Ethics Issues in Qualitative Research

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Ethics Issues in Qualitative Research
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Accepted Principles
The Belmont Report   Office of the
Secretary   Ethical Principles and Guidelines for
the Protection of Human Subjects of
Research   The National Commission for the
Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and
Behavioral Research   April 18, 1979
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Accepted Principles
Belmont Report
Basic Ethical Principles
Respect for Persons
Beneficence
Justice
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Respect for Persons
Respect individual autonomy (independence,
freedom, capacity for self direction).
Provides extra protection for those
with less autonomy.
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Basic Ethical Principles
Rules for Ensuring Respect for Persons
Informed Consent
Complete information about study and potential
risks
Understand information
Voluntary participation
Withdraw at any time
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Beneficence
An effort to secure peoples
well-being.
A decision about when it is justifiable to
seek certain benefits despite the
risks involved.
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Basic Ethical Principles
Rules for ensuring Beneficence
Risk / Benefit Assessment
Consider all types of potential harms
Benefits to participants and / or to society
Brutal or inhumane treatment is never justified
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Justice
Fair distribution of the benefits
of research and the burdens of being a
research subject.
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Basic Ethical Principles
Rules for Ensuring Justice
Subject Selection
Selection process and outcome must be fair
Avoid cultural, racial, social or other biases
Avoid choosing convenient or easy to manipulate
participants
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• Although ethical consideration and issues impact
  quantitative research, they do so in unique and
  more fragile ways in qualitative research.
• Ethical implications may be unclear or
  unanticipated.

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Nonmaleficence

• Participants must not be harmed.

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Autonomy

• Researchers must obtain informed consent, and
  informant participation must be voluntary.

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Informed Consent

• Informed consent means that participants have
  adequate information regarding the research are
  capable of comprehending the information and
  have the power of free choice, enabling them to
  consent voluntarily to participate in the
  research or decline participation
• This definition fits well with quantitative
  designs.

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• The open, emerging nature of qualitative research
  methods in most cases makes informed consent
  impossible, because neither researchers nor
  participants can predict exactly how data will
  present themselves either through interview or
  participant observation.

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Process informed consent(Consensual decision
making)

• This approach requires that researchers, at
  varying points in the research process,
  reevaluate participants consent to participate
  in the study.
• Participants must know from the beginning of and
  be reminded throughout the investigation that
  they have the right of withdraw from the research
  study at any time.

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• Common sense plays a large part in renegotiating
  informed consent. If our focus should change, we
  need to ask participants for permission to change
  the first agreement. Continually informing and
  asking permission establishes the needed trust to
  go on further in an ethical manner.

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Covert Participant Observation

• The use of covert participant observation must be
  given serious consideration in the conduct of a
  qualitative investigation. Researchers must
  consider available alternative solutions for data
  generation provided those solutions will maintain
  the integrity of the study.

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Beneficence and Justice

• Researchers must assure participants that
  confidentiality and anonymity will be upheld and
  that participants will be treated with dignity
  and respect.

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Confidentiality and Anonymity

• The very nature of data collection in a
  qualitative investigation makes anonymity
  impossible. The personnel, one-to-one interaction
  during the interview process allows researchers
  to know the participants in ways that are
  impossible and unnecessary in quantitative
  designs.

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• Small sample size and thick description provided
  in the presentation of the findings can present
  problems in maintaining confidentiality.

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Ethical Considerations related to the
researcher-participant Relationship

• The particular data generation strategies
  necessitate a close, personal relationship with
  participants. The researcher is the tool for data
  collection and, as such, comes to know
  participants in a personal way.
• Researchers must not move from the role of
  instrument in the investigation to that of
  counselor or therapist.

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Selection of Participants

• An ethical basis for selection would also involve
  attention to the inclusion of those whose voices
  need to be heard women, minorities, children,
  the illiterate, and those with less personal and
  professional status.
• Social responsibility calls for attention to
  diversity.

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Interpretation and Reporting

• Returning final descriptions to participants so
  that they may validate that the interpretation of
  the interview or observation is authentic. This
  procedure can assist researchers in verifying
  that there were no serious misinterpretations or
  omissions of critical information.

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Ethics Checklist
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Phenomenon of interest

• 1. Is the research study relevant, important, and
  most appropriately investigated through a
  qualitative design?
• 2. Are any aspects of the research or phenomenon
  of interest that appear to be misleading either
  in terms of the true purpose or misleading to
  participants?
• 3. Is the research primarily being conducted for
  personal gain on the part of the researcher or is
  there evidence that the research will somehow
  contribute to the greater good?

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Review of the Literature

• 1. Has the literature review been obviously
  biased?
• 2. Has the researcher concentrated only on the
  articles he or she thought to be relevant or has
  all the available literature been reviewed?
• 3. Has the researcher referenced only those
  articles which support his or her ideas?
• 4. Is there evidence of plagiarism or quoting out
  of context?

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Research design

• 1. Is the physical and psychological well-being
  of the subjects protected?
• 2. Is consent freely given?
• 3. How were vulnerable population recruited?

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Sampling

• 1. Is the confidentiality of participants
  protected?

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Data Generation

• 1. If more than one researcher collected data,
  were they adequately prepared?
• 2. Is there evidence or falsified or fabricated
  data?
• 3. Is there intentional use of data collection
  methods to obtain biased data?
• 4. Was data collection covert? Why?
• 5. Have the participants been mislead with regard
  to the nature of the research?
• 6. Is there evidence of deception?

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Data Analysis

• 1. Was data analysis conducted by more that one
  person?
• 2. Is there evidence of data manipulation to
  achieve intended findings?
• 3. Is there evidence of missing data that may
  have been lost or destroyed?

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Conclusions andRecommendations

• 1. Is there evidence of intentional false or
  misleading conclusions and recommendations?
• 2. Is confidentiality broken given the
  presentation of the findings?

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opportunistic maximum variation samplingapproach
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• if a group of people is extreme in several
  different ways, it will contain people who are
  average in other ways.

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• There are two main occasions for using maximum
  variation sampling
• When the sample size is very small, or
• When no population information is available (and
  it is not difficult to find population members
  with the selected characteristics)

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• Often it's useful to have a preliminary
  brainstorming session with an initial group of
  local informants (who should not be eventual
  respondents). Present an initial list of personal
  types to them, similar to the above, but suitably
  modified for the purpose of your study. Ask them
  to come up with some more types of person, and to
  tell you if some of the types you invented make
  no sense in that area.

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you can use dimensional analysis to create a more
comprehensive list. It's done like this...

• Step 1 is decide what sample size you want. For
  example, let's say it's 20. This determines the
  number of dimensions 20 is 2 to the power of
  what? The closest answer is 4, because 2 x 2 x 2
  x 2 16. So you can use 4 dimensions to get 16
  cases, then add a few more factors, such as
  socially isolated people. (For a sample of 32,
  use 5 dimensions, and for 64 use 6. Above 100 or
  so, quota sampling usually works better.)

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Step 2

• Step 2 is to decide on those dimensions. Think of
  some characteristics of people that (a) differ
  widely between people in relation to the subject
  you're researching, and (b) are known to a wide
  range of other people. For example, if the
  subject is how much time people spend listening
  to radio, it may not be useful to choose gender
  as a dimension, because in most countries men and
  women spend about equal time listening to radio.

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• Have a radio at home yes (A) or no (B)
• Have TV at home yes (C) or no (D)
• Stay at home most of the time (E) or away from
  home most of the time (F)
• How often they talk to others about radio
  programs "most days" (G) or "hardly ever" (H)
• Taking each of the 4 variables in turn, there are
  16 possible categories (2 x 2 x 2 x 2). These
  areACEG, ACEH, ACFG, ACFHBCEG, BCEH, BCFG,
  BCFHADEG, ADEH, ADFG, ADFHBDEG, BDEH, BDFG,
  BDFH

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Step 3

• All you have to do now is find somebody matching
  that description - and repeat that task for the
  15 other types of people. What if you can't find
  people who meet some of those descriptions? This
  can happen - for example, it might be hard to
  find somebody who stays home most of the time,
  and doesn't have radio at home, but talks about
  it a lot. In this case, you'll end up with more
  than one person in some of the 16 categories. No
  great problem just make sure that people in the
  same category are very different in some other
  way that seems relevant to your study.

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Step 4

• Finally, don't forget to add the 4 people who
  seldom communicate with others. That brings your
  sample up to 20. You want more than 20? Just add
  some more people, as long as they are as
  different as possible from each other in some
  relevant way