Appendix A – Methodology

A Working Group with representatives from Family, Children and Youth Section (FCY) and the Research and Statistics Division (RSD) of the Department of Justice Canada (the Department) provided support for the project. The consultation with the Working Group was ongoing to provide technical advice throughout the project.

To collect and collate research, information and existing efforts to access the voice of the child in family law in Canada, a Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) methodology was used to systematically search, retrieve and analyze studies and literature in family law in Canada and to consider available international evidence regarding potential trends in children’s voices within the context of family law.

The first strategy was to search for reported studies in the academic literature published in electronic databases in the past ten years (2008 – 2018)Footnote 171. While the focus was on Canadian content, the search was not be restricted to any single country, but only studies in English and French were included given that the focus of the REA is to provide a rapid selection of studies to be explored. For published studies, the electronic databases searched to locate empirical studies related to family law issues, included, PsychInfo, Sociological Abstracts, Social Science Abstracts, Dissertation Abstracts, ERIC, and Medline.

The second strategy was to search for grey literature (reports typically not reported in the academic electronic databases) to locate Canadian research reports, highlights from international family law organizations, and examples of approaches and best practices for including children’s voices in similar legal frameworks or jurisdictions (e.g., Australia, United Kingdom, United States, New Zealand). This review explored all possibilities and when possible, reflect upon the cost-effectiveness and substantive effectiveness.

The third strategy consisted of a review of available Canadian legal cases to explore legal decisions in the courts pertaining to children’s voices. Legal cases were explored using LexisNexis (Quicklaw). The review of legal cases are presented based on legal decisions regarding the inclusion of children’s voices within family law matters and to consider the direction of the courts.

Rapid Evidence Assessment

The functions of a REA are to search the electronic and print literature as comprehensively as possible within the constraints of a policy or practice timetable; collate descriptive outlines of the available evidence on a topic; critically appraise the evidence; and provide an overview of what the evidence is saying (Davies, 2003). The REA follows established guidelines for the inclusion of published reports, analysis and data synthesis to ensure the information retrieval process is explicit and that the criteria for inclusion and exclusion of studies are transparent. The inclusion criteria accommodates various research designs, conceptual papers and media reports. Non-peer reviewed reports (e.g., government reports, guidelines, case studies, etc.) were not excluded given that it is the intention of this review to provide an environmental scan and synthesize the current trends.

Both published and unpublished works were considered eligible for the review. The search located 1,479 potential hits based on the information retrieval process of key terms relevant to the children’s participation in family law matters (see Table 1). Titles and abstracts were saved to Refworks, an electronic library database and duplicates were removed. The titles and abstracts were then screened.

Table 1: Preliminary Results of Information Retrieval

Table 1: Preliminary Results of Information Retrieval
Search Search Term Hits
PsychInfo (child* or teen* or youth or adolescent*) AND (divorce or separation of family Breakdown) AND (voice or interview or participation or preferences)Limited by peer review, “empirical study” 1190
Sociological
Abstracts / Social Science Abstracts
(child* or teen* or youth or adolescent*) AND (divorce or separation of family Breakdown) AND (voice or interview or participation or preferences)Limited by peer review, “empirical study” 816
Dissertation Abstracts (child* or teen* or youth or adolescent*) AND (divorce or separation of family Breakdown) AND (voice or interview or participation or preferences) 315
ERIC (child* or teen* or youth or adolescent*) AND (divorce or separation of family Breakdown) AND (voice or interview or participation or preferences)Limited by peer review 857
Medline (child* or teen* or youth or adolescent*).mp. [mp=title, abstract, original title, name of substance word, subject heading word, floating sub-heading word, keyword heading word, protocol supplementary concept word, rare disease supplementary concept word, unique identifier, synonyms] AND (divorce or separation of family Breakdown).mp. [mp=title, abstract, original title, name of substance word, subject heading word, floating sub-heading word, keyword heading word, protocol supplementary concept word, rare disease supplementary concept word, unique identifier, synonyms] AND (voice or interview or participation or preferences).mp. [mp=title, abstract, original title, name of substance word, subject heading word, floating sub-heading word, keyword heading word, protocol supplementary concept word, rare disease supplementary concept word, unique identifier, synonyms] 317
Duplicates Removed 2016
Number of Hits for First Screening 1479

During the Rapid Evidence Assessment process, an article should pass through various checkpoints to assess whether it should be included in the final review. The checkpoints should be established in ‘level’ format where each level consists of increasing scrutiny of the articles based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the review.

The review includes three screening points: 1) Initial screening; 2) Strict screening; 3) Data Extraction Form.

  1. Initial Screening (level 1): The first stage consists of an initial screening to quickly determine whether a study might be appropriate for the review based on the study’s title, abstract and bibliographical information. The purpose of this initial screening is to include all possible relevant studies related to the objectives of the REA. Two questions guided the initial screen at this stage:
    1. Is the population related children? Yes / No
    2. Is the article about children’s views, preferences, voices within the context of family law issues / services / procedures? Yes / No
  2. Strict Screening (level 2): The second stage consists of a strict screening where research assistants will be given full copies of articles to determine whether the articles should remain in the review. Two bins will be created for included articles:
    1. empirical evidence;
    2. conceptual.
  3. Data Extraction Form (level 3): The third stage consists of a data extraction form to log data from the articles that have made it past the two previous screenings. Empirical evidence results will be presented in a scoping map of the literature to organize the results based on location of the study; methods used, sampling; and key findings. For conceptual papers, an annotated bibliography was be created.

Limitations related to methodology used in the project

Undertaking a systematic review takes time, typically two years. Users of research and evaluation evidence often need quicker access to what the existing evidence is telling them. To this end, REAs have been developed for use in public policy research and evaluation. REAs are based on the principles of a systematic review. But the focus of the REA is about breadth, not depth. Although systematic procedures were used for the information retrieval process, the results are based on published reports (e.g., journal articles, research reports, conference proceedings, case law) and may not include studies that were not published at the time of conducting the information retrieval of studies.