The Craft of Qualitative Longitudinal Research by Bren Neale

Author:Bren Neale [Neale, Bren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473995444
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2021-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

Gaining consent for archiving

Forward planning is equally important when it comes to seeking consent for archiving. For QL enquiry, gaining consent of any kind can be time-consuming and difficult, particularly if contact with participants has been interrupted or lost (see Chapter 5). For this reason, it is now regarded as standard practice to seek consent for archiving alongside the general consent process prior to fieldwork (Corti et al. 2020). For QL research, such consent can be revisited at key moments in the research process.

At this point, it is worth clarifying exactly what participants are being asked to consent to in relation to the future use of their data. Can consent for archiving be properly informed when future uses of a dataset (lines of enquiry, interpretations, contexts for re-use) are unknown and cannot be anticipated? In the context of an evolving QL study, where the themes under investigation may radically shift over the course of a study, the notion of informed consent is problematic in any case. It can’t be specified with any certainty for the work of the original researchers, let alone for the work of others, who may subsequently use a dataset for a different purpose (detailed in Chapter 8).

One way forward is to reframe the consent process in terms of enduring consent. This generic or ‘blanket’ model of consent clarifies that data may be used in new research contexts, in relation to unanticipated themes, over unspecified timescales, and without the need to re-contact participants in future. Procedural consent, i.e. consent for the way that data are to be stored, managed, accessed and generally protected, can be specified in advance and built into this model of enduring consent. Enduring consent is commonly used in medical research, and has obvious utility for longitudinal enquiry and for the future use of archival data (Neale and Bishop 2012b; Neale 2013; ESRC 2016; Hughes and Tarrant 2020b).

It is also worth noting here that, for QL studies at least, the vast majority of participants readily agree to the archiving of their data (Neale 2013). They wish to have their accounts on record as part of social history; indeed, such an agenda may be the driving force for a project (Berriman and Thomson forthcoming). It is important to clarify with participants that, unlike popular archives, research archives are not publicly available resources. Access can be carefully controlled and restricted to those working in officially recognised research institutions, who will pledge to uphold high ethical standards. In these circumstances, participants see little distinction between sharing their accounts with one bona-fide research team or several such teams through the medium of the archive (Kuula 2010–11; Weller 2012; Neale and Bishop 2012a). Kuula’s research on participant perceptions of archiving revealed that, ‘participants perceive open access to research data for other researchers as self-evident’ (Kuula 2010–11: 15). This was certainly our experience within Timescapes, where over 95% of participants consented to archiving. Even where data are virtually impossible to anonymise, or are highly sensitive, consent is not usually withheld.

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