Martin Tolich

Planning ethically responsible research

Chapter 1. Introduction: Research Governance and Research Ethics Chapter 2. Why We Need Ethics: Assessing Vulnerability, Risk and Benefit Chapter 3. The Relevance of Ethical Theory to IRB Chapter 4. A Retrospective IRB Review: Rehabilitating Milgram, Zimbardo and Humphreys Chapter 5. Journalist Ethics Does Not Equal Social Scientists Ethics Chapter 6. Community-Engaged Research and Ethnography: Extreme Misfits with the Medical Model Chapter 7. Communicating Informed Consent and Process Consent Chapter 8. Degrees of non-Disclosure Chapter 9. Strategies for Assuring Confidentiality Chapter 10. The Ethics for the Invisible, Powerless and Vulnerable Research Assistant Chapter 11. Why IRBs Have an Important Place: The Autoethnographic Experiment Chapter 12. Evidence-Based Ethical Problem Solving: A Research Agenda Chapter 13. Making Ethics Review a Learning Institution: Ten Simple Suggestions

A Critique of Current Practice: Ten Foundational Guidelines for Autoethnographers

Any research is potentially compromised when researchers address ethical issues retrospectively rather than by anticipating these issues. In this regard, creative analytical practices (CAP) autoethnography has endemic problems. In Part 1 of this article, I detail a case study of an autoethnography in which journal reviewers insisted that an author gain retrospective informed consent from the 23 persons documented in an autoethnography. Yet the journal reviewers’ insistence failed to go one step further—acknowledging that a conflict of interest develops when gaining consent retrospectively. In Part 2, I contrast three leading autoethnographers’ justifications for not gaining informed consent with the Position Statement on Qualitative Research developed by successive Congresses of Qualitative Inquiry. In Part 3, I identify resources available for autoethnographers, including ethical issues present when researchers use autoethnography to heal themselves, violating the internal confidentiality of relational others. In Part 4, I question if autoethnography is research and, like journalism, exempt from formal ethics review. Throughout the article, 10 foundational ethical considerations for autoethnographers are developed, taking autoethnographers beyond procedural ethics and providing tools for their ethics in practice.

If Ethics Committees were Designed for Ethnography

Where did the ethics review process go wrong for qualitative research, and how can we make it right, or at least better? This paper begins with an excerpt from an ethnography of attempting to attend an ethics review-related workshop, which exemplifies that the ethics-review process is based on epistemological assumptions aligned with positivistic research, and does not fit the qualitative research process. We suggest that a new format for ethics review, based on assumptions associated with qualitative research and ethnography, might be a better fit. In this model the researcher becomes the expert and the committee the learner or ethnographer. In this process the ethics review process is guided by four core open-ended questions that facilitate a fuller and richer exchange of information. The second part of this paper presents strategies that may lessen the risks associated with the unknown or emergent aspects of qualitative research. These strategies include a dual consent process and the co-opting of journal editors or thesis review boards to review ethical considerations prior to publication or sign off, and a renewed focus of ethics training.

Managing the Managers: Japanese Management Strategies in the USA

One of the greatest difficulties Japanese multinationals have had is managing American managers in their US subsidiaries. The reason for this is fundamental and profound: Americans and Japanese conceive of management very differently and have strikingly different conceptions of themselves as managers and of correct management practice. We do two things in this paper. First, borrowing from social psychology, we explore the idea of the ‘management self’. Second, we report our research on management self‐conception and style in Japanese‐owned factories or ‘transplants’ in the USA. The research reports the results of 34 interviews conducted with 19 US and Japanese managers in three electronics transplants. Each factory had adopted different combinations or ‘hybridizations’ of the management styles of the two countries. The three factories had very different characters. One was dominated by Japanese management practice, another by American practice, and the third was a hybrid of the two styles. We found four factors critical determinants of management style: the nationality of the general manager, a stated preference (or lack thereof) for bicultural management, control over the budget‐setting process, and the strength of the Japanese assignees

What can Milgram and Zimbardo teach ethics committees and qualitative researchers about minimizing harm

The first objective of this article is to demonstrate that ethics committee members can learn a great deal from a forensic analysis of two classic psychology studies: Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Study and Milgram’s Obedience Study. Rather than using hindsight to retrospectively eradicate the harm in these studies, the article uses a prospective minimization of harm technique. Milgram attempted to be ethical by trying to protect his subjects through debriefing and a follow-up survey. He could have done more, however, by carrying out what ethics committees routinely insist on today for those researching sensitive topics. The establishment of counselling supports to identify harm to participants would have minimized additional harm. Were these in place, or in Zimbardo’s case had the Stanford Ethics Committee properly identified Zimbardo’s conflict of interest – he was both a principal investigator and the prison warden – how much harm could have been minimized? The second aim is to examine how some qualitative authors routinely demonize these classic studies. It might appear that there are too few cases of unethical qualitative research to justify such an examination; however, this article identifies a number of recent examples of ethically dubious qualitative research. This would suggest that qualitative research should examine its own ethics before poaching from psychology.

How an exchange of perspectives led to tentative ethical guidelines for visual ethnography

Qualitative research, especially visual ethnography, is an iterative not a linear process, replete with good intentions, false starts, mistaken assumptions, miscommunication and a continually revised statement of the problem. That the camera freezes everything and everyone in the frame only complicates ethical considerations. This work, jointly authored by the researcher, the Research Ethics Committee (REC) chair and an informed outsider, walks the reader through the ethical challenges the researcher experienced seeking REC approval to conduct a visual ethnography of a secondary school’s rowing event. Eventually, the researcher found the challenges and ambiguities of informed consent indicative of the current issues facing many researchers working with the visual medium. The account fleshes out a procedural ethics and ethics in practice dichotomy and ends with the researcher and REC chair retrospectively contemplating the iterative ethics of visual ethnography. We conclude our conversation by proposing five tentative guidelines for visual ethnography researchers and their research ethics committees.

Just Checking It Out: Exploring the Significance of Informal Gender Divisions Amongst American Supermarket Employees

This paper describes a research project in which some of the dynamics of informal gendered task segregation between male and female workers in American supermarkets with the same job description are explored. It also provides a discussion of the implications of this form of gender inequality for equal opportunities policies.

Shifting from research governance to research ethics: A novel paradigm for ethical review in community-based research

This study examines a significant gap in the role of providing ethical guidance and support for community-based research. University and health-based ethical review committees in New Zealand predominantly serve as ‘gatekeepers’ that consider the ethical implications of a research design in order to protect participants and the institution from harm. However, in New Zealand, community-based researchers routinely do not have access to this level of support or review. A relatively new group, the New Zealand Ethics Committee (NZEC), formed in 2012, responds to the uneven landscape of access for community-based research. By offering ethical approval inclusive of the review of a project’s study design outside institutional settings, NZEC has endeavoured to move beyond a gatekeeping research governance function to that of bridge-building. This change of focus presents rich possibilities but also a number of limitations for providing ethical review outside conventional institutional contexts. This paper reports on the NZEC’s experience of working with community researchers to ascertain the possibilities and tensions of shifting ethics review processes from research governance to a focus on research ethics in community-based participatory research.

Still working for love? Recognising skills and responsibilities of home-based care workers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on care workers employed in clients’ own homes recognising the skills and responsibilities of home-based care workers. Design/methodology/approach – Interviews and focus groups with domiciliary care workers in New Zealand centred on what these employees actually do during their working day. Findings – Home-based care workers require the same skills as residential care workers, but they also have greater responsibilities and receive less supervision and support, as they work largely in isolation. In addition, they must spend a large part of their working day travelling between clients: this time is unpaid, and brings their average hourly pay below the minimum wage. Practical implications – Although the home-based care workers who took part in this project love and are committed to making a positive difference to their clients, they also want the government, employers and the public to recognise their skills, efforts and their challenging working conditions. O...

Making ethics review a learning institution: The Ethics Application Repository proof of concept – tear.otago.ac.nz

The Ethics Application Repository is an open access, online repository of exemplary Institutional Review Board (ethics committee) application forms donated by scholars who want to gift some of their expertise and wisdom to novice researchers in the spirit of a public good. This article describes the background for the genesis of the project, the building of The Ethics Application Repository as a proof of concept and the initial supportive and critical feedback from graduate students, graduate advisors and Institutional Review Board members. The article also serves as a call for donations from qualitative researchers to enlarge and develop stage 2 of the project, the development of special collections featuring children, information research, innovative methodologies and community-based participatory research.