In collecting data, there's just a number of things that you need to be concerned about. If you're going to collect any kind of data with children in foster care, the whole consent and assent process is very different than it is if you're just working with a child and his biological family. When a child's in foster care, the biological parent no longer has, or for the most part doesn't have, the legal authority over that child. The foster parent doesn't really have the legal authority over the child, so the child welfare worker or the county or state judge, the juvenile court judge, is the one who now has legal authority.

You have to really determine who you're going to for consent, but even if you get a legal consent, just as a matter of good manners and just inclusion you might want to also at least convey what you're doing to the foster parent and the biological parent. You just have to be very aware of all of the different parties you're going to be working with when you're doing work with foster children.

Then explaining the whole research process to foster youth who their life is in somewhat disarray and chaos right now. They could be really enduring a lot of aftereffects of some traumatic events in their lives, so you need to be very careful and very methodical about how you explain what is going on and really let them understand that they have a choice about what this research process is all about.