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issues with interview participants, the context of which might have clearly
come from a distinctive source within the researched community.
It is not only the presence of the researcher that attenuates attempts to
preserve anonymity during the data-gathering stage, but also the use of
fieldnotes, audio-tapes, consent forms, and, later, interview transcripts. To
preserve the integrity of ones observations, real names must be used to
help the researcher correlate findings and find patterns. Even notes and
transcripts without a name, offer sufficient detail to make participants
identifiable (Murphy and Dingwall, 2003, p. 341). The displacement of
real names in favour of nicknames (e.g., Fast Walker, or Blue Cap)
barely lifts the veil of identity.
With the increasing reliance on interviews to conduct research rather
than participant observation (which, it seems, requires a more elaborate
ethics-review), there is also a reliance on recording the voice of interview
participants. The dictum to destroy those tapes is easier said than done.
Not destroying the tapes makes methodological sense. As a researcher
moves through the stages of transcribing the interviews and fieldnotes and
correcting the transcriptions, he or she discovers the benefit of listening
again and again to the voice of the interview participant. This process
occurs also later in the research stage when some new insight propells
the researcher to return to the tape. In terms of principles, the explicit reference in signed consent form to destroying the tapes leads the interview
participant to consider the research more dangerous than is really the case.
And, besides, what message are we conveying to the participant about the
relevance of his or her voice?
While the standard signed consent form explains to the interview participant that the tape(s) or transcripts will be first securely locked and
then destroyed,3 in practice these two elements of protection are impractical and both methodologically and principally undesirable. University
research offices seldom have the luxury of having working locks on filing
cabinets (universities are reluctant to devote resources to fixing filing cabinet) and, in the case of students or sessional lecturers-cum-researchers,
there is often no office available at all, let alone a filing cabinet. The
use of signed consent forms makes it even more problematic to maintain
anonymity (van den Hoonaard, 2002, p. 10). The research participant bestows his or her signature, creating a permanent non-anonymized record of
the people involved in the study. It is now known that research participants
use pseudonyms to sign these forms.
One of the more vexsome questions about having to reveal the identity
of research participants relates to the legal requirement to report particular
behavior, such as when, for example, child abuse is involved. The con-
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sistent logic behind such requirements does get researchers off the hook,
but they do reveal the identity of the research participant. As such, it is
still unlikely that the researcher will include the name of the research
participant, even the though the data stemming from such a setting might
still find their way into child-custody agents. A more fundamental, nearly
unresolvable point relates to the forced exclusion of areas of research, both
by virtue of the need for the researcher to state in advance that illegal
behavior will be reported and by closing off areas of examination that, in
the end, do require social and scholarly attention (see, e.g., Wolfs study of
biker gangs (1991)). A most interesting example issues forth from a study
by Ivan Zinger, Cherami Wichmann, and D.A. Andrews which involved a
study on prisoners and which looked at the effects of administrative segregation (i.e., solitary confinement). Palys and Lowman (2001) pointed out
that the researchers had failed to find anything meaningful because they
had fallen into the limited confidentiality trap, which involves the use of
a consent form that warns that plans of escape, injury to others, and the
general security of the prison would be reported to the authorities, thereby,
in effect, dampening the prisoners enthusiasm to reveal intended violent
behavior. As a consequence, the effect of administrative segregation was
not reported with any validity.
A NALYSIS S TAGE
An ethnographer confronts a mountain of transcribed texts or fieldnotes
upon entering the stage of analysis. Any experienced fieldresearcher knows
that there is a vital correlation between the vast amount of transcribed texts
and the threat to anonymity. But how much is much and how does this
have a bearing on the threat to preserving anonymity? It is not uncommon that a study involving twelve focus groups might entail 450 pages
of single-spaced text, as was the case of a recent national study on the
extent to which a religious community was implementing the equality of
women and men (van den Hoonaard and van den Hoonaard, forthcoming).
My M.A. thesis research in Iceland (van den Hoonaard, 1972) contained
just under 10 kg of notes.4 The shortest interview for David Altheides
book (Altheide, 1976) runs 40 single-spaced pages; the longest, 92 pages.
Howard S. Becker collected 5,000 pages of fieldnotes for his classic work
(1973), and Juliet Corbin interviewed 120 people (1988).
Analyzing such vast amounts of data also consumes time. Erving Goffman, one of the most pre-eminent sociologists, speaks about the need to
take one or two lifetimes to properly study 1,000 pages of single-spaced
typed fieldnotes (Goffman, 2002, p. 152). Goffmans statements ring true.
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ticipants are the best experts of their own life and a researcher may find
that they offer some of the most telling illustrations, in words and images,
of their life. So much so, that book titles are sometimes evocative, based
entirely on what was communicated by a single research participant.5
Second, some research participants might even see the publishing of
their pseudonyms as a breach of anonymity. When you consider, for example, chatroom on the internet, the role of pseudonyms are taken on by
those who engage in chatroom discussions and become part of the participants identity, such as those listservs or chatrooms where cyber-intimacy
is the norm (see, e.g., Graydon (2003) for an analysis of the gift giving
of HIV to partners and where listservs devoted to that end make us of
highly-personalized pseudonyms).
Third, the customary inclusion of the general background of the research participants, often involving the mention of age, ethnic origin, territory, or sex, might be revealing enough to identify a research participant.
Yet, such information is often seen as a requirement to get a sense of the
populations having been researched. For example, the reader of a published work will want to know more about the sample and whether or
not the selected research participants represent a particular category of the
population.
In particular, the need to include the territory of the research participants undermines the matter of collecive anonymity an element that a
researcher might not see as being as ethically critical as breaking individual
anonymity.
C OLLECTIVE A NONYMITY
The question of collective anonymity is of considerable interest, not only
to aboriginal and cultural communities where a collective identity prevails, but also to other groups. In focus-group research, for example, will
the issue of anonymity also be answered by the participants themselves
(as opposed to just the focus-group facilitator (Hay, 2003)? To what extent, beyond common courtesy, are participants required to keep the names
(and comments) of fellow focus-group participants anonymous? It is not
uncommon for collectivities to take pride in the fact that they are being
researched, at least in the pre-publication stage. Minority groups or groups
on the periphery of society seek validation by the outside. Researcher X
from University Y fits the bill. Even if the researcher is punctillious about
keeping the group anonymous, word will get out. Low-status groups are
more likely to have their anonymity violated than high-status groups.
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W HAT G IVES ?
From the above, it appears that it is extremely difficult to maintain anonymity in ethnographic and qualitative research. The situation is worrisome in
that ethics codes are so insistent about anonymity. By force of evidence
to guarantee anonymity, are we not to select a small community within a
given territory for research purposes, not use snowball sample techniques,
not research people who engage in illegal activity, convince the university
comptroller to invest in purchasing cabinets with working locks, destroy
the interview tapes, not to use signed consent forms, not to interview people
who know each other, minimize the number of interviews, avoid the use of
cyber-pseudonyms, forbid research participants from talking to each other
about the research or interview, or not publish our findings?
The front-stage work of researchers facing research-ethics review requires them to assert anonymity; back-stage, such assertions are hard to
maintain. Whether anonymity is unintentionally violated by the processes
described above, or by office routines (e.g., the University Comptrollers
Office processes financial records that deal with the expense accounts of
fieldresearch, or the departmental secretary knows of your whereabouts).
Through all these considerations that undermine anonymity I may have
painted myself into a corner. Obviously, social-science research does continue to be undertaken and it is also obvious that, so far, relatively few
research participants have objected to the possible breach of anonymity.
So, what gives?
The quandary of anonymity i.e. research-ethics codes insist on anonymity while the practice of research makes it virtually impossible to
maintain anonymity is only resolved with the involvement of the research
participants and the researchers themselves.
Both the natural accretions of daily life and the underuse of data in
ethnographic or qualitative research account for the maintenance of anonymity, rather than the formal rules that govern research ethics.
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writing up the data accounts for the relatively low proportion of quotable
interviews.
C ONCLUSION
Anonymity in qualitative and ethnographic research is in peril it always
was and will ever be. There are, unfortunately, not very many remedies on
hand. The onus is on the researcher to acknowledge that the likelihood of
tearing the veil of anonymity is a real possibility. To that end, the researcher
must incorporate all the known devices to maintain anonymity in the research and publication. Ironically, the only two avenues that may dispell
with the quandary of anonymity, is the research participants volunteering
to attach their real name to the research, or for the researcher to undertake
covert research. The former is unlikely to happen; the latter is undesirable.
In the end, what saves anonymity might be the lack of public interest in
social-science research, the fatigue of research participants, and personal
commitments and reflexion by the researcher.
It would amount to a fascinating research project to see how social
scientists formally oblige research-ethics boards with a blanket promise of
anonymity, while, in practical and informal terms, the assault on anonymity
begins on the first day of research and continues long after the research
has been published. How do we reconcile the front-stage assertions of
anonymity with our back-stage doubts and struggles about anonymity?
Surely, having research participants always identify themselves in the research cannot be a blanket solution. Must we then resign ourselves to
doing covert research? Will such a step loop us back to the genesis of
research-ethics review? Will we find ourselves back in the same corner as
before?
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I wish to thank Adolphine Aggor for a stimulating paper she presented at
the Qualitative Analysis Conference at Carleton University, May 2003.
N OTES
1 A number of feminist researchers are counter-poised to the issue of anonymity. Through
anonymity, they claim, the voices of the research participants are lost and are, in effect, appropriated by researchers. These concerns are particularly relevant in participatory-action
research (see, e.g., Weinberg, 2002, pp. 9091).
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Department of Sociology,
University of New Brunswick,
Fredericton, NB E3B 5A3,
Canada
E-mail: will@unb.ca