[Air-l] ethnography and ethics

Kendall, Lori Lori.Kendall at purchase.edu
Fri May 14 06:54:41 PDT 2004


I'm glad Jennifer has returned to the point about whether covert
research yields better data.  It's something that has been bothering
me since the inception of this conversation.  This comes up every
time I teach Research Methods (which I do every year).  When teaching,
I attribute the belief that "only covert research yields good data" to
the far greater familiarity my students have with quantitative methods
and with the fact that culturally in the U.S. the understood model of
SCIENCE means experimental methods, in which as many aspects of the 
research project are as tightly controlled as possible.

The objection raised by my students is usually that if people know I'm
observing them, they will behave differently, and therefore I won't 
really find out "the truth."  A similar (but sort of reversed) reaction is
contained in ET's original post on this topic.  He wrote (on May 5, 
and I was surprised -- I was sure we'd been talking about this much
longer!):

> "To me, if one is studying 
> humanity one should be part of it, exposed to the same experiences, 
> feeling the full swing of their emotions through their research.
> The obvious criticism of such an approach would be that one is too 
> involved and therefore potentially producing inaccurate research.
> But is such research any less accurate than the arms length - dont get 
> involved - approach where the participants are wary of the watcher?"

I have several responses to this.  First, coming in as researchers with
a research agenda, we can never be participants in exactly the same
way as the people we are studying.  Most participants presumably have 
one agenda in participating (although in some settings, other participants
may also have more than one agenda, such as a journalist participating in a
listserv and using posts from the listserv -- overtly or covertly -- as
fodder for a weekly column).  Researchers (at least in the type of research
I do: participant-observation or ethnographic) always have two (at least!)
agendas -- a split self.  We are both observers, with all kinds of reasons
why we want to observe -- and we are participants.  That being the case, you
can actually be *more* of an immersed participant overtly than you can
covertly.  Covert research requires you to always hold something back, as
you hide your second agenda.  Overt research is therefore *less*
"arms-length," not more.

Second, being an overt researcher allows you to ask questions.  Some of
these questions would be considered rude, weird, or out of place from a
"regular" participant, but are acceptable from someone new to the 
culture or studying the culture.  Without the ability to ask questions and
achieve greater understanding of what's going on, you risk completely
misinterpreting things you observe.  I have an example from my research of
such a misinterpretation (from not asking a question), but it's kind of long
to explain, so if people are interested I can email or maybe post it later.


Third, I'm personally interested not just in what people do and say 
but in what these things *mean* to them, in what they *think*.  While 
you can observe some physical cues for emotional reactions (not available
in many online situations), a better way to find out what things mean to
people is to ask them.  This can provide for much richer, more nuanced,
and yes even *better* data.  An example of this is in my book Hanging
Out in the Virtual Pub.  The people I was studying had read a short piece
I'd published in an anthology and we were discussing the accuracy (or lack
thereof) of my observations.  So because I was open about my research, and
shared the "results" of that research with participants as I went, I was 
able ultimately to present (a) an excerpt of online text, (b) my own
analysis of what that text means, and (c) further text discussion amongst
participants about what *they* think the text means (with considerable
disagreements between me and them and amongst them).  I believe this
provides a much better picture of their culture, and it gave me further
insights and yielded an entirely new avenue of analysis for me.

As Nancy mentioned earlier, there may be some situations in which people
would so object to being studied that being an overt researcher would not
provide you with an advantage.  But in most situations I think it does.
When you add that to the ethical considerations, I think covert research can
only be justified in a very limited set of cases. 

Lori
________________________________
Lori Kendall
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Purchase College-SUNY
lori.kendall at purchase.edu




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