RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

SOURCES OF TENSION 59
Box 2.5
Negotiating access checklist
1 Clear official channels by formally requesting permission to carry out your investigation as soon as you
have an agreed project outline.
Some LEAs insist that requests to carry out research are channelled through the LEA office.Checkwhatisrequiredin
your area.
2 Speak to the people who will be asked to cooperate.
Getting the LEA or head’s permission is one thing, but you need to have the support of the people who will be asked
to give interviews or complete questionnaires.
3 Submit the project outline to the head, if you are carrying out a study in your or another educational
institution.
List people you would like to interview or to whom you wish to send questionnaires and state conditions under which
the study will be conducted.
4 Decide what you mean by anonymity and confidentiality.
Remember that if you are writing about ‘the head of English’ and there is only one head of English in the school, the
person concerned is immediately recognizable.
5 Decide whether participants will receive a copy of the report and/or see drafts or interview transcripts.
There are cost and time implications. Think carefully before you make promises.
6 Inform participants what is to be done with the information they provide.
Your eyes and those of the examiner only Shown to the head, the LEA etc.
7 Prepare an outline of intentions and conditions under which the study will be carried out to hand to the
participants.
Even if you explain the purpose of the study the conditions and the guarantees, participants may forget.
8 Be honest about the purpose of the study and about the conditions of the research.
If you say an interview will last ten minutes, you will break faith if it lasts an hour. If you are conducting the
investigation as part of a degree or diploma course, say so.
9 Remember that people who agree to help are doing you a favour.
Make sure you return papers and books ingoodorderandontime.Lettersof thanks should be sent, no matter how
busy you are.
10 Never assume ‘it will be all right’. Negotiating access is an important stage in your investigation.
If you are an inside researcher, you will have to live with your mistakes, so take care.
Chapter 2
Source: adapted from Bell 1991
subjects. However, what constitutes ‘harm’ is
unclear: one person’s harm is a society’s benefit,
and whether a little harm for a few is tolerable
in the interests of a major benefit for all, or even
for the person concerned, throws into relief the
tension involved here. The question is whether
the end justifies the means. As a general principle
we would advocate the application of primum
non nocere and, indeed, ethics regulatory boards,
for example in universities perusing research
proposals (discussed later), are guided heavily by
this principle. However, there could be tensions
here. What do you do if you discover that the
headteacher has a serious alcohol problem or is
having an affair with a parent What do you
do if your research shows teachers in the school
with very serious weaknesses, such that their
contracts should be terminated in the interests
of the students
When researchers are confronted with dilemmas
such as these (though they are likely to occur
much less in education than in social psychology
or medicine), it is generally considered that they
resolve them in a manner that avoids the extremes
of, on the one hand, giving up the idea of research
and, on the other, ignoring the rights of the
subjects. At all times, the welfare of subjects should
be kept in mind, even if it involves compromising
the impact of the research. Researchers should
never lose sight of the obligations they owe to those
who are helping, and should constantly be alert
to alternative techniques should the ones they