This week’s blog reflects on new connections. My mantra seems to be giving children a voice in medicines – but this is very difficult to achieve in practice!

I have recently teamed up with collaborators within the iCAN network which is an International body where children’s groups can collaborate on research relating to health, medicine, research and innovation.  http://www.icanresearch.org/ 

We are looking to share a very simple study where we ask Children about scales that are commonly used to evaluate the taste of medicines – when asking about taste it is important that the scales are meaningful to children therefore the language used and the faces need to be relevant to those taking part. There has been a lot of work done looking at pain scales and language but there is a real need to replicate this for other child related healthcare outcomes. The expressions on hedonic scales can vary and even simple additions like tears or sticking a tongue out can mean very different things for children. We are circulating a wide range of scales to ask children about their opinions and which they prefer. We did something similar a while ago and the responses were really interesting. I have attached the document below in case you have any comments.