Anticipating Law: Research Methods, Ethics, and The Law of Privilege

Our ethical obligation to protect the research confidentiality of individual participants is challenged when third parties use subpoenas in the context of criminal proceedings and civil litigation in an effort to order the production of confidential information. This paper discusses strategies researchers may employ in order to maximize their legal ability to maintain confidentiality in spite of those challenges. Use of existing statutory protections is the first choice, but these are available for only a subset of research related to health and criminal justice issues. In situations where statutory protections are not available, the Wigmore criteria may act as a guide for the design of research that maximizes researchers' ability to protect research participants by advancing a case–by–case claim for researcher–participant privilege. We discuss the legal basis for this conclusion and outline procedures that may be used to further strengthen confidentiality protections.     

Armor for Ethnographers

As its public readership has vastly increased, ethnography has entered a new world of social interaction, at once rewarding and dangerous. Among social researchers, ethnographic fieldworkers are unusually exposed to pressures to both make and break promises of confidentiality to subjects because they work to expose subjects to readers in a relatively transparent way. By showing individuals in their individuality, ethnographers draw the attention of nonacademic readers, which can be motivating but also terrifying because sources might be questioned and subjects sought out in ways the ethnographer may not be able to control. Tracking the schizophrenia that now threatens to pervade ethnographic work, I describe overlooked risks that all practitioners face and point to an as‐yet unexplored collective strategy for resisting pressures to breach promises of confidentiality. I then switch from a collective to an individual focus and review ethnography as a multiphased research act, suggesting ways to minimize personal and ethical risks at each stage.     

Research note: Strategies in eliciting sensitive sexual information: the case of gay men

Project SIGMA's research on gay men's sexual behaviour and Aids and HIV infection has posed complex ethnographic and methodological problems which have required unorthodox and innovative strategies for their solution. Three main problem areas included: value-conflict between interviewer/HIV tester roles; Issues concerning data confidentiality and legal interference, and the elicitation of detailed sexual behaviour. The procedures developed have clear applicability to other research concerned with covert, stigmatised and legally-sensitive behaviour or data.     

The Child's Voice in Service Evaluation: Ethical and Methodological Issues

This paper examines the ethical issues which arose as part of a qualitative study with children who had experienced sexual abuse and the implications of these ethical issues for the methodology and conduct of the study. The ethical dimensions addressed include protection of the therapeutic relationship, anonymity, confidentiality, safeguarding (child protection), consideration of the sensitivity of the issue, informed consent, the right to withdraw and storage of data. The study formed one component of a service evaluation of a network of therapeutic projects provided by Action for Children, offering interventions for trauma following child sexual abuse. Children and young people's perspectives were collected using a child‐friendly activity book designed to elicit their views on the service. The paper highlights the importance of conducting research which adheres to ethical guidelines and reflects upon the process of designing a study which incorporates them. The research was funded by Action for Children and managed by a steering group comprising managers from the organisation. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self-Determination and Confidentiality

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to further clarify the ambiguous nature of two of social work's most important values: self-determination and confidentiality. Previous research indicates that many ethical decisions in social work practice are difficult to make; and, many times decisions are made based on the worker's values and experiences rather than on written ethics, laws, and agency policy. To explore this concept further, an open-ended survey instrument was distributed to 82 social work students after completing the required practice classes. The participants were asked whether they would break confidentiality based on a specific vignette and describe what decision was made and why. Results indicated that degree level (MSW versus BSW) proved to be a significant factor related to whether and/or why the respondent would break confidentiality. In addition, students with more paid work experience were more likely to question the issue of confidentiality and were more likely to break it. Two issues reflected in the decision-making process involved ensuring client safety and self-determination. In conclusion, this article explores possible reasons for breaching confidentiality and pitfalls that can occur for all professionals in making these types of decisions. Furthermore, it explores the ambiguous nature of problem solving in this area, and suggests ways that social workers can improve their decision-making skills.     

Patient Rights: An Advocate's Perspective

Abstract

The current growing concern about patients' rights and the delivery of student health care precipitates an environment of fear, distrust, and uneasiness within university health services. This paper addresses several selected clinical, ethical, and legal issues which have come into conflict during recent years. Our examination surveys ethical and legal principles of confidentiality, defines areas in which breaches are most likely to occur, and suggests ways of preventing breaches of confidence between students and health services.

While the fundamental ethical principle underlying confidentiality is the individual's right of privacy, many issues of confidentiality are extremely difficult to resolve. University health services have expanded the concept of health care to encompass all the conditions — medical, emotional, social, economic and environmental — which affect the health of students. As a result, health service administrators should be fully aware of the laws and associated legal complexities in their own state which affect confidentiality. Furthermore, student health physicians, and particularly mental health therapists must be sensitive to needs for protecting the privacy of students.

Legal principles of confidentiality discussed in this paper with respect to specific problem situations which might arise in a student health center include: 1) right to privacy; 2) privileged communications; 3) releasing information from the medical record; 4) releasing information to the student; and 5) treating minors without parental consent. Finally, in addition to the responsibilities which must be assumed by the health professional, certain student responsibilities in the selection and utilization of health professionals are recommended.     

Desiring Self‐Determination in Research and Beyond: Parental Consent Requirements and Situated Ethics for Migrant Young People Living amid Changing Family Dynamics

How are procedural research ethics complicit in homogenising and paternalising young people? Through a youth‐centred ethnographic study completed in Canada, I illustrate how migrant young people's complex experiences of family separation, responsibility, and autonomy sit in relation to parental consent requirements for research. By complicating notions of childhood and critically discussing capacity to consent, I elucidate how procedural ethics can negate diversity among young people and perpetuate the structural barriers some face in determining their lives. More flexible ethical procedures and responses could reduce barriers and better accommodate young people's inclusion by recognising their specific circumstances, desires and competencies through heightened contextual awareness.     

Ethics and defense agency funding: some considerations

The author, an anthropologist working in a military defense science and technology funding agency, offers four guidelines for social scientists for evaluating the ethical problems in defense funding opportunities. These guidelines address what social scientists need to know in order to evaluate the ethical risks involved in accepting defense funding: (1) the need to understand the code of ethics of social science organizations and their limits in dealing with ethical problems of new technologies; (2) the need to understand the implications of working in “classified” contexts; (3) the need to understand the funding program's goals and objectives; (4) the need to develop an ethical imagination about technological advances and research and develop an appropriately supportive environment for promoting ethical behavior in the scientific community.     

Durkheim and individualism

Durkheim endorses moral and rejects methodological individualism. But he arrives at this ‘general position’via a particular development of it that runs into serious sociological, apart from any philosophical, trouble. It depends on an ethical relativism that in turn depends on an idea of society qua harmonious system, generating more or less practical aspirations, and a single appropriate, ‘normal’ morality. Yet modern society generates ideals quite unrealisable in it, and continuing, fundamental conflicts between moral doctrines and beliefs. To uphold central humanist, individualist ideals, we cannot rely on Durkheim's particular sociology or on his ethical relativism, and to defend his general position must unhook it from both.     

Taxonomic Chaos in the Confused Canadian Bioethics Industry: Apres Moi la Deluge

Abstract

This paper presents a conceptual analysis of a decade-old movement in Canada to purportedly raise ethical standards in research with human subjects, even though no systematic evidence has ever been presented either that there are serious ethical problems (especially in psychological research), or that the solutions imposed by the movement would improve the ethical situation, and not harm research's fundamental epistemological enterprise. The movement began with the activities of a committee from Canada's three major government research councils, the Tri-Council Committee (TCC). Like all ideological enterprises, it provided taxonomic chaos by, for example, confusing ethics with epistemology and feelings of discomfort concerning an area of investigation with intellectual expertise about that area. It also went beyond its American counterparts by calling its proposals a code of conduct rather than guidelines, and proposing that if a so-called research participant (i.e., a subject) did not like the investigator's hypotheses, she or he could withdraw “her” or “his” data. Even after the TCC and its various bureaucratic progeny retreated (though ambiguously) from these absurd positions, there has been a maintenance of such positions as the right and responsibility of IRBs to advise not only on the ethical issue of the treatment of subjects, but also on epistemological issues of research design. These issues require not only expertise in the requisite disciplines, but also an intimate familiarity with highly specialized sub-areas. In practical terms senior researchers may be able deal with the burgeoning North American bioethics industry and ignore the anti-epistemological and implicit principles according to which the industry operates. Younger researchers, who have no memory of how research used to be conducted, will succumb, and, in an epistemological sense, be “corrupted”. As the last phrase of my title suggests, senior researchers are currently acting like France's Louis XV.     

Small Voices: Children's Rights and Representation in Social Work Research

The persons who are social work's constituencies are typically disenfranchised and excluded. This is particularly the case with children whose voices are routinely suppressed. This paper outlines why Children's Article 12 Rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to express their views on all matters concerning them should also apply to social work research. The ethical issues around research with children are explored and a number of different research methods are outlined in order to offer a starting point for social workers wishing to place children's viewpoints and voices at the centre of their research.     

Ethical Issues in the Mental Health Treatment of Gender Dysphoric Adolescents

SUMMARY

This paper will focus on ethical dilemmas that arise in the treatment of adolescents with gender dysphoria. We will begin with a discussion of ethical and legal issues pertinent to the treatment of any adolescent, and then proceed to the gender dysphoric adolescent, since there is a great deal of overlap between the two areas. The authors re-view legal decisions, the existing data on adolescent decision-making, and ethical principles that may help the clinician in resolving some very complex situations. Utilizing case vignettes of three gender dysphoric adolescents, the authors provide a pragmatic illustration of the ethical dilemmas involved in evaluation and treatment of these youth. It is the authors' belief that treatment interventions should be based on respect for the adolescent's autonomy and confidentiality where he or she is deemed competent to make decisions.     

RECONSTRUCTING DAILY LIFE IN THE PAST: AN HERMENEUTICAL APPROACH TO ETHNOGRAPHIC DATA

Traditional sources of sociohistorical data capture only a narrow sense of past lifeworlds. Ethnographic accounts often preserve greater details of social practice but have less clear guidelines for use as data. We evaluate the use of hermeneutical theory as providing guidelines for a method by which ethnographies may be used as sociohistorical data. Hermeneutical analysis of ethnographic "texts" is used to reconstruct patterns of daily life in early-twentieth-century rural Appalachia. This method involves: (1) concept-critique to separate observations from the theoretical framework of the ethnographic account, and (2) validation through a logic of internal consistency and comparison. Through hermeneutical analysis, ethnographics can be made to yield observations of social relations not otherwise available. Our analysis suggests benefits and drawbacks of hermeneutical analysis of ethnographic texts.     

Censoring the Sexual Self: Reflections from an Ethnographic Study of Gay Filipinos on Mobile Dating Apps in Manila

This paper reflects upon Evelyn Blackwood's 1995 ‘Falling in Love with An-Other Lesbian’ essay on love and desire during fieldwork research as it intersects with the figure of the ‘virtual anthropologist’ in Kath Weston's 1997 essay of the same name. My multiple subjectivities (specifically those nativised) enabled and restricted what I considered bonds and differences between me and others during ethnographic research among gay Filipino men using mobile dating apps. I revisit an experience from four weeks of preliminary data collection between May and June 2015 in Manila, Philippines, where I decided not to include a sexual encounter with a research participant named Wesley. Moving forward with my study, my reflections on censoring sexual encounters with research participants helped me to acknowledge several sources of moral anxieties and ethical considerations that influence how this specific testimony took its shape and to consider how to construct and apply a malleable ethic of honesty for current and future projects especially when intimacies themselves are the focus.     

Women's rights in Peru: insights from two organizations

In this article we explore the appropriation of ideas about women's rights in Lima, Peru through an ethnographic study of two non‐governmental organizations. SEA is a local NGO grounded in the Catholic Church's liberation theology movement, which seeks to promote integrated human development, and is linked to the worldwide Catholic Church. DEMUS, the second NGO, with feminist roots, actively fights gender discrimination and belongs to networks of international women's human rights movements and UN organizations. We argue that the struggle for women's rights is part of a broader struggle for recognition and equality for the poor, shaped by changing notions of national identity, citizenship and diversity. Our research revealed clear examples of vernacularization, whereby local context, values and culture played a decisive role in the adoption of women rights ideas. Encounters with other concepts and movements, including social justice, family violence and women's mobilization, intimately shaped the vernacularization of women's rights. Ultimately, the adoption of rights ideas involved changes in women's individual and collective empowerment.     

Aligning theory and methodology in mixed methods research: Before Design Theoretical Placement

When a theoretical framework (and its components) is not clearly linked to research methods, researchers risk designing flawed studies, wherein the stated research question is inconsistent with the research design. Explicitly identifying one’s theoretical orientation can provide an orderly schematic for linking observations from separate investigations (i.e. qualitative, quantitative) thereby facilitating understandings and guiding research designs particularly in fields of social and health sciences where complex phenomena are an aspect of the subject of inquiry. Although this has been established, how researchers might position their research theoretically to guide mixed methods research is less clear. In this paper, we propose the Before Design Theoretical Placement as a general guide for specifying and locating studies in a broader theoretical grounding, and discuss how it may inform overall study considerations. We then use this approach to illustrate how theories and methods can work together to facilitate professional knowledge development from a relational perspective.     

Ethical uneasiness and the need for open-ended reflexivity: the case of research into older people with a wish to die

This article focuses on research ethics in highly intimate research with possible impact on life and death. In order to stimulate an open-ended dialogue about research ethics, we reflect on four ethical challenges that came up during our research into older people with a wish to die. Drawing on our experiences, we discuss (1) the possibly confirming influence of our research on the death wish (moral experience of whether or not to disregard responsibility); (2) the suggested duty to intervene (moral experience of whether or not to compromise the person’s autonomy); (3) the researcher’s authority and power over the data (moral experience of threatening a person’s self-narrative) and (4) the dilemma of intimacy (moral experience of encountering the tragic). For guidance in addressing these challenges, we draw upon work on research ethics from phenomenological and care ethics scholars, as well as from those writing about relational ethics in health research. We suggest that being open about ethical uneasiness is important, because in most cases of a grey area, there are only open-ended answers needing an enquiring mind, rather than clear and fixed guidelines. Acknowledgement of ethical uneasiness and open-ended reflexivity are indispensable to constitute a morally good research practice.     

On Our Own

Abstract

While research has stressed the need for self-awareness on the part of social workers, few scholars have addressed the influence of organizational policies on spiritually-sensitive practice. Focus groups and interviews, conducted with 11 practitioners, suggested that agencies require information about clients' religious or spiritual background as part of an initial assessment; however, the parameters for using that information were ambiguous. Lacking clear guidelines, each social worker developed a personal policy for spiritually-sensitive practice, based on the practitioner's personal belief system and the NASW Code of Ethics. Recommendations are made to align spiritually-sensitive practice at the organizational and the practitioner level.     

Should Sociologists Stand Up for Science? Absolutely!

Standing up for science is part of sociology's mission as a social science. Standing up is also consistent with our field's ethical obligation to identify and avoid research compromised by conflict of interests.     

Evolving Ethical Standards in the Digital Age

ABSTRACT

Ethical standards in social work have matured significantly since the formal inauguration of the profession in the late 19th century. This article traces the global evolution of ethical standards in social work, focusing especially on current challenges in the digital age. The author discusses changes over time in social workers’ understanding of ethical issues and development of conceptual frameworks and protocols for managing them. Social workers’ increasing use of digital technology poses novel and unprecedented ethical challenges pertaining to privacy, confidentiality, informed consent, professional boundaries, conflicts of interest, documentation, client abandonment, and professionalism, among others. The article outlines emerging ethical standards designed to help social workers manage ethical challenges in the digital age.