A couple of weeks ago I took part in a panel on Rural Research Ethics at the 2022 International Emerging Rural Scholars Summit. It was a pleasure to be part of this panel discussing the ethical considerations of working in small communities, and in this blog I will try and summarise some of my contribution to the topic.
The panel included people from a range of backgrounds and my particular focus was on the ethical considerations of living and working in the same (rural) community that you conduct research in. My position would typically be thought of as being an “insider” researcher, however, I have avoided using this term as tend to think that my position in my community is a little bit more complex than just being an insider (or an outsider)! My three key points are outlined below.
The impossibility of anonymising the location of the research
Anonymising a community is often an approach favoured by researchers who are seeking to protect the anonymity of participants. Sometimes communities are given a pseudonym in reports from projects, for example “Smoketown”. However, I argue in my research that it would be impossible and inappropriate to anonymise the communities I have researched. This is partly because in my research the specificity of places is important. So, for example, hiding the identity of Orkney or Shetland by giving them a different name would mean that I would also have to hide key features of the islands (e.g. their labour markets, their transport connectivity – both of which are highly significant in my research). Secondly, I would question whether if I hid the identities of the islands they would stay very secret for very long…. After all a simple web-search of my name would identify where I live, my friends and neighbours know what I research, and my participants are all connected to the islands too, so if I did disguise the identity of the communities in my research it would be the worlds-worst secret (certainly in the islands themselves!).
The problems of pseudonyms
Where it is difficult to disguise the identities of the locations of the research, the risks of identifying participants is potentially raised. One of the ways I have addressed this in my research is limiting the amount of information I give about my participants, and not using pseudonyms. My position on this has changed over time and I have become more and more clear on the importance of providing added protections to participants as I have written and published more. The issue for me is that the use of pseudonyms allows (potentially) the ability for readers to track individual participants across quotations and across publications. And it is in this aggregated data across multiple publications that risks to participant anonymity are heightened. One solution suggested by some researchers might be to gain consent from participants to share information that might potentially identify them. However, this is not a solution that I have favoured because of issues about how consent might change over time…. which leads me on to…:
The interesting question of time….
Finally, as I have moved into a post-PhD phase, I have become increasingly aware of issues of time. Typically my experience of university ethics procedures is that there are assumptions that once the project is over, the project is complete and ethical considerations are also over. However, if you live and work in your small community (like I do) then the reality is that me and my participants will remain in something of a relationship over time. So, for example, it is quite likely that at some point I will end up at the same social gatherings as one or more of my participants, we could end up working together, they may work or socialise with my extended family, we may end up seated next to each other on one of our island planes and so on…. The ways that we potentially come into different contacts with each other means that for me the research (and research relationships) are not “over” – but will continue to be negotiated and renegotiated. It is also the case that (potentially) participants’ relationships to each other and to the community could change – for example in my research some participants returned to the islands after they graduated even though they had had no intention of return at the point of entering higher education. I am also aware that some participants were in relationships with each other (living together as friends, or were in romantic relationships) during the research, and that these relationships could change over time. Participants, feasibly, could also end up in different relationships with each other – entering new relationships, or becoming colleagues (or employers) of each other, entering new friendships and so on. Bearing in mind these changes, I am aware that how someone feels about being potentially identifiable, and their words being potentially traceable, might also change over time. I am sure there are ethical arguments to be had over this topic, but the issue of time is one of the reasons for my increasing caution about doing anything (including using pseudonyms) that might mean that my participants are potentially identifiable.
So, those were my main contributions to the panel, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this topic, especially if you have faced similar considerations in your work / research!
Dr Rosie Alexander 