- with thanks to Dr Sara Wheeler (Bangor University) for provoking me into thinking and writing
The researcher-researched relationship is complex. Although ‘researcher’ is fairly universally used for the person who initiates the research relationship, the term for ‘the researched’ is not. Indeed it is highly contested. If I choose to participate in someone else’s research, I might be their ‘subject’, ‘participant’, ‘co-researcher’ or something else depending on how ‘the researcher’ frames their research.
So what kind of relationship do these two people have, and how does that relate to what motivates ‘the researched’ to take part? And, most importantly in this context, what does ‘ethical’ mean?
My university ethics handbook requires any ‘researched’ person to give informed, freely-given, non-coerced consent to be part of the research. The ‘researched’ person must know they can withdraw at any time without giving a reason and without any comeback. There are particular concerns about anything that can be seen as an inducement to take part, or that could make the person feel obliged to take part or to continue taking part.
That’s fine as far as it goes. It ceases to be fine if it is used as an argument for avoiding any reciprocity in the relationship.
Some relationships are essentially impersonal and transactional, for example involving a payment for taking part. This can work fine for one-off experiments, tests and surveys. The researcher wants something from you (blood, time, filling in a form) and the researcher gives you money. You weigh up the (in)convenience to yourself, the payment and your interest in the research; you decide if you do or don’t want to take part.
Not all research can be so impersonal. And here is where the nature of the researcher/researched relationship and the motivation to take part in research move into murkier ethical water. This is quite separate from any considerations of how the relationship affect data collection and analysis – that’s for another blog!
Rapport and transparency
Some kinds of research (ethnography, action research, inclusive/participatory research) require a personal relationship between researcher and researched. Or at least they require what is universally termed in handbooks on qualitative research as ‘rapport’.
Can we gain rapport and have a personal relationship in an ethical way, in a way that does not induce someone to take part nor blur the boundaries of the research relationship? Ethics rules out ‘fake friendship’, an accusation sometimes justly levelled at researchers who have understood the importance of rapport to collecting good data but who have used it more as a way to groom ‘the researched’ than to establish a genuine two-way rapport. And if we are to have genuine rapport, particularly where the relationship goes beyond a one-off meeting, how can it not involve genuine inter-personal exchanges?
To me, transparency is key to an ethical relationship. Both parties need to be aware from the start and throughout the research of what they bring to the research relationship, their own power and vulnerability, and the power and vulnerability of the other person. Both parties need to be very clear about the nature of the relationship, in particular its boundaries. This can only be done through on-going communication, starting with the informed consent information pack.
I would argue that transparency and clarity about the relationship and boundaries are probably more important than where the boundaries lie. If both parties know that this is an intense relationship involving considerable self-disclosure and sharing of knowledge/power/access but that it is time-limited and will cease when the research relationship ceases – well, that’s hard to pull off but as any short-term therapeutic community knows, it is possible provided both sides continually remind each other of the short-lived nature of the relationship and have an agreed formula or ritual to bring the relationship to a close.
Inducement and two-way transactions
The issue of inducement to take part and continue to take part in research has to be taken very seriously.
As a university, we accept that it is possible to give someone cash in exchange for taking part in research without that being an undue inducement to take part. The researcher gives cash and gains data. The researched gives something of themselves (blood, time, information) and gains cash. It is a two-way transaction.
If this is acceptable, surely it must be possible for a researcher to give someone access to knowledge, ideas or practical help in exchange for taking part in research, without that being seen as unethical.
The difficulty, perhaps, is that impersonal, financial transactional relationships are easier to police than personal ones. It is easy to pay someone £10 and keep a financial audit trail. It is much harder to police yourself and to be policed by others where the transaction is personal.
If the issue is essentially one of policing, then I would suggest two possible approaches.
- One approach is to think in terms of child protection policies where an adult needs to work close and personally with a child or young person. One of the keys, particularly when the relationship involves personal transactions, is to have a third party who is aware of your interactions with that particular child. You might copy the third party into emails you send, and make sure the third party is aware of times you phone or meet the child and in particular anything you say, offer or do that could be misconstrued as “grooming” or stepping outside your professional role. Yes, it can feel bureaucratic and cumbersome, but it provides protection to everyone. It guards against accidentally slipping over the line into an inappropriate relationship while allowing a healthy personal relationship to develop.
- An alternative approach for research relationships might be to route any personal transactions via a more formal route, such as a TimeBank. By formalising the exchanges, it protects against ‘boundary-creep’, where the research relationship subtly shifts into a different kind of relationship without either party noticing until the boundary has been long breached. The ethical implications of providing knowledge/access/practical support become similar to the ethical implications of financial transactions.
Fear of breaching boundaries, fear of providing inducement to take part in research, fear of being unethical or unprofessional can lead to the very situation that the researcher is trying to avoid – exploitation of the ‘researched’. It can turn into the patently absurd “You give, I take – otherwise it might not be ethical”.
As researchers, we need to be extremely careful in our relationships. As researchers, we need to be transparent, honest and human. As researchers, we need to be accountable and auditable. But this does not mean we need to remove ourselves from our relationships with the people who we are researching. It does not mean we have to withhold who we are and what we know – particularly when the research relationship is ongoing.
What we must always be is:
- transparent
- mindful of power and vulnerability
and make sure we always have a way to be held to account for our relationships in the field.
