Yesterday I joined in on the online session with Adesola. The session focused on the topic of ethics. We looked into several areas all associated around ethics and how it relates to our inquiry. There were a lot of points that I hadn't considered to be part of ethics. We started by speaking about our own inquiry and what we were planning on doing and how our inquiry would effect other people. Adesola talked about how our investigation could effect people or not and how we would know if it was positive or not?
We went on to discuss how we would word our inquiry. For example I was going to use the term 'culture' in my inquiry however after discussing the meaning of culture and how would I define it, I realised it was a very ambiguous word to use as people could interpret it in several different ways. I have now decided not to use the term culture in my inquiry. After discussing this topic we realised we all needed to be very specific when wording our inquiry.
We then looked into the do's and don'ts when carrying out our inquiry, especially if we are interviewing or using questionnaires. The main categories were:
Ethical Issues:
Make sure you make it clear you are aware of the ethical issues involved.
Consent:
- It is hard to interview children as they will say what they think you want to hear, it is better to observe them.
- Do people actually known what you're doing and what you're inquiry is about, as the research constantly changes the inquiry changes, it is important that people can drop out at any point of the inquiry.
- Always use pseudonyms
Interviewing:
What the effect of being interviewed or not being interviewed can have on a group of people. If you are using people that are in a certain category such as people from a particular culture or elderly people, they may not see themselves in that category .
There were many other areas that we touched upon. However one of the points that really helped me was realising that we do not have to find out one answer at the end of the inquiry. It may lead to other questions and open more doors. It is about researching the topic you are focusing on. I kept thinking that I needed to have lots of figures and answers at the end of my inquiry, however Adelsola pointed out that we
are only looking into this topic over 3 months which is a small amount of time to make much of a difference. The inquiry is about finding more information about our topic
area, which should lead us to other ideas or questions.
Overall I found the session incredibly helpful and it has made me see my inquiry in a completely different way. I enjoyed talking through the different areas as I was very confused before but now I feel like I have a better insight into what ethics involves.
Thank you Adesola .
