Ethical Consideration

For studies involving the human participants and social perceptions such as this research, it is necessary to consider ethical issues to ensure the objectivity, the confidentiality, and the protected identity of the research participants

(Hammersley, 1995; Kellehear, 1989). Ethics and social or human-related studies are closely connected, where the choices of methodological approaches,

strategies, and data-collection and data-analysis techniques are critically affected by the ethics-related aspects (Kellehear, 1989). Type of participants, age of participants, their social and political contexts, the privacy of their personal information, the relationship between them and the researcher, and effects of the research on their lives, are among the considerable ethical issues for such studies (Kellehear, 1989).

In this research, the ethical considerations were captured through the lens of the above considerable issues and in accordance with the current regulations of ethics of the RMIT University for human-related studies. The RMIT University had granted the present research an Official Ethics Approval in January of 2013 (see Appendix D) for its subsequent fieldwork and other pertinent research activities in completing this thesis.

In response to this Approval, all participants interviewed by this research had the age of above 18 and below 60, to ensure their sufficient recognition and

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understanding of the interview issues before answering. They had a full right to decide whether to give opinions/responses or not without any influence from interviewers or others. They could give no answer without reason or explanation if they wanted. In addition, there was no pre-existing relationship between the researcher and the interviewees that could influence the interviewees ’responses or answers. All the interviewees were residents/staff living in the case-study sites and, therefore, unknown to the researcher before (who came from another place).

The interviewees were randomly selected from the list, and their engagement in this research was purely voluntary without influence from or reliance on anyone.

Before any interviews or discussions during the fieldwork, the participants had clear explanations about the purpose of this research and the associated interview or discussion, for their full understanding of the activity, before deciding whether to give responses or not. They were asked to sign a consent form before the interview or discussion, if they agreed. They could skip some questions during the interview or discontinue the interview at any time if they found something unclear or untrustworthy. These ethics-related considerations were fully respected by the researcher in the fieldwork implementation.

Moreover, this research would not generate any cultural, social and political biases, conflicts or tensions among participants, since the questions for interviews and discussions were mainly associated with the housing issues and people’s perceptions on building housing resilience to future climate threats. Information relating to the personality and privacy of the participants would not be asked because it was not relevant to the purpose of this research. In the case of some questions that contain part of personal information of the participants, the identity and privacy of individuals were protected by the replacement of their original name and home address to avoid any further influences on them in the future.

In terms of storage, the data collected from the fieldwork are safely stored and will be kept for at least five years after the publication of the research findings (thesis) according to the current RMIT University policies. The hard copies of the household questionnaire and interview sheets have been stored in a safe place, where the researcher is the only one person that can access them.

In short, as recognised by the Ethics Approval granted by the RMIT University, this research was classified as a low-risk study that has no or little (not significant) effect on the research participants.

106 3.5 Research Validity

To validate this study, the researcher has submitted several papers that summarise the results of this study to different academic conferences and peer-reviewed journals, to check responses and feedback from international in-field experts and scholars. Overall, this study has been acknowledged and appreciated by the international research community. Namely, one paper was recognised as one of the best papers at a conference in Cyprus in October of 2013, where the researcher was invited to present the research outcomes in front of the whole workshop⁶; and one paper was published in a peer-reviewed journal, Natural Hazards, in June 2015⁷. In addition, during the time that this thesis was being reviewed by examiners after its initial submission on 10th August 2015, this study was afterwards submitted to the Springer International Publisher and, consequently, has been published as a reference book in the field of CCA and DRR⁸, in early 2016. These achievements indicate that this study is an original research project whose results have been recognised by the international research community through the published works above.

3.6 Conclusion

This chapter has described the research design, where the methodology, methods, and techniques used in this research were justified and outlined. As this research focused on exploring social, institutional, and technical issues beyond the

formation of disaster-resilient housing, the interpretive paradigm (Bryman, 2008;

Travers, 2001) was then applied as the backbone of the research design to decide the chosen research methods and techniques. The case study method (Platt, 1999;

Maxwell, 2005; Bryman & Burgess, 1999), one of the most common and effective strategies for qualitative research, was employed to ground the three major themes of this research in the real-world context of Central Vietnam. These themes are (i) Community Consultation, (ii) the Role of Built-environment Professionals, and (iii) Design Principles for Resilience. The interpretive methodology and the

6 The conference proceedings can be accessed at

http://www.disaster-resilience.net/images/Docs/ds1_proceedings.pdf, the paper title is “Post-disaster Housing Reconstruction as a Significant Opportunity to building Disaster Resilience: a Case in Vietnam”.

7 The link of this paper can be found at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11069-015-1826-3.

8 The link of this book can be found at http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319267418.

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study method have shown their valuable contribution in guiding the conduct of this research.

The selected methodology and methods above also affected the selection of data collection and analysis techniques. Accordingly, two common techniques for data collection in qualitative research, qualitative interviews and participant

observations (Hennink et al., 2011; Bryman, 2008), were applied by this research to gather data on the ground; whereas the thematic analysis technique (Bryman, 2008; Braun & Clarke, 2006) was employed for data analysis and interpretation.

The use of these techniques not only helped to gain reliable information and data from the field but also enabled an effective data analysis and interpretation of significant findings.

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Chapter 4 : Fieldwork Implementation and Case Studies