QLR ETHICAL DILEMMAS
These are all ethical dilemmas in conducting qualitative longitudinal research that were collected
at event 1 In Southampton for discussion at event 2 (and the rest of the series).
IMPACT
Managing potentially greater expectations about the impact of a longitudinal study to change policy/
practice
How do you deal with the fact that the aspirations of your participants appear to have changed as a
result of participating in the study?
Research being confused with intervention – what value does ‘research’ have to participants in a
developing world context? Getting the balance between not raising expectations (part of which is
making clear that it is not an intervention) and also trying to communicate potential value to the
research.
What is the impact of a long term relationship between a participant and a researcher?
Working in resource scarce (and resource-stretched) settings where the research study by virtue of
being longitudinal becomes interpreted by the participants as an intervention. This happens despite
the best efforts of the researcher.
ANONYMISATION
How do you get the balance between compromising the meaningfulness of your data so that
participants are identifiable? Should you always anonymise? Some participants may prefer to be
named.
How to protect people’s identities? For instance how to anonymise data without losing critical
information. People may be identifiable through the particular changes they have been through/
experienced over time. How can you use this data whilst protecting the individual, or can you?
TRACKING
Ethical issues re recontacting individuals/ young people you have worked with in the past and want
to contact again for your research study. What do you do if they are no longer associated with the
agency through which you first worked with/ were in contact with them?
OWNERSHIP/ AUTHORSHIP AND SHOWING
How to use visual methods (either photos/ videos taken by participants or online data) and how to
anonymise, use in reporting (presentations and published papers). Is it enough to describe the data?
Who owns and controls the data? The participants, researchers, the funders, the institution, the PI,
the media producers? Problems associated with researchers losing control and even access to data
that they generated. To what extent might we have intellectual property in our work. Is it different
for different kinds of data (interviews vs field notes). How does bringing time into the frame change
things? For example what impact do time embargos have on lessening sensitivities and why.
CONSENT AND ITS LIMITS
How to manage the possibility that the research might become an additional form of pressure on
participants – the implication that their lives SHOULD have changed or developed in some way, or
they should have experienced a certain thing by later stages.
Archiving data by minors. Do you get consent from parents? When data is re-used later when they
are adults, do we need to negotiate consent again?
What are we consenting to when we agree to be in a QLR study (that may be archived and re-used).
Do any of us know?
Working with online ethnography – how to design research that includes an on-going process of
informed consent. How to use visual methods (either photos/ videos taken by participants or online
data) and how to anonymise, use in reporting (presentations and published papers). Is it enough to
describe the data? What is the status of ‘found’ data.
ANALYSIS
How to attend to different types of social structures/ systems in analysis and interpretation –
longitudinal intersectionality.