Principios generales de la relación de las Comunidades Autónomas entre sí y con el Estado

In conducting this research, a number of important ethical considerations were identified and taken into account. These included obtaining consent from research participants, confidentiality and anonymity. The means by which consent to conduct interviews was sought depended on the type of interview and with whom they were conducted. In the case of semi- structured interviews with key informants such as representatives of NGOs or government, a letter of introduction including an outline of my research was forwarded to each potential interviewee.20

This was followed by a phone call to discuss whether they were willing to participate and, if they were, to arrange a meeting time. Upon meeting the interviewee, I once again explained who I was, where I was from, my research objectives, and why their participation was being sought. Their verbal consent was sought to participate in the interview and written consent sought to publish their name in my thesis.21 The participants were made aware that they had the right to refuse consent and withdraw from the research at any time.

Because households were selected at random for the Household and Privatisation Surveys, I was not able to provide respondents with information prior to conducting the surveys. Once houses were selected, my research assistant would introduce us to the occupants and explain how I was conducting research on water in Tagbilaran and requested their participation. During this introduction, respondents were free to ask questions concerning my affiliation, research objectives and so forth, and also to refuse to participate without providing an explanation. Confidentiality and anonymity were assured and no personal or identifying information was collected.

Confidentiality was ensured by coding interview transcripts and prohibiting access to this information by others. All quotes presented in this thesis are from individuals who have given their written permission for me to quote them and to use their names. To ensure anonymity of informants, I have used codes for interview respondents in the body of the thesis rather than identifying them by name despite having permission to identify them because of my concerns that some of the material provided may be viewed as inflammatory by others. For consistency, this convention has been applied for all interview responses even those which are innocuous in content. Codes have been determined based on the organisational affiliation of informants. Each code is a unique identifier and comprises initials to represent the organisation/group they were representing at the time of the interview, and a number. Interviews were conducted with informants representing national government agencies (NG), provincial government agencies (PG), local government agencies (LG), waterworks utilities (WW), national government line agencies (LA), and representatives of non-governmental organisations, citizen groups and other

20

See Appendix A for an example of letter and outline.

21

members of civil society (CS). Coding for interview respondents and the identifiers which appear in this thesis are summarised in Table 2.2 below.22

Code Description Identification in thesis

NG National government agencies such as the National Water Resources Board

NG#1 – NG#2 PG Representatives from the provincial government

such as the Provincial Planning and Development Office

PG#1 – PG#5

LG Representatives from the Municipality of Corella and the City Government of Tagbilaran

LG#1 – LG#6 WW Tagbilaran City Waterworks System, Bohol Water

Utilities Inc., and Corella Waterworks System

WW#1 – WW#5 LA National government line agencies such as DENR

representatives in the region/province

LA#1 – LA#2 CS Representatives from NGOs, citizen’s groups, and

other civil society groups

CS#1 – CS#4

Table 2.2 Interview codes

Codes have also been used to identify quotes made by survey respondents. Each survey code is unique and allows for responses to be matched to location (Tagbilaran or Corella) and waterworks utility (see Table 2.3 below). Where quotes are used additional information, such as barangay or household income class,23

is also noted where relevant in parentheses.

Survey Code Survey Type Waterworks Utility Consumers

COR001 to COR 025

Corella Household Surveys CWS consumers

TAG001 to TAG098 Tagbilaran Household Surveys BWUI consumers

TAG099 to TAG141 Tagbilaran Household Surveys TCWS consumers

PRIV001 to PRIV100

Tagbilaran Privatisation Surveys BWUI consumers

Table 2.3: Survey codes

In keeping with the ethical requirements of my university, I discussed the ethical considerations of my research with each of my research assistants before commencing data collection. As an additional measure, I asked each of my research assistants to sign an ethical research agreement form.24

As noted above, each assistant had previous experience in research and conducting surveys and was, therefore, aware of matters such as obtaining consent, the need for confidentiality and anonymity.

22

For a general description of interview respondents and the dates interviews were conducted see Appendix C.

23

Household income information was obtained and has been grouped into classes

corresponding to the Provincial and Tagbilaran City Government’s classification system as per

the Provincial Medium Term Development Plan (1997) Socio-economic Profile for Tagbilaran

City (2002) and the Comprehensive Land Use Plan: Tagbilaran City (2001). The classes range

from Class 1 (P1,000 per month) to Class 10 (greater than P10,000 per month). See Appendix D for further information.

24

Permission to conduct fieldwork was granted by the Australian National University Human Research Ethics Committee in May 2003. See Appendix E for an example of the ethical research agreement form.