Instructor Commentary:
Designing Ethical and Culturally Sensitive Research
by Gina Wong-Wylie

Microethics of Research

Modernist accounts of research ethics have emphasized the treatment of those involved in the research (known generally as subjects in quantitative research and as participants in qualitative research). Indeed, it is very important to obtain consent to participate, secure subject/participant confidentiality, to inform about details of the research and the right to withdraw at any time without consequence, to avoid harmful consequences for subjects/participants, and to consider our role as researchers. The relevant ethics here can be called the microethics of research (Brinkmann & Kvale, 2005).

Macroethics of Research

Beyond the microethics of research, it is also important to consider how the knowledge produced will circulate in the wider culture and how it will affect humanity and society. The ethics here is the macroethics of research. This involves thinking beyond the produced work and the obvious optics of it from an objective stance. Underlying, and nearly impossible to capture in ethics applications, is how and where the results of a research study will be published and what respectful or disrespectful ways research interpretations may or may not be stretched (Brinkmann & Kvale, 2005). Further adding to the complexity involved in the ethics of research is that, for each individual, the measure and judgment of problematic microethics and macroethics can be different.

In considering research contexts, power relations and cultural conditions need to be ascertained in conducting all research. Some often-neglected power characteristics of the interview situation are briefly outlined below to illustrate the shortcomings of an unreflective qualitative ethicism (Kvale, 2004).

  1. The asymmetrical power relation of the interview.The interviewer has scientific competence and defines the interview situation. The interviewer initiates the interview, determines the interview topic, poses the questions, critically follows up on the answers, and terminates the conversation. The research interview is not a dominance-free dialogue between equal partners; the interviewer's research project and knowledge interest set the agenda and rule the conversation.
  1. The interview is a one-way dialogue. The interview is a one-directional questioning. The role of the interviewer is to ask and the role of the interviewee is to answer. It is considered bad taste for interview subjects to break from their prescribed role and by themselves start to question the interviewer.
  1. The interview is an instrumental dialogue. Unlike a good conversation, the research interview is no longer a goal in itself or a joint search for truth, but a means of serving the researcher's ends. The interview is an instrument for providing researchers with descriptions, narratives, and texts, which researchers then interpret and report according to their research interests.
  1. The interview may be a manipulative dialogue. A research interview often follows a more or less hidden agenda. The interviewer may want to obtain information without the interviewee knowing what the interviewer is after, attempting to, in Shakespeare's terms, by indirections find directions out. Modern interviews may use subtle therapeutic techniques to get beyond the subject's defenses.
  1. The interview's monopoly of interpretation. In social science research, the interviewer generally upholds a monopoly of interpretation over the interviewee's statements. The research interviewer, as the "big interpreter," maintains an exclusive privilege to interpret and report what the interviewee really meant.

The above outline of Kvale's (2004) five pitfalls of qualitative research interviews is not provided to demonstrate that this method of data collection is poor, but to show the need for researchers to be aware of power imbalances and potential unintentional misuse of this power. After all, researchers have an agenda in terms of getting the research done, reporting something interesting, and so on. However, being a reflective researcher is as important as being a reflective counselling practitioner. The same dynamics of power and potential for exploitation in counselling are present in a research context and we must be aware and consider our actions in order to circumvent these pitfalls.

Throughout this lesson, researcher self-awareness is promoted as a means to designing ethical and culturally sensitive research. In GCAP 631, developing as a reflective counselling practitioner was highlighted and students were exposed to Donald Schon, one of the foremost widely read philosophers in American education. Schon advocated reflective practice, and his seminal writings (1983, 1987) have been prolific and have catalyzed reflective practice in education. Contributing to the groundwork erected in Deweyian philosophy, Schon stimulated professionals in diverse fields to think along similar lines and to focus attention on developing the craft of their practice. He described the reflective practitioner as one who "reflects on the phenomena before him and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour" (1983, p. 69). A reflective practitioner therefore enters a dialectic process of thought and action and actively shapes his or her own professional growth (Osterman, 1990).

Schon (1991) proposed that practitioners and educators take a reflectiveturn, an epistemic shift that involves a process of observing, describing, and illuminating practice actions, particularly those that are spontaneous.

References:

Brinkmann, S., & Kvale, S. (2005). Confronting the ethics of qualitative research. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 18, 157-181.

Kvale, S. (2004). Dialogic interview research - Emancipatory or oppressive? Unpublished manuscript. Aarhus University.

Osterman, K. F. (1990). Reflective practice: A new agenda for education. Education and Urban Society, 22, 135-52.

Schon, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books.

Schon, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Schon, D. A. (Ed). (1991). The reflective turn: Case studies in and on educational practice. New York: Teachers College Press.

GCAP 691 Lesson 4 Commentary 1 p.1