Estructura Vial Actual

Ethical considerations are vital in research to ensure that participants’ rights are protected, and there is no risk or potential harm to their personal and/or professional life. In the following paragraphs, the ethics procedures this study followed are described, explaining the researcher’s awareness of the need to address ethical issues in conducting the fieldwork, besides considering the applied methodology – narrative inquiry – and its challenges with regards to the participants’ rights and protection.

Denzin and Lincoln (2013) state that particular ethical issues arise in narrative study. Unlike qualitative studies in general, which commonly use short quotes from interviews in their published work, narrative researchers usually present or publish longer stories from individuals’ narratives; however, “this increases the risk that narrators will feel vulnerable or exposed by narrative work” (Denzin, and Lincoln, 2013, p.61). Further, in Josselson’s (2007b) article The ethical attitude in narrative research, another ethical consideration was raised. She highlights a need to articulate narrative research to participants, and appeals to researchers to improve ‘ethical attitude’ which must be sensibly developed based on each research situation (Denzin and Lincoln, 2013). In this research, the interviewees’ contribution in the study was well-grounded. Narrative research was explained to all participants, they were informed about the purpose of the study, how the data should be used, and anonymity. One of the challenges facing the narrative inquiry researchers is the ‘rights of representation’

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(Gergen and Gergen 2003; Hunter, 2010). To address this, informed consent was sought from the participants for every step of conducting the fieldwork (interviews); this includes recoding the interviews, permission to use the data for academic purposes, and permission to publish the data prior to, during, and after the research is completed. Above all, confidentiality and privacy were guaranteed. The interviews were primary-recorded, then transcribed, translated, and cited as anonymous transcripts.

Moreover, Punch (1994) claims that ethical issues should be aligned with the research’s methods. He asserts that suitable training on ethics should be given to researchers, particularly in a qualitative study. Also, Walker (2000) advises that the relationship between the researcher and the participants must be based on ethical principles. (Hence, an ethical training (workshop) on conducting research with human participants, and an online ethics course (as part of the Epigeum online Course System provided by Anglia Ruskin University) were undertaken. As a result, a Certificate of Good Research Practice was obtained.

In addition, ethics approval for this study was obtained from the Faculty (LAIBS) Research Ethics Panel (FREP) under the terms of Anglia Ruskin University’s Research Ethics Policy on 8 December 2014 (see Appendix A). In the application, information about the research, including its strategies to conduct the fieldwork in detail, the selection of participants, the possible jeopardies expected including solutions to mitigate them, consent form, besides suggestions and clarifications in how confidentiality, and anonymity will be ensured by the researcher, were provided.

Webster and Mertova (2007) argue that the responsibilities and rights of both the participants and researcher need to be considered. They state that ethical issues within the research are not merely concerned with the “formal application for confirmation of the study by a university or research institution, but, perhaps more importantly, are reflected in the procedures used in the conduct of the study” (Webster and Mertova, 2007, p. 94). Hence, in this study and before starting the interviews, the participants were introduced to the researcher, and the nature, and purposes of the study were explained in the participant information sheet (see Appendix B). This step aimed to ensure that all the participants were well informed and clear about their roles. Also, the participants’ signatures were obtained on the consent form (see Appendix C) which was given to the participants prior to the interviews. The consent form was clear about how the data would be processed, used, and protected in this study. It was explicit as well that confidentiality, anonymity, and privacy

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were assured and, more importantly, it was highlighted that the participant had the right and freedom to withdraw at any point if he or she did not want to continue with the interviews.

Lieblich (1998, in Clandinin and Murphy, 2007) proposes that because narrative researchers have no clue in advance about precisely how they will present the data collected from the fieldwork, it is wiser to come back to the narrators in order to inform them and ask them again for their permission to use their stories once they do know how they design to use, publish, or present the work (Denzin and Lincoln, 2013). In this research, all participants were asked to provide feedback at several points alongside the study process (William and Morrow, 2009). This process is named ‘member checking’ by Guba and Lincoln, (1989), and it was applied in this study as explained earlier (see section 4.4.2).

Ethical issues should be considered on a persistent rather than on a one-time basis (Miles and Huberman, 1994). Thus, they should extend to collecting data, analysing the data and even to the discussion, interpretation, and distribution of the results of the study (Denscombe, 2007). In effect, in this study the recorded interviews and their transcriptions, and translations are stored on a protected-password personal laptop used for all the research processes including analysis, and interpretation. In addition, all the data, recorded interviews will be destroyed when the research is completed

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