Definition
The undertaking of research without the consent of research subjects, by the researcher posing as an ordinary member of the collectivity, or by the experi- mental manipulation of research subjects without their knowledge.
Distinctive Features and Evaluation
There is little point in trying to separate the evaluation of covert research meth- ods from a discussion of its distinctive features, since the central preoccupation in all methodological writing on covert research is a concern with whether or not covert research is ethical. Although research ethics committees routinely require would-be researchers to obtain the informed consent of their research subjects, and informed consent is seen as a cornerstone of ethical research practice, not all guidelines on ethical research practice explicitly prohibit covert research. Thus, the Statement of Ethical Practice of the British Sociological Association states that the use of covert methods may be justified in certain circumstances, instancing the difficulties that arise when people change their behaviour because they know they are being studied and (more compellingly) the denial of open research access by powerful or secretive interests. However, the same guidelines state that covert research ‘should be resorted to only where it is impossible to use other methods to obtain essential data’. In effect, two tests are being applied here: that other methods are impossible and that the data obtained by covert research are essential. These are stringent tests and it follows that, even where non-covert
Covert Research
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*Heritage, J. (1997) ‘Conversational analysis and institutional talk’, in D. Silverman (ed.), Qualitative Research:
Theory, Method and Practice. London:
Sage. pp. 161–182.
Heritage, J. and Greatbatch, D. (1991) ‘On the institutional character of institutional talk: the case of news interviews’, in D. Boden and D.H. Zimmerman (eds), Talk and Social
Structure: Studies in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. Cambridge:
Polity Press. pp. 93–137.
Hutchby, I. and Wooffitt, R. (1998)
Conversation Analysis: Principles, Practices and Applications. Oxford: Polity Press.
Mehan, H. (1979) Learning Lessons:
Social Organisation in the Classroom.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation (vol. I). Ed. Gail Jefferson; Intro. by Emanuel A. Schegloff. Oxford: Blackwell. *Ten Have, P. (1999) Doing Conversation
Analysis: A Practical Guide. London:
research is prohibited, it will rarely be unambiguously justifiable: there are a number of instances on record of researchers receiving permission to undertake research on secretive organizations (for example, Fielding’s 1982 research on the far-right political organization, the National Front); and comparatively few social scientists would be sufficiently megalomaniacal as to claim that their research was ‘essential’ for humankind.
It is sometimes argued that some data can only be obtained by participant observers who have withheld their true status from those in the study setting. For example, a number of early studies of mental hospitals in the 1950s and 60s (e.g. Caudill, 1958) involved the researcher simulating mental illness, and Buckingham (Buckingham et al., 1976) underwent severe weight loss in order to simulate a dying patient in both a hospice and a conventional hospital ward. These studies were important in their day and contributed to policies and prac- tice, but the growth of ethnographic research in nursing studies has meant that access to ‘backstage’ hospital settings is now readily obtainable by trained nurse- ethnographers. The dissemination of qualitative research methods among dif- ferent professional groups has transformed the conduct of ethnographies in institutional settings: the present case for the dissembling participant observer is less strong than in the past. Other arguments mobilized against covert research by its critics (for example, Dingwall, 1980) include the betrayal of trust, the pain suffered by research subjects who may subsequently discover that they have been the victims of fraud, the invasion of privacy, and the possible adverse effect on research access for future researchers. Sluka (1995) has argued that the decep- tions of covert research may make fieldwork more dangerous for fieldworkers.
While the above seems to establish a strong case against any covert social science research as unethical, there nevertheless remains a contrary case to be made. In the first place, much ethnographic research in street settings begins as covert research: it is only when close relationships have been established with at least some research subjects that the researcher’s purposes can be revealed and informed consent can be sought. In some cases, and for some sensitive research topics, the initial covert stage of street ethnography can last for a long period: Chambliss’s (1975) study of organized crime in Seattle (which took place over a ten-year period), began with a three-month period of covert observation before he ‘came clean’ to a person he had come to know who ran an illegal backstreet gambling operation and whom Chambliss then asked for help. Relatedly, in any street ethnography, there will be collectivity members, who are only peripheral actors in the settings in which the researcher has a research interest, who will never receive any explanation of the research topic and will never have the opportunity to give or withhold their consent. Any ethnographer who stopped all and sundry on the streets to explain his or her purpose and seek their consent to his or her presence would quickly either empty the streets or get punched on the
nose. So street ethnography depends on covert observation, at least for some research subjects and for part of the time.
Examples
Although covert qualitative research projects are still sometimes undertaken, the controversy surrounding covert methods has probably made such studies less common than they were previously. So it should be no surprise that our exemplar studies are drawn from the 1960s and 70s.
The experimental manipulation of research subjects without their knowl- edge occurs more frequently in quantitative studies, particularly in psycholog- ical laboratories (for example, the Milgram [1963] experiments on obedience, where the great majority of research subjects showed themselves perfectly will- ing to inflict pain on others when instructed to do so). But this manipulation can occur in qualitative studies also: in the course of Braginsky, Braginsky and Ring’s (1969) mental hospital study, one group of patients were told that the pur- pose of their upcoming psychiatric assessment was to see whether they were fit for discharge, while another group of patients were told that the purpose was to see whether they were capable of remaining on their open ward (or must return to a locked ward). When the assessment results of the two groups were compared, new patients performed equally well no matter what they thought the purpose of the assessment was; but long-standing patients performed better in the assess- ments when they thought they might be banished back to the locked ward, than when they thought they might be discharged. This unethical experiment remains the best demonstration available of the ability of patients secretly to influence doctors’ seemingly objective clinical judgements.
An example of covert research being used to penetrate a secretive and power- ful group is Wallis’s study of the Scientology cult. According to Wallis (1977), the Scientologists responded, not just by complaining to his research funders about his unethical behaviour and threatening legal action, but also by some covert activities of their own – espionage among his colleagues and students, attempted entrapment, and forged letters implicating him in homosexual acts and spying for the drug squad. The force of the Scientologists’ alleged response to his research may perhaps be taken as a measure of the importance of his findings.
The most famous example of unethical covert research practice in quali- tative social science is almost certainly Humphreys’s (1970) Tearoom Trade. The book is an account of Humphreys’s PhD research on anonymous sexual encounters in public lavatories (‘tearooms’ in American gay argot), which Humphreys observed while posing as a ‘watchqueen’ (one who gets his kicks by watching others have sex, while simultaneously keeping a look-out for intruders). At the suggestion of his Director of Research, Lee Rainwater, the distinguished Harvard sociologist, Humphreys went on to collect a sample of Covert Research
tearoom users’ car licence plates (most users drove to the tearooms). It is not clear whether the next step occurred at Rainwater’s suggestion or on Humphreys’s own initiative: ‘friendly policemen’ (without ‘becoming too inquisitive’ about the reason for Humphreys’s interest – Humphreys, 1970: 38) then gave Humphreys access to the police licence registers to trace the tearoom users’ names and addresses. (Quite apart from the misuse of police records, the known punitive attitude of the police to tearoom users made this method of sample tracing an exceedingly risky one for the unsuspecting sample mem- bers.) Having traced his sample, he was able to add their names to a univer- sity community health survey he was working on (with the permission of the director of the survey!), so that he could interview them and gain, by this deception, personal data on their employment, marital status and other mat- ters. D.J. West, the Cambridge criminologist, wrote a foreword for the UK edi- tion of Tearoom Trade, describing these research methods as ‘enterprising’.