Dealing with ethnographic issues
Dealing with ethnographic issues
If both IRBs and researchers give a little, you can protect subjects and meet the needs of ethnographers
When IRBs encounter ethnography proposals, their concerns—and requests for change—tend to fall into a few key areas.
Lack of detail in the questions to be asked and in the informed consent process can leave a proposal in limbo.
But those with a foot in both worlds say there are steps that ethnographers and IRBs can take to ensure appropriate protection of informants while still giving the ethnographers the flexibility they need.
Specifying questions
While IRBs want to see specific lists of questions that will be asked of informants, ethnographers generally don't develop questions until they've spent time in the communities they're studying.
As an example, Rena Lederman, PhD, associate professor of anthropology at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, described fieldwork she did in New Guinea earlier in her career.
"I was interested in how large-scale events were organized in decentralized political systems, based on (her) pre-fieldwork reading," she says. "But I couldn't presume to phrase questions in ways that would be meaningful locally until I'd been in my field community for a while.
"While I did eventually conduct informal interviews, the largest part of my research involved in-context conversations and both observing and participating in everyday social life, the peculiarities of which I could not have planned in advance," Lederman says.
Ethnographer Edward Bruner, PhD, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, says that with this type of this research model, the focus of a study can change, and change again over its course.
"We keep in touch with the people we study and we keep reevaluating the study and keep telling them what we think we're finding and we keep recording their reactions to it," he says. "This can go on for a year. It's so different from the biomedical model. And this is what I think is the cause of all the difficulties we've had with IRBs."
Lederman says researchers might address this IRB concern by describing their study's rationale and giving examples of how the researcher would respond if a topic of interest comes up in conversation with informants.
For its part, Lederman says, the board would have to understand that the discovery process in ethnographic fieldwork is inherently open-ended, so the researcher's initial topic of interest at the time of the IRB proposal won't be able to exhaustively describe the final research.
Lederman says this process has worked well on her own IRB.
Informed consent — written or oral?
Ethnographers have long argued that informed consent documents are a bad fit with field research, where, for example, researchers may be working with tribes that are not literate.
Lederman says that the informed consent document itself may pose a risk to informants in certain situations, where it serves as the only evidence of their participation in a study. In order to preserve confidentiality, researchers often will use pseudonyms or numbers in their notes to avoid linking the data to particular people. So the only place a person's name might be available is on an informed consent document.
This might pose a real danger, for example, in human rights research, or in studies that look at illegal activity or stigmatized conditions such as AIDS.
"In field settings, consent forms can be confiscated by local authorities, they can be stolen," Lederman says. "And if they're the only items that associate named individuals with your project, they themselves can constitute a breach of confidentiality."
Moreover, she says, the emphasis on a consent form misrepresents what informed consent entails in ethnographic research, where consent is a long process of gaining trust and access to people.
"In a more conventional experimental style of social research, access means you're negotiating with somebody about coming into the lab or sitting down for an interview," Lederman says. "Access is more like an event. 'Here's exactly what'll happen: Will you do it?' 'Yes I will.' 'Sign this form and let's get going.'
"In ethnography, access is really something that's worked on over the course of the whole research. You're always developing relationships and gaining access to people. As people get to know you better, they're able to judge in new ways what to tell you or show you, and what to allow you to participate with them in."
Lederman notes that consent forms themselves are not required by the Common Rule, which allows for informants to give oral consent. But forms often are required by IRBs because that addresses their own need to document compliance procedures.
Lederman says her IRB has been willing to forego written consent forms in circumstances where they're inappropriate to the cultural situation. Donald K. Robotham, PhD, a professor of anthropology and IRB member at the City University of New York in New York City, says his own IRB actually has insisted on oral consent when they thought informants in a foreign country might be at risk from a written form.
But Lederman says in cases where there will be no written consent, ethnographers need to explain to the IRB the process they will follow in obtaining consent and in helping informants fully understand what the researcher is doing and the risks of participating.
She says researchers — especially novice fieldworkers — need to show that their research preparation has included consultations with scholars who've worked in field circumstances similar to the planned study and who can offer practical advice.
"IRBs need information about this practical preparation," she says. "People don't always explain that well enough the first time around."
And Robotham says IRBs should still ask tough questions about how researchers will ensure that consent is truly voluntary and that the research doesn't put informants at undue risk.
In some cultures, for example, a researcher might seek the oral consent of a village elder before pursuing any work in the village.
"How does one ensure that the elders do not coerce or bring undue pressure on villagers to participate in the study?" he asks. "Or, on the other hand, how does one protect poor informants in a small village from pressure by village or state authorities?
"My IRB has discussed such issues in at least two cases I am familiar with and mainly focused on specifics of the interviews and the village power context, as well as ensuring the security of the data."
When IRBs encounter ethnography proposals, their concerns--and requests for change--tend to fall into a few key areas.Subscribe Now for Access
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