Confidentiality
Topic 5: Methods
Most studies and dissertations you will read assign a pseudonym for the organization and participants involved. Why is that? There are several reasons. First, participants may be reluctant to provide candid responses to your questions unless their identities cannot be identified. In fact, in some studies looking at sensitive topics, being identified could put participants at risk – for embarrassment, censure from a boss, or even prosecution for potentially illegal activity.
Hypothetical situation:The organization you are using in your dissertation has said that it doesn't mind being named in the study. Should you create a pseudonym for it or not? Typically, traditional social science research ethics suggest that you use pseudonyms to protect the privacy of participants, even when they say they don't mind. The concern is that they may not mind now, but they might mind in the future.
Additionally, particularly in qualitative studies using interviews, it may be prudent to not provide specific descriptors of participants if those descriptors would allow someone familiar with the organization to identify the participant. For example, one student conducted a study of successful African American PhD students. While the original intent was to look at their experiences by academic department, the institution had so few African American PhD students that identifying the department (i.e.,"Student A, a 3rd year PhD student in English") would have made it easy to identify the student. The researcher ended up describing the distribution of academic departments in the aggregate in the beginning of Chapter 4 (“Thirty four students participated in interviews; Table 1 provides the departmental affiliation of the students.") and later identifying the participants when citing quotations from them only as "Participant 1" etc.
CITI training for the IRB process provides additional information about protecting your participants and the use of pseudonyms.
Hypothetical situation:The organization you are using in your dissertation has said that it doesn't mind being named in the study. Should you create a pseudonym for it or not? Typically, traditional social science research ethics suggest that you use pseudonyms to protect the privacy of participants, even when they say they don't mind. The concern is that they may not mind now, but they might mind in the future.
Additionally, particularly in qualitative studies using interviews, it may be prudent to not provide specific descriptors of participants if those descriptors would allow someone familiar with the organization to identify the participant. For example, one student conducted a study of successful African American PhD students. While the original intent was to look at their experiences by academic department, the institution had so few African American PhD students that identifying the department (i.e.,"Student A, a 3rd year PhD student in English") would have made it easy to identify the student. The researcher ended up describing the distribution of academic departments in the aggregate in the beginning of Chapter 4 (“Thirty four students participated in interviews; Table 1 provides the departmental affiliation of the students.") and later identifying the participants when citing quotations from them only as "Participant 1" etc.
CITI training for the IRB process provides additional information about protecting your participants and the use of pseudonyms.
 |
 |
