Politics and Ethics of Qualitative Reseach

                                                  

Issues having to do with ethics in social science are central to qualitative research methods, which all involve problems of the politics of research practice.  For example, the interpretive nature of qualitative research raises issues of the accuracy of representation and the assumptions and biases that influence the depiction of research subjects The intense involvement with the persons, groups and communities on and with whom we carry out our research,  that qualitative field work requires, raises dilemmas of independence and engagement. Moreover, these ethical dilemmas are not external to the methodology; to be solved, for example, by drawing up and signing an ethics charter. Instead they are embedded in the very methods themselves. Qualitative interviews can be subtly rigged to yield a particular outcome. Samples can be drawn that leave out hard to reach, and often powerless, groups. Clearly, these issues are not absent in other, quantitative, approaches to social science, but the nature of qualitative methods makes it impossible to obfuscate them. Qualitative research wears research ethics on its sleeve as it where.

Qualitative researchers have addressed these issues for decades. In this Workshop we want to bring together researchers who, through their own experience, have experienced and struggled with these issues in their work. Topics to be addressed are among others:

• The ethics of qualitative interviewing. How do we guarantee a minimum of face validity in qualitative interviewing? What techniques and guidelines can be formulated?
• The dilemmas of ethnographic field work. When does participant observation become observing participation? What does this mean for the position of the researcher? For the quality of the data? What difference does the nature of the object of enquiry with the power differentials they involve make (e.g. village communities, urban neighborhoods, formal organizations) For the quality of the data? What is the role of trust in field work? How is entry and exit into and from the field negotiated esp. when studying modern organizations bureaucracies, international organizations?
• How do we deal with the effects of the researcher’s involvement on the group or community he/she researches? How does the outsider’s perspective relate to the insider’s perspective? What problems of confidentiality arise and how are the limits of publishability to be negotiated? Does a group or community have right not to be intruded? For whose good is the research?
• What is the relationship between thought and action in qualitative research?
• What is the role of dialogue in qualitative methodology? How can dialogue, and dialogical approaches, be made to guide and inform qualitative research?
• What is the role of power in qualitative research? in what guises do power differentials affect qualitative research? 
• What are the normative assumptions that qualitative research makes and how valid are these? Is qualitative research, by its nature, oriented towards a just, inclusive, more democratic society?

Many of the above issues come together – and are explicitly addressed – in Action Research (AR). The Conference and Workshop will pay special attention to the theory and practice of AR. Action research brings together research, social action, and participation. As Greenwood and Levin state in their classic text: “AR is not applied research. AR explicitly rejects the separation between though and action that underlies the pure-applied distinction that has characterized social research for a number of generations”. One of the main purposes of AR is to re-establish the essential relationship between thinking and acting in scientific research. As Wadworth aptly describes action research: “Essentially, Participatory Action Research (PAR) is research which involves all relevant parties in actively examining together current action (which they experience as problematic) in order to change and improve it. They do this by critically reflecting on the historical, political, cultural, economic, geographic and other contexts which make sense of it. … Participatory action research is not just research which is hoped will be followed by action. It is action which is researched, changed and re-researched, within the research process by participants” Action research intrinsically aims at the empowerment of the groups involved, enabling them to makelfull use of their resources and talents. It tries to be “a genuinely democratic or non-coercive process whereby those to be helped, determine the purposes and outcomes of their own inquiry."

We expect the Conference and Workshop to make real contributions in (1) addressing the ethics of qualitative research, and (2) in making Action Research more accepted in qualitative research curricula and dispelling some of the misunderstandings and prejudices that surround this approach.. Also we will address matters relating to awareness of ethical issues in the teaching of qualitative research and action research.

The Conference will bring together experienced, senior researchers from across Europe and America to share with their experiences and solving problems (ethical and political) in the field research.

The Conference will also include training sessions for young researchers (students, particularly on the PhD/ Dr. level) that will follow the conference. They will be organised as workshops where young researchers discuss and analyse research problems and case studies with leading scholars of Europe.

CALL FOR PAPERS.