ETHICs
The main ethical concerns of phenomenological research are to ensure privacy is maintained, ensuring open and honest interactions and avoiding misrepresentations.
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The researcher must advise the participant before starting what the research is used for and how it will be interpreted. The role of the participant as well as the identity of the researcher should be clarified. If the data is published then the names of the participants must be left out and explicit informed consent to allow a description of the participant. It should be clarified to the participant who will be seeing the data and consent for this taken (NCBI 2014).
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When discussing privacy some participants may not want to have direct quotes published, which makes presenting the results difficult. Researchers have no choice but to summarise the participant’s description into a theme and not rely on direct phrasing for evidence. When relaying evidence of a participant it is quite common for the researcher to give a description of the participant instead of their name. This builds an identity for the participant but also opens up claims of bias on behalf of the researcher or participant. If the doesn’t appear to be a cross section of the community represented in the descriptions then the researcher could be accused of bias for the way in which they selected the participant. The participant could be accused of cultural, religious or gender biased based on their descriptions of their experience (NCBI 2014).
Another ethical concern is the relationship a researcher has with the topic being discussed. There are times when a journalist (for all intents and purposes are acting as a phenomenological researcher) seem to be unable to prevent themselves and their body language from either agreeing or disagreeing with what is being said. The same can be said for proper researchers that they may not be able to emotionally distance themselves from a particular participants results (Brocki & Wearden 2006).
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Misrepresentation is also an ethically concern. Researchers run the risk of using themes that are common in descriptions. However just because one participant described their experience referencing 10% of the established theme and 90% of another theme that hasn’t featured before doesn’t necessarily mean that their experience is congruent to the established theme (NCBI 2014).