Hawthorne Effect

Where young offenders and the criminal justice system are the focus of investigation it is best to treat the institution as a small community in which its members have different and competing interests. Its members, this includes staff members and young offenders, will be concerned with the impact that a research study may have upon their role within the institution. For example, a staff member may be concerned with the reputation of their organisation or unofficial working practices and may want to paint themselves and their working environment in a favourable light. Similarly, some young offenders may have concerns about their status amongst their peers or the impact of disclosing incriminating information which means they may be likely to keep sensitive issues or concerns hidden. With this in mind, the researcher took into account the potential dangers of the Hawthorne Effect (Payne and Payne 2004), in that the investigation may change a research participant’s attitude under study, particularly in relation to distorting their reality. Efforts were made to highlight that privacy and confidentiality were serious matters taken into consideration by the researcher and the research study. Young offenders were told that the interview recordings and other documents would not be made available to anyone else and any information that would be used for reporting the research findings would be anonymised.

136 6.11 Ethical Practice

Within the following section, I will discuss the implications of informed consent, confidentiality and handling sensitive data in relation to the purpose of this study.

6.11.1 Informed Consent and Confidentiality

Achieving informed consent is commonly promoted as a fundamental guiding principle for an ethically informed approach. In such a way that participants have complete understanding, at all times, of what the research is about and the implications of being involved (Shaw 2003).

To achieve this, the researcher gave each research participant detailed information about the aims of the research so that they could make an informed decision. Each research participant was verbally asked if they were willing to participate in the research study, and the researcher explained in person (following a prescribed script to ensure consistency, see appendix, Table A9: Consent form for research participants) to each participant the purpose of the research study. This allowed the researcher to clarify any concerns, especially in relation to anonymity (De Vaus 2002) and confidentiality (Little 1990). At which point, a signed consent form was retained by the researcher, and a duplicate copy was given to the research participant.

In the interests of maintaining good practice I continually reviewed consent to ensure that the young research participants remained happy with their involvement. The right to withdraw from the study was also emphasised regardless of the implications around the loss of potential data.

The researcher took considerable care in maintaining confidentiality, this was particularly important to enhance trust between myself and the research participants. However, it is essential to recognise that confidentiality does have its limits especially when conducting research with young offenders (France 2004, British Sociological Association 2003, 2002). There were ethical considerations when conducting research

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with young people who have offended, which meant that the same degree of confidentiality could not be guaranteed. There were three areas of particular concern that related to assuring confidentiality to young offenders, these were:

 where a young offender discloses anything that might put themselves at risk or any other person, e.g. self harm, that they are being seriously harmed or ill- treated or that they intend to harm others,

 where a young offender discloses information relating to a crime for which they have not been convicted,

 and where a young offender discloses anything that compromises the security of the environment where they are held, e.g. threats of violence or terrorism, threats to harm staff members or other participants or compromised key security.

Maintaining informed consent meant that the research participants were informed of these caveats before agreeing to participate in the research activities. This allowed each individual the opportunity to make an informed decision around what they wished to disclose or if they choose to participate in the research. Because of the complex nature of the data collection process when implementing multiple methods the research participants were approached to ‘opt-in’ rather than ‘opt-out’ of the research study (Wescott 1998). Meaning, each individual was asked if they were willing to participate at each stage of data collection (an example of the consent form can be found in the appendix).

In further safeguarding the welfare of the young research participants, prior to undertaking the research, and under the Police Act30 (1997), the researcher obtained a criminal record certificate from the Criminal Records Bureau. Historically, this issue had received little attention within social science research organisations. However, given the current political climate of working with young people and vulnerable groups there is no rationale for researchers to be exempt from this requirement (France 2004).

30

For more information go to http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1997/1997050.htm, viewed 06/03/07

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6.11.2 Handling Sensitive Data

When conducting research with vulnerable groups, sensitive data and personal information, researchers are offered a wealth of guidelines and information in relation to anonyminity, confidentiality and data protection. As a statutory act, the Data Protection Act (1998) should be adhered to over and above guidelines on best practice or codes of conduct, however due to the sensitive nature of the research data the researcher decided that the act was limited in fully appreciating the ethical implications of handling sensitive research data. When research data no longer falls within the Act’s guidance of handling personal data, as was the case with this research study, the researcher, in the interests of promoting ethical practice, completely anonymised the research data. The data is only completely anonymised (and thus no longer falls within the Act’s definition of personal data) if it is impossible to identify the individuals from that information plus any other information that the University holds or is likely to hold, for example direct identifiers and indirect identifiers (Masson 2004). When completely anonymising qualitative material, such as transcribed interviews and textual data, pseudonyms or vaguer descriptors should be used to deal with any problematic identifying information, for example:

Original Changed to*

Spain European country

Manchester Northern metropolitan city or English provincial city

20th June June

Amy (real name) Moira (pseudonym)**

Francis my friend

Station Road primary school a primary school

Morrisons a leading supermarket chain

* replacements were identified using square brackets throughout the data

** pseudonyms were selected randomly from ‘Top 100 names in England and Wales’ as published by the office of National Statistics (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_population/2009-girls.xls and

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In accordance with the Chatham House Rule31, confidentiality was maintained by taking considerable care not to pass information to those connected in any way with the participant, including the dissemination of the research findings such as research reports and research publication papers.

Throughout the research process, all of the raw research data, for example, interview tapes, interview transcripts and research notes were kept in a safe lockable place. Once the research was finished, the raw research data was destroyed securely in accordance with the Data Protection Act.

In this chapter, I have discussed the methodology conducted for this study; this includes the research design, sampling and data collection, analysis, researcher role and reflexivity, and ethical practice. The following four chapters present the analysis and discussion for this study. Based upon the findings of the research data the analysis and discussion is divided into four main themes, 1) Risk; 2) Knowledge, Power and Risk; 3) Escapism and 4) the Importance of Mattering. Theme one – Risk – provides a descriptive account of the ways in which expert discourses construct risk and ‘risky behaviour’. Theme two – Knowledge, Power and Risk – explores how an expert knowledge around risk was intertwined with power interests and how, in contrast, this positions the offender. Theme three – Escapism – and theme four – the Importance of Mattering – explore how young offenders talk about risk, what meanings they attach to their behaviour and how this compares to expert discourses around risk.

31

The Chatham House Rule, devised in 1927 and revised in 1992 and 2002, originated at Chatham House with the aim of providing anonymity to speakers and to encourage openness and the sharing of information. The Chatham House Rule reads as follows ‘when a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participants, may be revealed’ (Chatham House, http://www.riia.org/index.php?id=14 )

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Chapter Seven