Reading response: Week 9

Ethics in qualitative research

On Silverman’s chapter about research ethics I came across Table 9.3 (p. 327) and though about answering these ethical questions relating it with my research project. These are my answers:

1. What is the purpose(s) of your research?

My main purpose is to preserve an archival perspective to the issue of government secrecy and advocate for the importance to archivists to understand it ramifications. It also have a self-advancement purpose given that this is a topic that probably will be part of my dissertation topic.

2. Which individuals or groups might be interested or affected by your research topic?

I hope archivists and records managers became more interested in the topic.

3. What are the implications for these parties of framing your research topic in the way you have done?

I see this in some way as a call for archivists to a more proactive attitude on issues of secrecy and access of government records. But because of the type of project and I see that it will have more direct implications to myself, not only on understanding better this topic but also on me been a more active archivist. I relate this with what Silverman points out when indicating that “[i]nevitably, your personal biography will be involved in topic selection.” (p. 327)

Silverman talks about research ethics focusing on the relationship between the researcher and the subjects. Indeed, it seems that he undermines the ethical issues when studying texts for qualitative research. Talking about Max Weber, he says: “From an ethical point of view, Weber was fortunate in that much of his empirical research was based on documents and texts that were already in the public sphere.” (p. 316) Even if the documents are public, I believe there are ethical implications, specially on how the researcher use the data to come to his/her conclusions. Is the researcher willing to accept that he/she was wrong after studying the data? Or will he/she interpret the data in a way that will accommodate his/her personal beliefs and hypothesis? Documentary editing is a good example of this kind of actions.

Interviews

Regarding Gorman and Clayton’s chapter about interviews, the discussion can be summarized in two main aspects: preparation and control of the interview process. On preparing the questions it is important to ask ourselves if the questions relate with what the researcher is looking for and if it will offer the opportunity to obtain information that he/she doesn’t know (p. 129). With good preparation the researcher will be better equipped to control the interview process and face any situation that arises from it. I think this is important when conducting open-ended interviews, which in one hand offers the opportunity to gather a broader spectra of data, but in the other hand it presents the risk of causing a discussion not related to the research topic.