Confidentiality in Participatory Action Research

Ive been having an interesting experience writing up the results of a PAR study this week, particularly in regard to issues of confidentiality.

Participatory action research prides itself on dealing with issues of power is research, positioning the partners as equals to the researcher who together co-construct meaning and develop something that can lead to valuable local change.

The possible dilemmas that can arise, however, can mediate against this effort...in my own case, for example, the participants became concerned about identifying as authors on the paper as it would mean people might guess who they were...some wanted authorship and others voted no, leaving us in a quandry..should we change the results so they are less revealing so authorship is possible? should we say no authorship but then they miss out? Its not as void of power as we might think..

Also what to do if the participants are concerned about some of their direct quotes in retrospect...there perspective on the issues may have changed since the research was conducted...should the paper be changed? Is the paper editing meeting another 'interview' ? Should it be coded and integrated into the results?

Research Blogging about Blogging Research

Pro-Ana and pro-Self-Injury websites abound on the web as do more constructive sites that aim to detail personal narratives or empower those suffering from a wide range of psychological distress...so can we study these sites, using posts and comments as data for qualitative analysis? What are ethics of using this as data? Do we need consent? Is the info 'public' or private?

There are toolkits for analysis...here

Lots of studies here

Lots of papers on method

HERRING, S.C., Kouper, I., Paolillo, J.C., Scheidt, L.A., Tyworth,
M., Welsch, P., Wright, E., Ning Yu (2005) ‘Conversations in the
Blogosphere: An Analysis "From the Bottom Up”’, Proceedings of the 38th
Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-38), Los
Alamitos: IEEE Press
HODKINSON, P (2007) ‘Interactive online journals and individualization’, New
Media and Society, 9(4) 625-650.
HOOKWAY, N. (2008) ‘”Entering the blogosphere:” some strategies for using
blogs in social research’ Qualitative Research 8(1) 91-113.
HUFFAKER, D.A., and Calvert, S. L. (2005). ‘Gender, identity , and language
use in teenage blogs’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication,
10(2), article1. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue2/huffaker
THELWALL, M. (2007). ‘Blog searching: The first general-purpose source of
retrospective public opinion in the social sciences?’ Online Information
Review, 31(3), 277-289
THELWALL, M. & Prabowo, R. (2007). Identifying and characterising public
science-related fears from RSS feeds. Journal of the American Society for
Information Science and Technology, 58(3), 379-390.

Here is a good thread about it on MethodSpace