these issues? Basically, any research involving interviews, focus groups,or participation-observation requires ‘informed consent’, implying some sort of access permission from a gatekeeper, if not a whole community, or a tacit recognition that the observation is happening in a public place. Here too the definition of publicness is not clear-cut. For conducting interviews and/or focus groups, you need to use, or compose your own informed consent form. These vary from basic to more developed depending on the sort of interviews you envisage doing (see Chapter 6 ). Do consult with your supervisor about the wording and the eventual use of interview material; these matters will become clearer at a later point and are touched on in Chapters 6 – 8 .
For official definitions and extensions pertaining to your disciplinary home-base or data-gathering approach, I advise you to consult your institutional or respective inter/national association’s documentation; most of which are now available on the web. For the time being, the key principles to bear in mind are first those applying to the design and execution phases, and second those related to how we treat the material we’ve gathered afterwards in terms of its use in the project and storage:
informed consent
access rights and obligations
anonymity and data-use
data-retention
transparency and accountability.
Informed consent
This principle is the cornerstone of research ethics today in that how a researcher goes about contacting and interacting with research subjects in an ethical way sets the tone for aspects below. What we mean by the notion of ‘informed consent’ is that any individual, group, or community who you envisage as your ‘research subjects’ (and that means they effectively become the object of inquiry) – those you plan to survey, interview, or observe – knows who you are and what you are doing. They then grant consent, in written form usually and where necessary orally. It is up to the researcher in the latter case to show how consent was gained; Appendix 1 provides a template for this sort of request.
Gaining informed consent is a procedure for ensuring that research subjects understand what is being done to them, the limits to their participation and an awareness of any potential risks they incur. . . . The amount of information needed to ensure a subject is adequately informed about the purpose and nature of an inquiry is bound to vary from study to study.
(Social Reasearch Association 2003: 28)
The basic point here is that active deception or coercion for most social research scenarios, and journalistic codes of ethics moreover, is not acceptable on the whole. There are exceptions whereby covert research is possible; experimental research and in the case of police work and investigative journalism undercover work. The latter are also governed by professional and legal codes and so lie beyond the scope of this discussion. On a more informal level, whilst there are some ongoing debates aboutwhether it is justified to tell a ‘white lie’ to gain access where normally access (e.g. to sacred or gender-based restricted areas such as married women only) would be denied, it is advisable to err on the side of caution.
If consent is not granted, or is controversial for legal or cultural reasons, then you may need to rethink the object of analysis; some research topics are not feasible for student projects whilst others accepted in one discipline may well be considered inappropriate in another. For academic research the bottom line is that we are not undercover police officers or journalists (see Chapter 1 , ‘What is academic research?’) so gaining consent or access by deception is a breach of ethics.
Access
Here the distinction between what is a public place and what is a private one is particularly difficult sometimes for research situations. It is a truism to note that there are cultural, and commercial if not civic variations on what is meant
For official definitions and extensions pertaining to your disciplinary home-base or data-gathering approach, I advise you to consult your institutional or respective inter/national association’s documentation; most of which are now available on the web. For the time being, the key principles to bear in mind are first those applying to the design and execution phases, and second those related to how we treat the material we’ve gathered afterwards in terms of its use in the project and storage:
informed consent
access rights and obligations
anonymity and data-use
data-retention
transparency and accountability.
Informed consent
This principle is the cornerstone of research ethics today in that how a researcher goes about contacting and interacting with research subjects in an ethical way sets the tone for aspects below. What we mean by the notion of ‘informed consent’ is that any individual, group, or community who you envisage as your ‘research subjects’ (and that means they effectively become the object of inquiry) – those you plan to survey, interview, or observe – knows who you are and what you are doing. They then grant consent, in written form usually and where necessary orally. It is up to the researcher in the latter case to show how consent was gained; Appendix 1 provides a template for this sort of request.
Gaining informed consent is a procedure for ensuring that research subjects understand what is being done to them, the limits to their participation and an awareness of any potential risks they incur. . . . The amount of information needed to ensure a subject is adequately informed about the purpose and nature of an inquiry is bound to vary from study to study.
(Social Reasearch Association 2003: 28)
The basic point here is that active deception or coercion for most social research scenarios, and journalistic codes of ethics moreover, is not acceptable on the whole. There are exceptions whereby covert research is possible; experimental research and in the case of police work and investigative journalism undercover work. The latter are also governed by professional and legal codes and so lie beyond the scope of this discussion. On a more informal level, whilst there are some ongoing debates aboutwhether it is justified to tell a ‘white lie’ to gain access where normally access (e.g. to sacred or gender-based restricted areas such as married women only) would be denied, it is advisable to err on the side of caution.
If consent is not granted, or is controversial for legal or cultural reasons, then you may need to rethink the object of analysis; some research topics are not feasible for student projects whilst others accepted in one discipline may well be considered inappropriate in another. For academic research the bottom line is that we are not undercover police officers or journalists (see Chapter 1 , ‘What is academic research?’) so gaining consent or access by deception is a breach of ethics.
Access
Here the distinction between what is a public place and what is a private one is particularly difficult sometimes for research situations. It is a truism to note that there are cultural, and commercial if not civic variations on what is meant
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