Gerd Altmann, 2023. Compass Brain Think . Pixabay. https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=8046139
Ethical considerations are key when analyzing qualitative data. As you work closely with participants and observe or hear about their experiences, you yourself become part of the story they are telling, and your involvement may even change the way in which their stories are told. And as you analyze them, your unique worldview will inevitably have an effect on, for example, your choice of codes. Therefore, you need to be particularly considerate of the role your subjective views play in both data collection and analysis.
Positionality
To identify biases in your interpretation of the data, it is helpful to think about your positionality. Reflecting on your positionality can help to “determine where [you] stand in relation” to the participants and the subject manner of your qualitative study (Bourke, 2014, 7). That is, you try to tell assumptions informed by your personal experiences apart from your observations and notes about the participants.
By identifying the differences in social positions between you and your participants, you can become more aware of your situated perspective and even use it to help your analysis. In his Statement on Methods for the book Sidewalk, sociologist Mitchell Duneier (Duneier & Carter, 2001) explained,
Duneier, M., & Carter, O. (2001). Sidewalk (1st paperback edition). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Front Cover.
I try to use myself as a kind of control group, comparing the way I am treated in particular situations with the way people on the street are treated. When the dog walker responded immediately to me while delaying her reaction to Keith, I could see that our social positions and behavior led to the dog walker’s differing response. When the police treated an educated white male professor differently from an unhoused vendor on Christmas Day, I was in a better position to speculate on the underlying dynamics. And when I realized how effortlessly I walked into public bathrooms, I could make a useful comparison in my chapter on that topic.“
Reporting back your findings
Even if you are not using member checks to validate your analysis, you still have an obligation to the community that you are working with to report back with your findings (Bazeley, 2021). Your findings may help a sense of empowerment and action grow in the community you worked with.
For example, Patricia Bazeley invited her participants to a local school and presented her findings on mental health needs and resources in public housing. As a result, a neighborhood committee was formed to tackle some of the issues that her research brought to light (pp. 417-418).
Principle and virtue ethics
A truly ethical analysis of your data should align with both the principles laid out by an institution or wider academic community and your personal morals and views. Social science research is specific and often personal. The general, universal guidelines can sometimes fall short when we come across a new ethical dilemma, and that is when you need to uphold your own standards of respectfulness, sincerity, and reflexivity.
Reflecting on her award-winning reporting of child homelessness in New York City, journalist Andrea Elliot wrote in her book The Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City (2022),
Elliott, A. (2022). Invisible child: Poverty, survival, & hope in an American city (Random House trade paperback edition). Random House. Front Cover.
And what if I witnessed things that made me want to intervene, stepping out of my role as a reporter? … While they never questioned me on the rules of my profession, I imagined hearing these rules from their perspective: I am housed. They are homeless. I have food. They are often hungry. And yet there I am, writing about them – and their poverty – as my job. … What I could depend on was the respect I had for Dasani’s family, and they for mine.“
Personal Project
As you move on with your research, do not forget to ask yourself these questions about the ethicality of your analysis from time to time:
With respect to societal and scientific expectations…
With respect to the community I work with…
With respect to my own behavior…
As researchers, we are often inclined to examine an issue from a remote and privileged position rather than experience it from the perspective of the people we work with. But because the participants offered us their trust, it is important to in turn recognize and be responsible for the impact of our work on their life. Ethnographer Lee Ann Fujii (2012) puts it this way,
Wrestling with ethical dilemmas is the price we pay for the privileges we enjoy. It is a responsibility, not a choice, and, when taken seriously, it may be one of the most important benefits we have to offer those who make our work possible.“
