Excellent commentary. In my work on (and with) the Human Terrain System, ethics has been foremost on my mind. Too often people do not take pragmatics into account when considering fieldwork. I am here at HTS specifically to research these issues and get an impression (and hopefully report) on the true on-the-ground ethical implications of warzone embedded fieldwork.

I found issues 7 and 9 especially pertinent, and with your permission will be reposting them (with citation) on my blog for people who follow my running assessment of the program.

Good work, we need more people discussing research ethics in a simple, jargon-free way. Thank you

Thanks so much for this. I’m emailing the link to my professors who teach in qualitative methods and ethics, as I’m sure they’ll find it a useful resources for future classes.

Cheers!

~Bri

What is the most frustrating is that I feel as though the ethics committee can just demand anything of me, and I have to do it – what recourse do you have when you feel that the demands are bordering on interference? I can understand the pedantic requests in relation to getting initial approval for your project and when you are working with patients and other vulnerable groups – but surely once you’ve been involved in the research for some time, and are requesting amendments, you have a better understanding of what is ’sensitive’ than do the committee? Which brings me to a couple of key questions about public figures, sensitivity and politics…
Is the ‘political’ necessarily sensitive from an ethics point of view – if you are interviewing people who are publicly and professionally engaged in political issues that are the topic of your interviews (and are offering to protect their anonymity to the utmost) – should you have to provide transcripts etc for review? These obligations might be appropriate when you are really getting personal, but for people who speak about your research/interview topic publicly and whose identity is being protected? What is the criteria for ’sensitivity’ here?

I am not saying that we shouldn’t have to comply with information and consent procedures, but what if your research is incredibly fluid and you often find yourself in situations where halfway through a conversation you realise/sense that you are speaking with someone who would be a great interviewee? in my experience, research opportunities arise in a flash during fieldwork, and (onerous obligations aside) no matter how quick the turnaround on amendments, these opportunities can be missed if you can’t be spontaneous.

I’m coming to believe that there is something fundamental about the nature of anthropological research that has not been accommodated by the Macquarie ethics review process. There should be some kind of approval process for spontaneous or opportunity-based research, where the researcher still goes through a ‘checklist’ of info/consent procedures, but where you can be trusted to change tack as you move through your network of research contacts and become experienced with your research subject matter. Maybe then the committee could get research students to really think about how you apply ethics in a way that is appropriate for the discipline of anthropology, instead of alienating us with unrealistically rigid expectations.

Unfortunately, I think that the solution I prefer is to professionalize the ethics committee, to create the sort of body that can give advice, maintain consist, fair standards, and establish a reasonably rational set of decisions. But that means that the university get serious about the process and about supporting the people who make the decisions. In the case of Macquarie, for example, a long battle was necessary to make sure that the chair of the committee was actually provided with some type of recognition and release from other duties, elevating the position to make it equivalent to other similar administrative duties. Prior to that, generous and over-worked faculty did the committee’s work with zero compensation, as I understand it. For most members, it’s still an added-on responsibility, on top of all the usual ones.

That can mean that people on the committee burn out, cycle through very quickly, and there’s not build up of ’structural wisdom’; you wind up with an eratic, constantly shifting committee where no one has been around long enough or read deeply enough to know what the precedents are.

Is there any way to bring this to the attention of your university’s research office? They might like to know that inconsistent application of standards is leading to student evasion of the process, exposing them to all sorts of liability. With adequate support and training (for the committee members NOT just the applicants), the committee can become a real resource for the campus rather than just an arbitrary bureaucratic obstacle that everyone seeks to avoid or escape from. I don’t know what you could do if there’s no structural change, though, unless your department might step up and establish an ‘endorsement’ process or some other system to try to head off arbitrary applications of standards.

I feel a lot of sympathy for you. From reading on other blogs and comments, I’m getting some feel for how dysfunctional some IRB systems are. I suspect that a lot of factors need to be working in your favour for the system to function properly; good policy, university support, even-handed committee members, cooperative department staff, and well-oriented students. When any part of this system falls down, the rest of the system pays the price, and it can make previously responsible groups less and less so (e.g., a pattern of arbitrary decisions from a committee can sour department faculty and create apprehension and evasive behaviour in students).

Sorry I’m not too much help…

Thanks all for the response. Prof. Schrag is no doubt right about dropping the use of ‘ethnographer’ and switching to ’students and ‘novice researchers,’ but I also think that the ‘make it up as we go’ syndrome also affects many senior people as well. I know that I’ll be doing something similar when I begin an entirely new fieldsite in New Zealand, and I’ll be writing more about my own thoughts on getting approval for ‘fishing trips,’ field work when you really can’t anticipate what exactly you’ll be doing, on a later post.

The U. of Penn. system sounds extremely interesting. At Macquarie, there is a bit of a de facto system like this in place, with greater latitude given to researchers with proven track records (in relation to the ethics committee — not just publications). In fact, some senior researchers might be extremely lax, so we can’t just equate years to appropriate ethical concerns, something I’m sure Prof. Schrag would agree with.

We’re in the process of trying to shorten our form (although the dig on the 31-page form is appropriate). As in any bureaucracy, removing layers is more arduous than creating them. (And there are a few other committees around campus that could also make everyone’s life a bit easier if they underwent a similar self examination.) The new form should be out by the end of the semester, and I am reasonably confident that it will both include a check box for ‘participant-observation’ (although I’m concerned that this will become a small methodological rug under which to sweep the problem of specific details about what this entails for each researcher) and it will be fewer pages (I’m experimented on one and cut it to about 20 pages, still allowing for large boxes for a researcher to fill in). As I’m writing an application at this moment (as soon as I finish this post, I will write sample questions), and have two more to do in the near future, I’m hoping I’ll be able to have a fresh perspective on the process.

Thanks also to Prof. Philen. I know my experience is idiosyncratic, but I’m hoping that — like Rena Lederman, Alex Golub, Jack Katz and others — I might at least add another layer of detail and pragmatic discussion to that available to other researchers.

Future posts are going to focus on the issue of illegal activity in fieldwork (like, when you observe it or hear about it, not when you DO it), what do we mean by ‘participant observation,’ ‘fishing trips,’ and some other stuff that has come up. We just had a fascinating ethics committee meeting today (honest, someone else even said so on the way out, so I’m not the only ethics sicko at Macquarie); one of the issues that I need to think more about is the definition of ‘no risk’ or ‘low risk’ research in the Australian National Statement, which our committee is seeking to use to expedite approriate applications while still providing researchers the appropriate support and feedback. Thanks to all of those who are sharing comments; you’re just inspiring me to write more.

Greg