[Air-L] Ethics and retrospective consent

Ingbert Floyd ifloyd2 at gmail.com
Wed Oct 22 14:34:43 PDT 2008


I agree with Dr. Carlson. In the past I have been successful (though
barely) in making a case similar to yours to an IRB, so I don't think
it is impossible. The thing is, if you allow the posters not to
participate, and are as open about what you are doing as Dr. Carlson
suggests, you can probably convince the IRB/ethics board, even if it
requires an appeal. In my own institution, IRB representatives have
told me they try not to reject anything, rather they simply try to
revise it to be ethical. They have also stated that they are open to
counter-arguments that directly contradict their suggestions. For me,
the biggest barrier is the time it takes to negotiate an acceptance
(and do the quizzes, etc.). My anecdotal observation is that fear of
IRB rejection paralyzes research far more than outright rejection
does.

Ingbert

P.S.: You have full permission to use any of my posts I've ever made
on any listserv, public or private, in your research, whatever it
might be. I consider messages I send out to a listserv to be public,
and when I say something embarrassing (like I probably have in this
one), well, it's no different then the rest of life. (I'm just glad
I'm not running for US president.) I'd love to debate your
interpretation, of course, but such an opportunity is not necessary to
obtain my permission.

On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 3:41 PM, Gordon Carlson <gordycarlson at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was asked permission to use a comment I made on a listserv several months
> ago.  It included what it would be used for, when they saw it, when I posted
> it, and (this is the best part) allowed me to see how it would be used and
> to respond.
> It seemed like a totally responsible approach and as a potential "subject"
> (I suppose) I felt protected and informed.  If you can never use data out in
> the world without thinking of it as data ahead of time then research itself
> is harmed.
>
> That said, IRB rules and committees are strange.  Good luck.
>
> -Gordon Carlson
> -University of Illinois at Chicago
>
> PS - in case something in this message strikes you as useful you have my
> permission, having been informed of its potential use, to employ this email
> as data in research.  Maybe everyone should just write something like this
> at the end of every message.  Kind of like an IRB opt-in message.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 2:55 PM, Philippa Smith <philippa.smith at aut.ac.nz>wrote:
>
>> I'm in an unusual situation in that I want to analyse language from a
>> discussion that occurred in a listserv in March this year but which is not
>> publicly archived.  As a subscriber to the listserv I saved the discussion
>> myself because the topic was of interest to my PhD research.  I have all the
>> email addresses of the 16 people who posted on this discussion and I am
>> making an ethics application to contact these posters for consent to
>> linguistically analyse what they said.  However I have been told by an
>> ex-ethics committee member that I would be unlikely to get ethics approval
>> for this because it is a retrospective discussion which is private and they
>> would have been unaware that their comments might be part of research, and
>> because it is not publicly archived (even though anyone can join the
>> listserv).  I thought if I at least got the posters' permission then this
>> would be okay. I'd be interested in other peoples views.  Please note I have
>> not yet put forward the ethics appl
>>  ication (due tuesday).
>>
>> I guess I can draw a comparison to this listserv-  How would people feel if
>> they were approached about their comments posted several months ago being
>> used for research.  Surely if they gave consent then that would be okay?  I
>> also might add that I consider the research a linguistic analysis rather
>> than looking at the individuals as human participants - but thenI guess that
>> is another can of worms!
>>
>> Many thanks in advance for your comments.
>>
>> Philippa Smith
>> PhD Candidate
>> Institute of Culture, Discourse & Communication
>> Auckland University of Technology
>> Auckland
>> NEW ZEALAND
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Gordon Carlson
> C: 541-990-1155
> _______________________________________________
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>



-- 
==========================================
Ingbert Floyd
PhD Student
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
http://ingbert.org/     ||     skype: spacesoon

Check out the unofficial GSLIS Wiki:
http://www.gslis.org/

"Dream in a pragmatic way."
-Aldous Huxley



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