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Ethical considerations were important at all stages of my research: early in the planning phases, throughout data collection, and at the stage of documenting my participants’ voices. I will use these three phases as a basis on which to reflect on and discuss the key issues I encountered.

Ethical issues arose as early as my thinking about the research topic. As Chapter 2 discussed, a researcher’s choice of topic frames his or her whole inquiry, and choosing is thus itself an ethical endeavour. My reflection on the issues I was interested in, and how I would frame my topic, was guided by my values as a health promoter of participation, empowerment, and social justice, as well as holistic health. Chapter 2 discussed the ways in which a biopsychosocial frame could broaden the scope of nutrition promotion; this guided my ethically informed choices early in this research project.

The next phase of considering ethical issues emerged in my preparation of the study and application for university ethics approval, in which I identified the potential risks of the research. I considered food practices to be minimally private and intimate, but saw the potential for students with eating disorders to feel uncomfortable when faced with my research topic. I made an effort to stress my focus on the social nature of eating for this reason. I also considered various scenarios in which students might engage in illegal behaviour while in my presence. As a researcher in a trust relationship with the students, I decided it would be appropriate to not report any such behaviour by default, and that I would determine my reaction to each situation on a case-by-case basis. An example of my trying not to judge behaviours was my experience when a smoking participant expressed to me her desire to quit. I remained silent on the issue; although I do not agree with the smoking, it was not my role there to tell her what is best for her health. Another example

was a participant’s disclosure of an eating disorder. Through the talk it became apparent that teachers knew about her problems and that she was seeing someone to deal with her issues. I therefore did not see a need to offer judgement, refer or seek to intervene in this issue. In the case of students causing serious physical or psychological threat to other students or themselves, my stance was to seek responsible people in the school, which had existing procedures in place to deal with such situations. For my own safety I decided that if I were to attend any private events I would let one supervisor know prior to attending. I made sure not to take part in any events in which there was an indication of alcohol consumption, to minimise exposure to illegal behaviour. As it happened none of the risks I had anticipated arose during data collection; even so, these considerations helped me think through my role and positioning as a researcher carefully. I also consulted a Māori ethics

advisor with whom to discuss Māori needs and issues in my study (see Appendix R).

During data collection the key ethical challenges for me were to respect students’ privacy, their willingness to share with me (even if it was not related to my research topic), and equally their unwillingness to share anything with me. Throughout my fieldwork I acted as a friend, but took on a passive role within the friendships that evolved. Rather than leading conversations, suggesting places to go, or seeding my ideas with participants, as I would in my real-life friendships, I let the students take on these roles, and followed their lead throughout. The students seemed to feel responsible, and happy, to take me by the hand and show me their school lives. I feel that initiating these relationships in this passive way set the path for a rather equal relationship throughout, in which students never felt obliged to share with me. Although I was aware of the implicit power I had, in that I was collecting data that was of interest to me rather than them, I saw that food was part of their everyday

lives—lunch breaks with friends, walking to the supermarket, or shared lunches in class.

Food practices and the interactions and relationships arising through these practices were important to the participants, to varying degrees. In this sense I never felt I was imposing

my agenda on them; I paid respect to all their food practices, whether they were coherent with my personal preferences or not. I made sure to pay respect to their perspectives on any issues they wished to share with me. In informal conversations I let them lead the topic. Similarly in the interviews I was facilitative of their views and aimed to give them control over the process through listening to their stories and asking open questions.

As a health promotion researcher the values of participation, empowerment, and social justice guided my way. I aimed to be approachable to all students through talking to different groups of students and picking up on subtle signs that indicated an interest to talk to me, and I attempted to visit a range of subject classrooms, to enable many different students to participate in the research. It was important to me not to disempower

participants, and ideally to contribute in some way to their sense of empowerment. Simply taking interest in their lives often seemed to be empowering for these young people. I felt they were excited about the fact that they were able to share many positive stories with me; it seemed they felt empowered to share these stories with me, in contrast to the way they might feel about being asked about things they were not doing well. Students often commented on society’s perception of youth, and that the “world” thought of them as disobedient; this often led to feelings of powerlessness. I attempted to provide equal opportunities for students to contribute to the research, asking a range of students from different backgrounds to partake in interviews, and avoiding privileging any information I obtained.

Mayall (2002b) argues that issues of power inequalities between researchers and young people are most profound in the stages of interpretation and writing up: during research, researchers can deny or reformulate the research process, but once they have left the field it is the researcher’s privilege alone to work with the data. I remained aware of this responsibility, and attended to it through considering every participant’s perspective, and trying to avoid leaving out any detail because I deemed it irrelevant. For obvious reasons it

was impossible to report back the vast amount of opinions and voices I had in my data; however, I made sure to include at least one instance of each participant’s voice in some way in the representation of the results. Because my results focused on school food practices, there was no space to include the wealth of stories the students shared with me about their food practices in family and community lives beyond the school. I plan to use

this data for later publications, and facilitate young people’s voices in this area also. In the

representation of the results I attempted to include the perspectives authentically, letting participants’ words speak for themselves.

Reporting back and disseminating my findings is a further task important to completing my ethical responsibilities as a researcher. Mayall (2002b) notes that youth researchers often miss the opportunity to report back to the participants themselves, and instead concentrate on disseminating the findings in the adult world. Besides publishing the research in journal articles, presenting at conferences, and presenting to groups at the research school, I therefore also made the results more readily available to the student participants. I have sent the students who contributed to the research in a more extensive manner a document including the abstracts of the papers I have submitted or published (with a note that I can make any of the articles available to them), as well as a brief summary in lay language of the key findings and conclusions of the research. I have also highlighted to them the ways in which their part in the research has contributed to the research world (see Appendix S). I plan to publish further articles in popular and practice contexts. I have already written a blog post for Neighbourly New Zealand on the social value of food, and plan to publish more in the New Zealand education and health promotion area.

Lastly, to ensure confidentiality I have stored all the data I collected on a password- protected digital drive to which only I have access. The consent forms, the surveys, and the photo diary booklets are stored securely in a locked cabinet.