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ETHICAL ISSUES IN SENSITIVE RESEARCH 125
who may be harbouring counter-attitudes to those
prevailing in the school’s declared mission. Pushed
further, this means that researchers will need to
decide the limits of tolerance, beyond which they
will not venture. For example, in Patrick’s (1973)
study of a Glasgow gang, the researcher is witness
to a murder. Should he report the matter to the
police and, thereby, ‘blow his cover’, or remain
silent in order to keep contact with the gang,
thereby breaking the law, which requires a murder
to be reported
In interviewing students they may reveal
sensitive matters about themselves, their family,
their teachers, and the researcher will need to
decide whether and how to act on this kind of
information. What should the researcher do, for
example, if, during the course of an interview with
ateacherabouttheleadershipoftheheadteacher,
the interviewee indicates that the headteacher
has had sexual relations with a parent, or has
an alcohol problem Does the researcher, in
such cases, do nothing in order to gain research
knowledge, or does the researcher act What
is in the public interest – the protection of an
individual participant’s private life, or the interests
of the researcher Indeed Lee (1993: 139) suggests
that some participants may even deliberately
engineer situations whereby the researcher gains
‘guilty knowledge’ in order to test the researcher’s
affinities: ‘trust tests’.
Ethical issues are thrown into sharp relief in
sensitive educational research. The question of
covert research rises to the fore, as the study
of deviant or sensitive situations may require
the researcher to go under cover in order to
obtain data. Covert research may overcome
‘problems of reactivity’ (Lee 1993: 143) wherein
the research influences the behaviour of the
participants (Hammersley and Atkinson 1983:
71). It may also enable the researcher to obtain
insiders’ true views, for, without the cover of those
being researched not knowing that they are being
researched, entry could easily be denied, and access
to important areas of understanding could be lost.
This is particularly so in the case of researching
powerful people who may not wish to disclose
information and who, therefore, may prevent or
deny access. The ethical issue of informed consent,
in this case, is violated in the interests of exposing
matters that are in the public interest.
To the charge that this is akin to spying,
Mitchell (1993: 46) makes it clear that there
is a vast difference between covert research and
spying:
‘Spying is ideologically proactive, whereas
research is ideologically naïve’ (Mitchell 1993:
46). Spies, he argues, seek to further a particular
value system or ideology; research seeks to
understand rather than to persuade.
Spies have a sense of mission and try to achieve
certain instrumental ends, whereas research
has no such specific mission.
Spies believe that they are morally superior
to their subjects, whereas researchers have no
such feelings; indeed, with reflexivity being
so important, they are sensitive to how their
own role in the investigation may distort the
research.
Spies are supported by institutions which train
them to behave in certain ways of subterfuge,
whereas researchers have no such training.
Spies are paid to do the work, whereas
researchers often operate on a not-for-profit
or individualistic basis.
On the other hand, not to gain informed consent
could lead to participants feeling duped, very
angry, used and exploited, when the results of the
research are eventually published and they realize
that they have been studied without their approval
consent. 2 The researcher is seen as a predator (Lee
1993: 157), using the research ‘as a vehicle for
status, income or professional advancement which
is denied to those studied’. As Lee (1993: 157)
remarks, ‘it is not unknown for residents in some
ghetto areas of the United States to complain
wryly that they have put dozens of students through
graduate school’. Further, the researched may have
no easy right of reply; feel misrepresented by the
research; feel that they have been denied a voice;
have wished not to be identified and their situation
put into the public arena; feel that they have been
exploited.
Chapter 5