Читать книгу Doing Field Projects - John Forrest - Страница 29

All fieldwork requires the informed consent (in some form or other) of the participants. The actual form of the consent, and the method to obtain it, vary from project to project, but the basic principles are always the same: people with whom you are working as ethnographic subjects must be aware of your purposes in using them for information, and how you intend to use the data obtained from them. However, the type of informed consent required can vary significantly from situation to situation. For instance, if you are documenting a public event, there is no need to obtain consent from everyone involved when collecting generalized data because the public has been invited expressly to be actively engaged with the event (in some sort of participant capacity – even if only as a consumer/audience member). When you begin talking to individuals about their experiences at such public events, you do need some kind of informal, informed consent, but this need not be much more than a simple question (preferably recorded) such as, “I am writing a paper for a college class on __________ (whatever kind of event it is). Is it all right to ask you some questions?” Scheduled, one-on-one fieldwork, such as life history interviews, requires more in the way of informed consent.

Let us unpack the word “informed.” Clinical trials for medications require that the participants be made aware of the risks involved in taking the medication, and also of the protocols (such as whether there will be control groups not taking the medication, and what the chances are that a participant will be in the control group or not). Experimental psychology research trials usually require that the participants be made aware of protocols, including whether deception is going to be employed, and that adequate debriefing after the trials is built into the procedures so that participants are eventually fully informed about procedures (and will have access to the results eventually).

Being informed and giving consent is much simpler for participants in qualitative anthropological fieldwork, partly because such research does not involve controlled experimentation, and partly because deception is not ethically permissible (see below). Quantitative fieldwork is a somewhat different matter, but the projects in this volume are all qualitative. In the projects in this volume that require informed consent (mostly interviews), “informed” means making sure that your interviewee knows your purpose in conducting the fieldwork, and what you will do with the information once you have collected it. The simplest way to accomplish this is to start a recording with something like:

My name is ___________ and I am here with ____________ talking about __________. I am going to be using part of the interview for ___________. Before we start, may I ask you if this is acceptable to you?

If at some later stage you have the good fortune to publish parts of the fieldwork, you may need to return to get a signed consent from the informant. This will depend on the requirements of the publisher. It is also advisable at the beginning of the recording to tell your interviewee that it is perfectly acceptable for them to stop the interview at any point, for any reason.

Finally, I will point out that minors are not legally capable of giving informed consent. Therefore, by usual ethical standards, fieldwork with children is not advisable. Technically, a parent or guardian can give consent on behalf of a minor, but it is simplest to just avoid children altogether. That way you are never in jeopardy.