Moralism and the Situated Character of Qualitative Research Practice

1
Moralism and the Situated Character of
Qualitative Research Practice

• Martyn Hammersley
• The Open University
• Anna Traianou
• Goldsmiths, University of London

2
Increased Attention to Research Ethics

• Growing use of visual and online data, generating
  new problems.
• The rise of ethical regulation from codes to
  committees.
• Fragmentation of qualitative research, involving
  fundamental divisions, many of these relating to
  ethics.

3
Moralism

• The vice of overdoing morality (Coady
  2005101)
• Two forms
• The belief that ethical values are integral to
  the goal of research.
• The requirement that researchers adhere to
  high, perhaps even the highest ethical
  standards.

4
Ethical values as integral to the goal of research

• This can take several forms
• The insistence that educational research be
  educative, in other words directly geared to
  bringing about educational improvement and
  therefore governed by educational values.
• ESRCs requirement that the projects it funds
  should meet the needs of users and
  beneficiaries, thereby contributing to the
  economic competitiveness of the United Kingdom,
  the effectiveness of public services and policy,
  and the quality of life.
• Many qualitative researchers insist that inquiry
  should be geared to liberal, radical, feminist,
  anti-racist, etc. goals and values, and this
  involves the requirement that in carrying out
  their work researchers must seek to realize the
  relevant political or ethical values.

5
Ethics and the research goal

• The primary ethical obligation of the
  researcher is to pursue the production of
  value-relevant knowledge.
• Yet, curiously, this is rarely given attention
  in discussions of research ethics.
• So, the values that underpin judgments about how
  the people being studied should be treated are
  extrinsic to the task of research they are not
  constitutive of its goal.
• As such they operate as external constraints on,
  rather than as inner directives for, the research
  process.  

6
Research ethics as a form of occupational or
professional ethics

• There are at least two components to a
  professional orientation
• dedication
• autonomy.

7
Dedication

• This term carries at least two meanings
• The sole immediate commitment of researchers
  should be to the task of producing knowledge
  they should not pursue other goals simultaneously
  or as alternatives, under the auspices of
  research.
• A high level of commitment is required because
  research is a very demanding activity. It
  requires researchers to find answers to questions
  that make a significant contribution to current,
  collective knowledge within research communities,
  and to do so in ways that meet a threshold of
  likely validity that is higher, as a general
  standard, than that which is employed by other
  people in other contexts.

8
Autonomy

• If research is to be done well, researchers must
  have considerable discretion in deciding what the
  task entails in any particular case and how it
  should be carried out.
• Attempts by agencies to promote or block
  particular topics of investigation, to specify
  what methods should be used or to rule out
  others, or to shape or block publication of the
  findings, need to be resisted where they are at
  odds with the professional judgment of the
  researchers concerned. This is the core of
  academic freedom.

9
The tyranny of high standards

• The second major aspect of moralism is that it
  gives too much weight to what we have called
  extrinsic values, by requiring that researchers
  seek to act in terms of the highest standard of
  these.
• Potentially this makes impossible, or at least
  intractable, either the pursuit of knowledge in
  general or at least the investigation of
  particular research questions.

10
What extrinsic values are of importance to
educational research?

• There is no straightforward manner of identifying
  these values, in the way that there is for
  intrinsic values.
• They can be any values an individual researcher
  happens to be committed to.
• However, it is possible to identify a number of
  such values that are often given priority by
  social scientists. The main ones are
  minimization of harm, respect for autonomy,
  protection of privacy, maintenance of trust,
  exercising reciprocity and equitable treatment.

11
Machiavellianism

• We can contrast moralism with Machiavellianism
• This is the idea that, given the imperfect nature
  of the world, and especially of human beings, if
  we are to pursue good things effectively, we may
  have to act in ways that breach important values,
  and act unethically in terms of these.
• Such machiavellianism is institutionalised in the
  way that members of particular professions are
  allowed to breach various moral rules that would
  normally apply. In other words, they are given
  some licence.
• Examples include doctors ignoring immorality or
  illegality, and journalists invading privacy.
  Without this, they could not do their work
  effectively, work which (it is argued)
  potentially benefits everyone.

12
So, what sorts of licence should educational
researchers claim?

• In collecting data, it may be necessary to
  tolerate behaviour that the researcher and many
  other people believe is wrong up to and
  including acts that are illegal
• It may sometimes be necessary to deceive people,
  actively or passively (for example, through not
  correcting misapprehensions), if data are to be
  obtained.
• It may be necessary to ask questions whose
  implications could be taken to be unethical or
  politically undesirable, for instance as sexist
  or racist

13
Conflict between intrinsic and extrinsic values

• A significant implication of our argument is that
  there can be a fundamental conflict between
  research as a professional activity and some
  religious, political, or ethical worldviews
• Those that insist on certain values and rules
  being applied at all times and across all
  contexts, allowing no waiving or relaxing of
  these for particular purposes or in particular
  circumstances.

14
An ethic of responsibility

• In Max Webers terms, commitment to an ethics of
  ultimate ends is incompatible with research (and
  indeed with other specialized activities), what
  is required instead is an ethic of
  responsibility.
• Our argument is not that what we have called
  extrinsic values can simply be ignored, it is
  about the degree to which, and ways in which,
  these values should constrain the actions of the
  researcher and also about who should make
  decisions about this.

15
Conclusion

• Our objection to moralism is itself an ethical
  one, in the sense that it rests on ethical
  grounds.
• We have shown that a wider definition is required
  that incorporates values that are intrinsic to
  the profession of research as well as relevant
  extrinsic ones.
• It is precisely in terms of these intrinsic
  values that we judge moralism, of both the kinds
  we have discussed, to be unethical for
  researchers.