Ethical Considerations

The research design was significantly influenced by the programme’s ethical dimensions. The importance of ethics in research was stressed by Basit in 2010 when he wrote that “Ethical considerations are extremely important in educational research and researchers need to ensure that research is conducted in an ethical manner” (p. 56). Moreover, the importance of a strong ethical code for any research programme was well made by Morrow in 2009 who held that unethical research can “seriously damage people’s lives, futures, reputations and relationships”(p. 1). These comments were well heeded during the development stages and conduct of the research.

Specific ethical dilemmas raised by the research programme were appropriately resolved and an ethics statement covering all aspects of the programme was developed. This statement was reviewed and judged to have met the required standards of the ethical approval system of the University.

In developing the ethical protocols for the research, consideration was given to the key underlying principles of ethics that relate specifically to social science and educational research. The exploration of these principles in academic literature played a valuable and instructive role in ensuring that all aspects of the research programme were ethically secure.

The confusion that sometimes exists between the moral and ethical responsibilities of researchers was somewhat resolved by Robson (2002) when he stated:

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Ethics are usually taken as referring to general principles of what one ought to do, while morals are usually taken as concerned with whether or not a specific act is consistent with accepted notions of right and wrong (p. 66).

One of the key principles of ethics specifies that the design should ensure ‘professional integrity and quality’ (Matthews and Ross, 2010). The British Sociology Association (BSA) (2004) included the additional requirement that the findings should be reported accurately and truthfully. A number of actions and processes were included into the research design specifically to address these points.

The actions taken to ensure the professional integrity of this research were guided by the works of organisations such as the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC0 (2010) and BSA (2009), and scholars such O’Leary (2005) and Oliver (2003). The full research programme was professionally supervised from its inception to its completion, and the research data, which were systematically recorded, were tested for validity and reliability. In common with all the research processes, the relationships between the research data and the final conclusions were reported in an open and transparent manner.

‘Informed consent’ is another important key ethical principle that guides the conduct of research. Matthews and Ross (2010) contended:

The basis of informed consent is making sure that the people who are going to take part in the research understand what they are consenting to participate in .... consent should be freely given [with] the right to withdraw at any time without giving any reason (p. 73).

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The seriousness of not gaining informed consent is well illustrated by the medical research known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which began in 1932 in the United States. The ramifications of the unethical approach adopted for this study have influenced ethical research protocols to this day. The consequences of this study were examined by Hesse-Biber in 2005, who concluded:

At no time in the course of this project were subjects asked to give their consent to participate in the study. They were not told about the particulars of what the study would entail. In fact, those who participated did not volunteer for the project! Instead, they were deceived into thinking that they were getting free treatment from government doctors for a serious disease (Hesse-Biber, 2005, p. 84.)

In fact the men participating in the study were not treated for this serious disease even when effective antibiotics became available. They progressed to levels of increased disability and early deaths. Whilst the links between social science and educational research and their consequences are not as direct as those for medical research, any research programme incorrectly managed can produce similarly serious consequences (Morrow, 2009).

For this research programme, the informed consent of all participants was considered of paramount importance and was reflected in the ethics statement. The purpose and objectives of the research were explained to all potential participants and it was stressed that they were free to participate or not as they wished and could withdraw at any time.

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The initial approach made to organisations and individuals inviting them to participate in this research reflected their different contexts and situations. For example, officials, officers and schools were initially contacted by letter or email. This first communication outlined the purpose and process of the research, the underlying ethical principles, stressing particularly the guarantee of anonymity, and stated that the research was conducted under the auspices of Warwick University. In addition, a summary of the researcher’s curriculum vitae was included. In some instances, initial contact was made by telephone as the potential participants were known to the researcher. A summary of the ethics statement was produced for participants. During all first meetings with participants the purpose of the research and ethical issues were discussed.

The research programme could not achieve its objectives if participants were unwilling to comment freely about their work, experiences and perceptions. To ensure full and open participation, the issues of confidentiality and anonymity were addressed. As Matthews and Ross commented in 2010, “Participants should be assured that they will not be identified in the research and that their input to the project will be confidential” (p. 78). The BSA concurred with the thoughts of Mathews and Ross, but also prescribed pre-emptive planning:

The anonymity and privacy of those who participate in the research should be respected. Personal information concerning research participants should be kept confidential. ... Where possible, threats to the confidentiality and anonymity of research data should be anticipated by researchers ... Appropriate measures should be taken to store research data in a secure manner (BSA, 2005, p. 5).

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Guarantees of confidentiality and anonymity of all organisations and individual participants were given and reinforced throughout the conduct of the programme. For example, a guarantee of confidentiality and anonymity was incorporated into the introduction of all questionnaires. The introduction included the statement:

... All information provided through this questionnaire concerning individual children and adults will be treated as confidential and will only be used for the purpose of the research programme. No individual child, adult or organisation will be identified or identifiable in any report or publication ... (Extract from Introduction to questionnaires)

To help ensure confidentiality and anonymity, a coding system was adopted for all participating organisations and individuals. In addition, descriptions of the characteristics of schools or local authorities were restricted to generalisations rather than precise information. For example, case study local authorities were described by generalities so that they could not be identified. The same approach was used for case study schools, teachers, parents and pupils. This was a very important issue for the research as individual pupil data were accessed and analysed. However, all pupils were coded before this took place and no records attributable to individual or groups of pupils were stored in any format, including paper and computer copies. As a further safeguard, the individual pupil codes were computer scrambled and new non- sequential codes created.

In compliance with the principles of data confidentiality, individual participants in interviews were able to determine the recording method for their interviews. Many

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preferred that the interview was not electronically recorded. Others requested that no notes be taken during the interview, but were happy for the content to be summarised following the interview as long as anonymity was assured. As a result, interview data were recorded by a range of methods including electronic, contemporaneous note taking and post-interview summarisations.

Data were stored securely in both hard and electronic formats. The data were accessible only by the researcher and electronic forms were encrypted and password protected. At regular intervals throughout the research programme the effectiveness of the ethical assurance processes was reviewed to assess their continuing fitness for purpose and compliance with the approved ethics statement.

8.7

Conclusion

This Chapter sets out the detail of the research methodology and the processes involved in its development. From the start, there was wide uncertainty about the reliability of the official and unofficial A8 immigration facts. The broadly-based research question reflected this uncertainty. The refining processes helped to define sub- questions linked to specific areas of research. The research design and processes were shaped by the need to gather data that could best answer the research questions. An exploratory, combined method approach was employed as this assisted the collection of evidence enabling unambiguous conclusions relating directly to the principal research question to be drawn.

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Questionnaires, interviews and data collection and analysis were adopted to provide the main evidence base. A range of evidence-collecting instruments was included. This provided opportunity for triangulation to facilitate a clearer and more revealing insight into the pertinent research issues and uncover obscured evidence, referred to by Taleb (2010) as ‘silent evidence’.

Ethical considerations played a pivotal part in all aspects of the research. The sensitive nature of much of the information gathered, especially pupil level data, was respected throughout the research programme. The confidentiality of data and the anonymity of all participants were assured and enhanced through the use of a computer ‘scrambling’ coding system.

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Chapter 9