Ethical considerations involve both empathy for moral and ethical rights and wrongs as well as adherence to institutional codes of conduct. For this doctoral research, the institutional codes were two-fold with Cardiff University and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) each publishing their own ethical guidelines and/or holding research ethics committees. As an ESRC funded project there was full adherence to the ESRC Research Ethics Framework (2015) which outlines six key principles of ethical research which must be addressed:
1) Research participants should take part voluntarily, free from any coercion or undue influence, and their rights, dignity and (when possible) autonomy should be respected and appropriately protected.
2) Research should be worthwhile and provide value that outweighs any risk or harm. Researchers should aim to maximise the benefit of the research and
minimise the potential risk of harm to participants and researchers. All potential risk and harm should be mitigated by robust precautions.
3) Research staff and participants should be given appropriate information about the purpose, methods and intended uses of the research, what their participation in the research entails and what risks and benefits, if any, are involved.
4) Individual research participant and group preferences regarding anonymity should be respected and participant requirements concerning the confidential nature of information and personal data should be respected.
5) Research should be designed, reviewed and undertaken to ensure recognised standards of integrity are met, and quality and transparency are assured.
6) The independence of research should be clear, and any conflicts of interest or partiality should be explicit.
The ethical decisions taken in the design of this research, then, were not made in isolation but in the context of a thorough and considered framework that accommodates both the expected moral outlook of a researcher and professional guidelines (Wiles et al. 2008, p. 34). Prior to the fieldwork I secured ethical approval from Cardiff University by outlining how I would prepare for and address potential issues. However, this capital
‘E’ ethics – which is also described as ‘procedural ethics’ by Guillemin and Gillam (2004) – fails to address the “messier, ongoing, impure, continually updated set of ethics that develop over time and through experiences” which emerge from the everyday encounters that occur throughout the research process (Crang and Cook 2007, p. 32).
Lowercase ‘e’ ethics, as defined by Crang and Cook (2007, p. 32), requires more than doing ‘the right thing’ or knowing what the right thing is in the first place, but are shaped from situated decisions and ongoing debates about how we should act in the world which are not always straightforward or predictable (Lofland and Lofland 1995, p. 30). Following the suggestion of Guillemin and Gillam (2004, pp. 277-278), then, reflexivity was incorporated into the research practice by acknowledging and being sensitive to the
‘ethics in practice’ which might emerge in situ, and being alert and prepared for ways of dealing with the ethical tensions that might arise.
3.4.1 Privacy and confidentiality
According to Bulmer (2008, p. 150), ethical research requires striking a balance between exposing the hidden processes at work in modern society and protecting the privacy of participants. As Reiss (1979, p. 79 cited in Christians 2000, p. 139) states “the single most likely source of harm in social science inquiry is the disclosure of private knowledge considered damaging by experimental subjects”. As such confidentiality was guaranteed
to research participants in this study as the primary safeguard against unwanted exposure.
Self-storage company employees and managers acted as gatekeepers in allowing and facilitating access through which to recruit research participants. Once they had vetted my recruitment materials (Appendix B, C and D) many chose to distribute them via email complying with the confidentiality agreements they held with their customers. Those self-storage users who returned the questionnaire to me and indicated their agreement to take part in interviews did so voluntarily. All participants were told at the outset that any and all data collected would be treated as confidential (see next sub-section on informed consent). In order to maintain the participants’ privacy pseudonyms were used instead of real names in order to ensure anonymity. All other features that could identify participants, including the location of their self-storage unit, were removed from transcripts at the transcription stage and some photographs have been doctored accordingly.
Completed questionnaires, scanned in copies of consent forms, audio recordings of the interviews, photographs and transcripts were held securely on an office computer and personal laptop (both password-protected) and backed-up on a hard-drive disk kept in a locked drawer. Data files at no point were shared with other parties.
3.4.2 Informed consent
Before commencing interviews with participants it was essential to acquire their informed consent to participate: what Bulmer (2008, p. 150) describes as the linchpin of ethical behaviour in research. Informed consent refers to the provision of sufficient information about a research project so that potential participants are aware of its nature and consequences before they decide whether or not to participate (Christians 2000, p. 138).
Prior to beginning our first interview the participants were provided with a copy of the information sheet if they had not received or retained one from the recruitment materials (Appendix C) and a consent form (Appendix E). This gave them the fullest information concerning the nature and purpose of the research in order to decide upon their participation. I talked through the form with participants to further ensure they did not feel uninformed or deceived (Tracey and Carmichael 2010).
3.4.3 Hoarding disorder
Over recent years hoarding has been the subject of a tremendous amount of media interest, particularly day-time TV programs like The Hoarder Next Door (Twenty Twenty 2012). This attention is remarkable because hoarding was virtually absent in research and healthcare until the early 1990s. Frost and Steketee (2014, p. 3) describe how, following the first paper on hoarding in 1993 and then subsequent definition in 1996, they
have “felt like passengers on a runaway train”, inundated with requests for help from health departments, elderly services, housing official and fire departments.
Understanding of hoarding has developed considerably over the last two decades and in 2017 the World Health Organisation added hoarding disorder as a new category under OCD, although this categorisation is contested with some suggesting it is a condition in its own right (OCD UK 2019). The condition is generally now understood as “where someone acquires an excessive number of items and stores them in a chaotic manner, usually resulting in unmanageable amounts of clutter. The items can be of little or no monetary value” (NHS 2018). Those with hoarding disorder can find the idea of discarding items distressing, and their personal, social, and domestic lives impaired by the quantity of things in their possession.
With hoarding disorder categorised as a mental illness these individuals could be defined as ‘vulnerable’ people under the broad understanding of the term in social research (see von Benzon and van Blerk 2017). So to avoid the possibility of distress to research participants it was decided that those clinically diagnosed with hoarding disorder would not be invited to participate or, if identified at interview stage, be removed from the study immediately. Since the question of hoarding was not directly addressed on the recruitment materials, to avoid putting off potential participants, it was necessary to be vigilant for signs of the condition in questionnaire responses and introductory conversations with participants. I further familiarised myself with the ‘clutter rating scale’
(Frost et al. 2008) but this had limited applicability to self-storage units which, by their nature, contain more than the average living room or bedroom. In the end, I had to take a common-sense approach, particularly because participants often described themselves as hoarders in a non-clinical sense.
3.4.4 ‘Emotional baggage’
As noted on the Ethical Approval Form for this project, it is possible that some individuals rent self-storage at stressful or emotional points in their lives (e.g. relationship break-up, bereavement) and this may result in upsetting narratives to being divulged during the interviews. These were not explicitly sought in the interviews but often emerged when discussing the events leading up to renting self-storage units or in relation to specific objects in the units. As the interviews were in-depth and largely non-directive, conversation was led by the participants who were able to dictate the content and form of the research (Brannen 1988). Talking about sensory methods Harris and Guillemin (2012, p. 696) suggest that research which explores participants’ experiences can lead into areas that would otherwise remain concealed and tapping into this may unleash emotions for which participants’ are unprepared. I made it clear at the outset that participants could withhold responding to questions if they wanted, and the interview
could be paused or ended at any point. Whilst I had not experienced many of the significant life events participants described during the course of their interviews, I empathised with the participants as best I could, acknowledging the emotions and tensions brought to the fore in discussing intimate personal and family practices. When similar life experiences had happened to me I found that sharing this established intimacy (Ng 2017). In many ways sharing personal stories created a sense of affirmation and social support (McKay 2002), which facilitated the research process but also affected the ways in which the participants related to me as a researcher (see Hubbard et al. 2001, pp. 129-130). Materials were taken to the interviews with which I could direct participants to appropriate bodies or services (such as the Citizen Advice Bureau) if the difficult subjects emerged. However, perhaps due to the age difference between myself and participants (many commented that they had children or grandchildren about my age) my advice was never sought in this way.
Ng (2017, p. 413) identifies that the research process “is active and morphing, evolving while the researcher experiences changes in his/her own life”, and that coping with emotional personal events can change the way the researcher relates to the research.
As a research project punctuated three times by the loss of loved ones the issue of emotion was reflected upon more often than expected. From its inception it had been clear that emotion would be a key topic of the research and it threatened and was tangible during a number of the interviews. Harris and Guillemin (2012, p. 696) state that it is not unusual to experience a strong resonance with some interview narratives. This may lead the researcher to reflect on their own life and personal situation (Hochschild 1983). In this research the narratives brought up by participants around experiences of bereavement were particularly difficult. One participant asked, mid-flow while recounting his self-storage story following the death of his mother, if I had ever experienced loss.
He proceeded without me responding, but from that point I was lost in thought about the funeral that I would be attending the next day. With great difficulty I had to drag myself out of that reverie to be fully present in the interview. Various strategies have been suggested for ‘emotion management’ during fieldwork including pacing interviews, keeping a personal diary and informal de-briefing sessions with peers (see for example Hubbard et al. 2001). My field diary became a particularly key tool to debrief and acknowledge how my own experiences and feelings of grief might be impacting upon the interviews. Research is an emotional and personal journey whereby researchers simultaneously draw upon theoretical ideas, experiences of conducting research and their own personal biographies in the pursuit of new understandings, thereby recreating themselves as researchers and individuals in the process.
An emotional response to a participant’s narrative – felt as sympathy, empathy and a resonance with the researcher’s own experiences – can also be productive because it has the ability to alert a researcher to the meanings and behaviours of those he/she is interviewing (Wilkins 1993). Emotion has an interpretative function because it enables the researcher to gain intuitive insight and subsequently allows inchoate knowledge to develop. Brannen (1988) suggests that awareness of the role of emotion in research should be extended beyond the interview process. When interpreting data we should acknowledge that the respondent’s narrative is ‘shrouded in emotionality’ and because of this will be ambiguous and contradictory at times. Emotion is both data in its own right and a method of understanding. It is necessary to acknowledge that my own emotional responses to participants’ experiences were present in the interpretation of the interview transcripts.
3.5 Chapter conclusions
This chapter has examined the particular research process adopted in this thesis from the recruitment of research participants, choice and implementation of research methods, and ethical considerations. It does so to explore the experiences of using self-storage in the UK. In line with good research practice I have attempted to be mindful throughout this project of my own views, values and assumptions and how my own identity, experiences and relationships with objects may affect data collection, analysis and written work. I have attempted to be reflexive about my interpretations of participants’
narratives (Butler 2001), without falling into “self-indulgent navel-gazing” (Ley and Mountz 2001, p. 245). In reality, it is not possible to be completely reflexive as our identities and subjectivities are constantly shifting in response to events in our lives and experiences as researchers (see Dwyer and Limb 2001). Therefore, the incompleteness of my accounts and self-awareness are acknowledged.
The accounts of self-storage users’ experiences in this thesis are also inevitably partial.
They present only a selection of perspectives of the place of self-storage in experiences of life transitions, trajectories and events as well as showing broader ways and practices of ‘living with things’. The analytical frames are based upon my personal interpretations of, and responses to, extant research (Chapter 2). Nevertheless, the situated-ness of the research does not negate its utility in speaking back to the issues which informed it.
Indeed, as I demonstrate in subsequent chapters, the specificities of the experiences unpacked here can illuminate much broader issues from which new theorisations can develop. The following four empirical chapters provide different insights into the overlapping relations between objects, people and space. They address how self-storage fits into everyday lives and offers insight into the ways that it acts as a contingency and categorises, connects and consolidates.