Ethics at home: informed consent in your own backyard.
Malone, S. (2003) Qualitative studies in education, 16 (6), 797-815
(week 4 CDR)
The study that is reported involved collecting evidence about the development of academic literacy (enculturation into the discourse of the discipline) based on interviews, observation and writing samples. It involved 4 students and 'their' professor as well as the researcher who was located within 'the same backyard'. Despite following formal ethical guidance a retroscope revealed a number of problems. 'are we lulled into false complacency', p813 when we adhere to guidelines. Maybe we need to ask 'some of the uncomfortable and difficult questions we need to be asking ourselves' p813. Can a researcher detach, disengage, sufficiently to get a real insight into the ongoing participant perceptions ?.
'we cannot know what we will find, what tangents might become the focus of primary inquiry, or into what political minefields we will stumble' p801
Gatekeeper
gatekeeper - 'our focus as we began was on the possible benefits; he saw the study as an opportunity to learn about his own teaching' - p802 ( KRO - the assumption seems to be that he has an excellent reputation as a teacher and that the research will largely confirm that this is the case) - even the gatekeeper, who was an experienced qualitative researcher ,was naive as to some of the possible problems including some aspects personal to his professional identity.
how easy is it for participants ( who in some way rely on a gatekeeper) to go against a gatekeeper request for participation? instead they tended to exercise autonomy in other ways eg 'forgetting drafts of papers'
as the doctoral research progressed
the gatekeeper became ' trapped to some degree, by his own research pardigm and teaching philosphy', p803
the gatekeeper 'often makes slightly caustic joked about everything being data'
participants
had some methodological sophistication - ie guidelines usually alert us to a lack of understanding in participants this is not always the case.
developing researcher - student interactions , some examples
- eventually started to think 'who am I in this group' p 806 ie altered relationship with the participant group as she began to participate which seemed to at the same time alter her relationship with the gatekeeper. When researcher showed student type risky behaviour ie asking questions in class the participants seemed to adopt a different view ( KRO - she became one of them). ' I didn't see clearly at the time that I shifted my perspective by bonding with the students..... I ended up seeing P (gatekeeper) through their eyes', p807.
- 'as the students became more comfortable with me, they began to trust me more and our relationship inevitable transformed at times into that of therapist and client', p807
- also they shared thoughts etc about gatekeeper and fellow students which could be harmful to future relationships had these been shared by the researcher.
obligation and harm
p809 ' the researcher's ethical dilemmas are often discussed in terms of obligation ' there are 3 places where obligation is likely to come into play:
- during the process of doing the research
- 'when writing and representing the lives of others'
- 'in thinking about what purpose our research ought to serve in its dissemination' .
qual cf quant research
' validity and reliability have been replaced by credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability' ( KRO -ehhhh) ' 'distance ourselves from the procedures that serve our quantitative colleagues well, but fall far short in addressing the complexities and complications of qualitative research'
