Children’s perspectives on the acceptability of medicine, how to assess acceptability and the development of the Theoretical Framework of Children’s Medicine Acceptability: a qualitative study. Children’s perspectives: medicines acceptability

Objective: To explore children’s perspectives on the acceptability of medicines and ranking scales.
Methods: Interpretive reflexive child-centred qualitative design using arts-based worksheets, an activity booklet, exploration of ranking scales and conversations between the children and with the researcher.
Key findings: Children aged 5-12 years can provide clear insights into factors affecting the acceptability of medicine and child-centred ways of assessing acceptability. These insights led to novel outcomes: a child-centred definition of the acceptability of medicine, children’s preferences in relation to ranking scales, and the Theoretical Framework of Children’s Medicine Acceptability (TF-CMA), a novel theoretically based framework that includes core aspects of medicine acceptability that have previously been over-looked.
Conclusions: Involving children in acceptability research is key to understanding their perspectives on broad range of factors; cognitive and affective attitudes are key components to consider in relation to acceptability. Future studies should consider using the TF-CMA as framework for acceptability assessment in children’s medicines. Children should be involved in designing child-friendly, engaging assessment measures.