Qualitative Research in Question

Abstract

This article narrates the author's experience of obtaining institutional review board (IRB) approval for her dissertation study. Although her research topic was particularly sensitive, this case is illustrative of the increasing level of difficulty qualitative researchers are facing in conducting not only risky research but also work that is not aligned with the National Research Council's conception of "scientific" methodology. The author nests her story within the larger social context of surveillance and disciplinary power operating on today's educational researchers. She focuses her attention on the complex power relations among researchers, IRBs, and arbiters of what counts as quality research.A s a public high school teacher, I learned pretty quickly how to pay lip service to what was fast becoming the modus operandi of schools in the mid-to late-1990s, the tenure of my teaching: standardized test preparation and its attendant curricular requirements. As long as my students produced acceptable test scores and I fronted what Foucault (1975Foucault ( /1995 terms a docile body, seemingly in compliance with the norms of the school, what happened behind my closed classroom door was unquestioned. I never really felt the effects of disciplinary power until I openly and defiantly challenged the school's practices my last semester of teaching, when I knew I was graduate school bound and untouchable. That is not to say that disciplinary power wasn't operating on me prior to my resistance to it; as Foucault argues, disciplinary power works most effectively when it is invisible:In order to be exercised, this power had to be given the instrument of permanent, exhaustive, omnipresent surveillance, capable of making all visible, as long Qualitative Inquiry

Doing Sensitive Research Sensitively: Ethical and Methodological Issues in Researching Workplace Bullying

“…While recognising that the research process itself, and the disclosure it implies, can prove beneficial or cathartic for some interviewees (Davies & Gannon, 2006), nonetheless investigating topics which are considered sensitive can pose considerable challenges for all researchers (Dickson-Swift, James, Kippen, & Liamputtong, 2009;Lipscomb, 2010), particularly inexperienced ones (Bloor et al, 2008;Johnson, 2008). As argued by Doloriert and Sambrook (2009), these challenges may, by their very nature, prove to be both methodological (e.g., sample size and access, research design, appropriate questioning, the accurate and "truthful" representation of voice) and/or ethical (e.g., informed consent, institutional ethical approval, the inherent power disparity between the parties and the interviewer/interviewee relationship itself).…”

Ethics Review: A Student's Tale

“…I don't take readers on a linear journey, because I didn't go on one, but I do want readers to come with me. My tale swings and circles rather than taking a position, which is not to say that my story stands apart from other accounts of encounters with formalised ethics (see, for example, Helgeland, 2005;Bhattacharya, 2007;Johnson, 2008;Sikes & Piper, 2008). Nor do I 'resolve' the issues that trouble me, although I have made peace with them.…”

Liminalidad, sensibilidad y simetría en la investigación: estudio de la muerte encefálica

“…Así, puede resultar de interés abrir espacios de trabajo conjunto entre disciplinas para entramar las alianzas necesarias para un conocimiento que recoja la complejidad, que sea traducible y que responda a las necesidades de las diferentes agentes que participan de él. Especialmente, en un momento en que la ética de la investigación tiende a pasar por la regulación desde los comités de ética que siguen patrones de evaluación dónde aquello que llamamos lo social y cualitativo no encaja en ninguna casilla del formulario y pueden ejercerse como salvaguarda de la institución antes que como cultivo de una ética de respeto, compromiso y responsabilidad para con las participantes (para leer más sobre el papel de los comités de ética en la investigación ver Czymoniewicz-Klippel, Brijnath y Crockett, 2010; Hedgecoe, 2009;Johnson, 2008;Palys y Lowman, 2010).…”