present justifications for their answers, suggesting they had doubts about the questions, while the younger children would just answer. For example, older children would respond to the "is milk bigger than water" question by saying "yes, because it's got color." Younger children will go beyond the properties of the items in the questions and add in their own context and background story. For example, saying yes because water comes from taps and milk comes from cows. The authors asked the children 3 other similar questions and found the same pattern of response for them all.
9/10 Jetts. An entertaining, easy read that provides some insight on interviewing young children.
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