Emergent Ethics in Qualitative Research

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Emergent Ethics in Qualitative Research

• Kathy Charmaz

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Paul C. RosenblattEthics of Qualitative
Interviewing with Grieving Families -- Farm
Accident Study

• I followed the husband from cow to cow,
  telling him things stated in the advertisement
  for the study and answering his questions. He
  was obviously hurting as we talked, using jokes
  and laughter to hold back tears, but said he
  would do it, and I arranged an appointment for a
  couple interview.
• (1995, p. 142) From Death Studies 19139-155.

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• She I think (very loud) Theres times I feel
  like theres a wall between us since then the
  accident.
• Had I violated my agreement with the
  universitys IRB by allowing the wife to use me
  to get her husband to talk? Had he been coerced?
  I gave him room to say no to an interview and to
  say no to any or all interview questions. But he
  was not exactly a volunteer.Perhaps the most
  ethical thing I could have done was what I did,
  to allow the interview to be used by the wife
  (and I think the husband) as a catalyst for their
  healing.
• (p. 143)

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My assumptionDifferent goals pervade the
research process

• Goals of researchers and research participants
  differ
• Goals of knowledge, ethics, and human subjects
  review boards differ
• Grappling with these differences spawns emergent
  ethics

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What are emergent ethics?

• These are ethics that researchers develop
• During the midst of collecting data,
  conducting the analysis, and/or writing the
  report
• After reflecting on their research decisions
  and directions

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Questions to consider

• What are the characteristics of emergent ethics?
• What is involved?
• When do researchers invoke emergent ethics?
• Which assumptions support these ethics?
• What are the implications of emergent ethics?

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Patricia Henderson (2005) on studying care of
dying AIDS patients in South Africa

• Ethical ways of interaction emerged in the give
  and take of relationship and intimacy. We became
  aware of a process of reconfiguring ethical
  ground through time. It is also through time that
  we have come to see our inadvertent collusion in
  a failure of ethics in relation to Mandla's
  mother and Vuysiwa. (p. 89)

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Ethics as contextual constructions

• No actionwhether of the research participant
  or of the social researcher stands outside of
  the contexts of its production
• Whether accepted or contested, conceptions of
  ethical principles, definitions of ethical
  dilemmas, and ethical choices and actions are
  constructed

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Monica Casper (1998)The Making of the Unborn
Patient The Social Anatomy of Fetal Surgery

• I care too much about the issues raised by fetal
  surgery and the unborn patient to assume a
  polite, reasonable distance, and instead embrace
  a politics of engagement that recognizes my own
  immersions in the worlds I study. I have been
  moved and transformed by this research in
  multiple ways, and fetal surgery is something I
  shall continue to think and talk about long after
  this book is published.

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Casper (cont.)

• My politics and intellectual assumptions have
  been shaken time and again, precisely because
  fetal surgery evokes persistent debates about
  fetuses, abortion, womens roles, the health-care
  system, and rescue technologies. (1998, p. 25)
• _______
• Monica J. Casper. 1998. The Making of the Unborn
  Patient
• A social anatomy of fetal surgery. New Brunswick,
  NJ Rutgers University Press.

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When are emergent ethics problematic?

• The meanings of emergent ethical practice, as
  with other ethical stances, may be contested and
  open to multiple definitions.
• You may see my ethical decision as an account,
  a justification

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Jay MacLeod (1996)--on withholding information
in court
I decided to say nothing about the argument that
preceded the shooting.I didnt feel good about
my role in the proceeding, especially refraining
from providing information under oath, but
neither did I lose sleep over the incident.
Bourgeois morality has diminished relevance in a
place like Clarendon Heights, where the dictates
of practical necessity often leave very little
moral ground on which to stand. (p. 137)

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Tensions between Goals of Ethics and Qualitative
Research

• Conducting qualitative research means
  tolerating ambiguity
• Ethical questions arise in ambiguous situations
• Qualitative research assumes different values
  and directions than medical and quantitative
  researchstarting points, standpoints, and
  priorities differ
• General ethical principles may not fit

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Tensions between Goals of Ethics and Qualitative
Research (cont.)

• Ethics aims for general principles, a frame that
  informs a range of events and incidents
• Qualitative research (now) aims for
  contextualized knowledge located in specific
  historical, cultural, social, and situational
  circumstances

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Tensions between Goals of Ethics and Qualitative
Research (cont.)

• Contextualized research aimed for situated
  knowledge does not always coincide with ethical
  theory or the premises of Institutional Review
  Boards (IRBs)
• Under certain conditions, the tensions are
  irresolvable

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Monica Casper (2007)Reflection about her 1998
study of fetal surgery

• I had been critical of surgeons and their lack of
  ethical reflection, to be sure, but I was also
  deeply concerned about fetal health and
  well-being. Surely we were roughly on the same
  side.
• __________
• Monica J. Casper, 2007. Fetal surgery then and
  now. Conscience The News Journal of Catholic
  Opinion 28(3) 24-27.

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Monica Casper2007 Reflection about her 1998
study of fetal surgery

• Yet I had also positioned myself as an advocate
  for pregnant women, arguing for their safety,
  care, and autonomy while challenging many aspects
  of the procedure itself. In the end, I realized
  that my book had become caught up in the very
  politics about which I had written.

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Review boards seek to
protect

• Vulnerable populations
• Institutionalized populations
• Their sponsoring institution
• The researcher?
•  

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Review boards seek to ensure

• Informed consent
• Anonymity and confidentiality
• Lack of harm to subject
• Benefits to subjects
• And increasingly--
• Perceived quality of approved research
  projects
•  

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From ethics creep to surveillance march?

• The language of ethics has been transformed by
  assumptions of risk and surveillance
• Boundaries blur between ethics and surveillance

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Expanding ethics review of human subjects
research

• All Federally funded research projects
• All funded research projects
• All graduate and faculty research projects
• Special scrutiny for sensitive topics
• Rejection of research proposals on
  vulnerable populations
• No identifiersin computers, on reports
• No undergraduate student research beyond
  the classroom without IRB approval
• Fewer expedited reviews

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Kevin Vyrans Amended Informed Consent Form to
Inform Himself

• In signing this Amendment Form, I hereby grant
  myself consent to utilize all of my own past,
  present, and future writings, drawings, and other
  of my own personal records and creative products
  for the purposes of research and publishing
  purposes. I understand that since this is an
  overtly autobiographical study and my identity as
  the author will be publicly-knowable, I will be
  identifiable in all published accounts. (SSSITalk
  Mon., 23 Feb 2004).

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How do institutional review boards operate?

• In brief, these boards
• Emerged in response to worst case research
• Show substantial variance among institutions
  in structure and in deliberations and decisions
• Invoke medical and quantitative models
• Rely on general principlesmay not
  distinguish between types of research
• Reduce principles to procedures

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Unrecognized and/or unacknowledged differences
between

• Discovery and deception
• Preconceived (FORCED) research questions vs.
  emergent inquiry
• Reviewing the general design of qualitative
  research and changing its focus
• Pursuing knowledge and protecting the
  sponsoring institutionno risk proposals

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IRB bureaucratization

• Minimizes the problematic aspects of
  on-going informed consent
• Assumes that harm can be specified
  beforehand
• Reduces possibilities for studying up
• Overlooks organizational and macro power
  arrangements
• Vitiates pursuing investigative social
  science

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Kakali Bhattacharya (2007)Fixed and fluid
understandings between the researcher and
researchedB

• Neerada asks me if she can stay with me, as she
  thinks of me as her elder sister. In the context
  of Indian culture, this is a common kinship
  relationship that girls form with other women
  older than themselves. I begin to think of what
  I would have done had I really been her older
  sister. Would I have left her alone? When
  should my researcher self kick in?

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Bhattacharya (cont.)

• Because my researcher self perceives the entire
  conversation as data, I question if
• Neerada consented to my using any and all
  information to which she has given me access as a
  re-presentation of her experiences? (p. 1096)
• Qualitative Inquiry 13 1095- 1114

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Bhattacharya on Neeradas trust

• Granting me such privilege becomes more of a
  burden than a relief. Does she understand what
  it means to give me such access and permission?
  Should the researcher play the role of a
  protector and tell the participant the
  implications of sharing such information? Am I
  assuming that Neerada is too naïve and incapable
  of understanding the qualitative research
  process? (p. 1098)

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Problematic areas for IRB committees and for
the researcher

• Sustained research with the same
  person(s)ethnography, narrative
  analysis, case studies, biography
• Implicated actors
• Internal confidentiality (Tolich 2004
  Rosenblatt 1995)
• Open-ended research process and product
• Authenticity of the research report

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Off the Mark, William Kornblum.
2008 Qualitative Sociology 31(2) p. 196, Review
of Sudhir Venkatesh, Off the Books The
Underground Economy of the Urban Poor

• Too much fictionalizing of a neighborhood or
  community risks making a real place into
• a nowhere. One then has the freedom to make
  assertions about its people without fear that
  anyone may offer contradicting evidence. I am
  sure this was not Sudhir Venkateshs intention,
  but the problem does become significant.

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Reply to Critics, Sudhir Venkatesh.
2008 Qualitative Sociology 31(2) p. 202

• The characters in study are real beings who live
  in Chicago, but they are embodiments of
  institutionalized social roles. For this
  epistemological reason, and because of the
  pragmatic promise I made to them (and to my
  universitys Institutional Review Board) to
  protect their anonymity, I altered the names of
  individuals and locations. Kornblum misperceives
  these choices for fictionalizing.
• .

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Reply from Venkatesh (cont.)

• The neighborhood is real and I take care to
  specify the wider region, located in Chicagos
  Southside (Greater Grand Boulevard), in which
  Maquis Park is situated. It would not be hard to
  find demographic information on Chicagos
  Southside. More important, however, contemporary
  ethnographers seem to conflate the use of real
  names with accountability and a proper adherence
  to the scientific enterprise.

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Representation, anonymity, and ethics in
writing an ethnographic storyW

• Morality wars were waged between various
  professional contingents and played out in
  patients lives. Most nurses imposed behavioral
  standards concerning sexuality, drinking, and
  cleanliness, although a few winked and walked
  away. The physical therapists claimed the moral
  high ground on assessments of patient
  independence. They battled social workers to
  gain early discharge dates by raising the specter
  of patients losing moral fiber and,
  subsequently, becoming institutionalized.

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• Remaining at the center after reaching their
  therapists notion of maximum improvement would
  surely result in all the deleterious effects of
  institutionalization. The head social worker said
  to me in disgust, The physical therapists think
  only God and they know when patients should be
  discharged.

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• The chief business administrator, Mr. Darby,
  fought with the head nurse, Miss Flora, over
  treatment plans, programs, and institutional
  policiesover everything. He even once told me,
  Miss Flora wont ever change. The only way to
  get rid of a nurse like that is through
  retirement.

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• . Mr. Darby told me that it took him a decade to
  persuade Miss Flora to stop coming back to the
  center on her Saturday nights off. Stories
  abounded of those days, or, rather, nights, when
  Miss Flora returned. She was said to hide next
  to the storage cabinet down the dark corridor
  near the backdoor, the better to nab miscreants
  about to sneak to the liquor store a mile down
  the road. (pp. 530-531)
• ________
• Charmaz, 2000. Sociological Perspectives
  43527-549.

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• Although Miss Floras midnight visits had ceased,
  her attention to misbehavior had not. At Monday
  staff meetings she announced her weekend bottle
  count taken from the garbage cans. Miss Flora
  not only testified to the broken rules but also
  supported her conviction that Mr. Darby failed to
  run a proper institution. And so it went.

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Recall my starting premises

• Goals of knowledge are not the same as
  those of human subjects review boards
• Goals of ethics may differ from goals of
  knowledge and from review boards
• AND NOW CONSIDER
• Goals of knowledge for certain studies are
  interwoven with service provision
•  

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Hilary Brown and David Thompson (1997)--The
ethics of research with men who have learning
disabilities and abusive sexual behaviour a
minefield in a vacuum

• Could these men give informed consent as research
  subjects?
• Vulnerable population with intellectual
  impairmentWould they understand that they
  could incriminate themselves?
• Unequal relationship with service providers who
  ask them to participate in research they might
  not understand

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Brown and Thompson (cont.)

• Conflicting interests with other potential
  stakeholders and beneficiaries
• Other people with learning disabilitiesoften
  their victims
• Care workers (accountable for the mens
  behavior?)
• Members of the public who may become their
  victims
• Entire service systemits efforts to represent
  all people with learning/developmental
  disabilities as valued community members (see
  p. 698)

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Creating multi-level solutions

• Individual actions
• Organizational efforts
• Involvement in empirical research

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Rosenblatt concludes

• There is much more to doing ethical research than
  applyingethical principles. I do not think
  there is a trustworthy ethical formula that one
  can bring to a qualitative research interview.
  If anything, one must be open to co-constructing
  a set of ethical guidelines as the interview
  unfolds. (1995, p. 155)

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• In short , emergent ethics!

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A final word--

• Thank you for your attention
• Enjoy the Festival!