RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS 409
Box 18.3
Structured, unstructured, natural and artificial settings
for observation
Structured
Unstructured
Natural setting Artificial setting
Structured field Completely
studies (e.g. Sears structured
et al.’s (1965) laboratory (e.g. the
study of
Stanford Prison
Identification and Experiment, the
Child Rearing) Milgram
experiment on
obedience, see
Chapter 21) and
experiments with
one-way mirrors
or video
recordings
Completely Unstructured
unstructured laboratory
field study (e.g. Axline’s
(e.g. Whyte’s (1964) celebrated
(1949) celebrated study of Dibs: In
study of Street Search of Self )and
Corner Society) observations with
and ethnographic one-way mirrors
studies
or video
recordings
appears to violate the principle of informed consent,
invades the privacy of subjects and private
space, treats the participants instrumentally – as
research objects – and places the researcher in a
position of misrepresenting her/his role (Mitchell
1993), or rather, of denying it. However, on the
other hand, Mitchell (1993) argues that there are
some forms of knowledge that are legitimately in
the public domain but access to which is available
only to the covert researcher (see, for example, the
fascinating account of the lookout ‘watch queen’ in
the homosexual community (Humphreys 1975)).
Covert research might be necessary to gain access
to marginalized and stigmatized groups, or groups
who would not willingly accede to the requests of
aresearchertobecomeinvolvedinresearch.This
might include those groups in sensitive positions,
for example drug users and suppliers, HIV sufferers,
political activists, child abusers, police informants
and racially motivated attackers. Mitchell (1993)
makes a powerful case for covert research, arguing
that not to undertake covert research is to deny
access to powerful groups who operate under the
protection of silence, to neglect research on sensitive
but important topics, and to reduce research to
mealy-mouthed avoidance of difficult but strongly
held issues and beliefs, i.e. to capitulate when the
going gets rough! In a series of examples from
research undertaken covertly, he makes the case
that not to have undertaken this kind of research
would be to deny the public access to areas of
legitimate concern, the agendas of the powerful
(who can manipulate silence and denial of access
to their advantage) and the public knowledge of
poorly understood groups or situations.
Covert research can also be justified on the
grounds that it overcomes problems of reactivity,
in particular if the researcher believes that
individuals would change their natural behaviour
if they knew that they were being observed.
That covert research can be threatening is
well documented, from Patrick’s (1973) study
of a Glasgow gang, where the researcher had
to take extreme care not to blow his cover
when witness to a murder, to Mitchell’s (1993)
account of the careful negotiation of role required
to undertake covert research into a group of
‘millennialists’ – ultra-right-wing armed political
groups in the United States who were bound
by codes of secrecy, and to his research on
mountaineers, where membership of the group
involved initiation into the rigours and pains of
mountaineering (the researcher had to become
a fully-fledged mountaineer himself to gain
acceptance by the group).
The ethical dilemmas are numerous, charting
the tension between invasion and protection of
privacy and the public’s legitimate ‘right to know’,
between informed consent and its violation in the
interests of a wider public, between observation as
a superficial, perhaps titillating, spectator sport
and as important social research. At issue is
the dilemma that arises between protecting the
individual and protecting the wider public, posing
the question ‘whose beneficence’ – whom does
the research serve, whom does the research protect,
is the greater good the protection and interests of
Chapter 18