Qualitative Research in Practice : Stories From the Field - Blogs Unpad

Qualitative research in practice
to delay approaching these parents in the immediate
crisis in order to avoid seeking parental consent at a
time when their capacity for informed judgement
might be most compromised. This entailed forgoing
the collection of data in the initial phase of the
case, thus illustrating the ‘trade-off’ which can occur
between ethical and methodological priorities.
There were other ‘trade-offs’ of this nature. For
example, I decided not to tape-record interviews or to
interview parents before their involvement with the
various services had finished, both significant methodological
sacrifices, because of the risk that parents
might divulge information which could be subpoenaed
in legal proceedings. The decision not to give
parents the option of being interviewed throughout
the period of service involvement was seen by some of
my colleagues as paternalistic and disempowering. My
reason was that it might be very hard for parents to trust
the confidentiality of what they might say to me when
they knew that I was in close contact and on first-name
terms with the professionals they were seeing. This may
be an example of ‘justified paternalism’.
All of the children in my study were aged ten years
or less, and parental permission was sought to observe
hospital social workers’ interviews with the children
through a one-way screen. This was a standard practice
in the hospital service and colleagues, trainees and
clinical supervisors routinely observed interviews in
this way (with the permission of the parent and the
knowledge of the child). I did not seek parental permission
to interview the children as I felt that interviewing
the children could not be justified due to the risk of
further traumatisation. While the potential risks could
not be quantified, nor could the potential benefits.
However, as the study unfolded, the issue of
children’s involvement in the research became less
clear cut. For example, on several occasions in the
follow-up home interviews with parents the children
were unexpectedly present for some of the interview
although I had arranged with the parents to visit at
a time when the children would not be there. As it
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