ERIC Number: EJ1402633
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023
Pages: 23
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1570-1727
EISSN: EISSN-1572-8544
When the Researched Refused Confidentiality: Reflections from Fieldwork Experience in Ghana
Journal of Academic Ethics, v21 n4 p567-589 2023
Meeting appropriate ethical standards for research involving human participants, mean ensuring confidentiality. It is assumed that the research participant will accept the safeguarding protocols necessary to ensure confidentiality. This assumption however oversimplifies the variation of motivations that goes into participants' decisions to participate in research. Drawing on reflections from my fieldwork experience in Ghana, I answer the questions: Why do research participants reject confidentiality? What ethical position can one take when the researcher and the researched have conflicting perspectives about confidentiality? I contend that participants with personal stake refuse confidentiality when they want to be acknowledged for their data. Rejecting confidentiality is however, embedded in the individual perspective, cultural, and political context of the study area. The ethical concerns of such refusal can be ameliorated if confidentiality is nuanced to include six categorically distinct but mutually non-exclusive stages: research-planning, ongoing-information, writing-up, reality-after-research, differential-disseminations, and no-confidentiality-clause. The paper further argues that whilst maintaining institutional allegiance in this matter is crucial, employing confidentiality should lie at the intersection of participants' motivation for taking part in the research, the socio-cultural-specific-context of the study location and the nature of the topic being explored.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Research, Confidentiality, Field Experience Programs, Cultural Context, Political Influences, Social Environment, Research Methodology, Data Collection, Ethics
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Ghana
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A