SOAN 3070 Chapter Notes - Chapter week 3: Qualitative Research, Anonymity

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology and Anthropology
• Course: SOAN 3070
• Professor: Anna Borisenkova

Document Summary

This article discusses the functions of research participants" anonymity in qualitative social research, from the perspective of social psychology. Anonymity becomes particularly important when publishing results: this article focuses on the phases of qualitative data analysis and the writing up of a research report. Despite anonymity being one of the core concepts of research ethics, it is a contested and criticized concept, and a small yet growing number of researchers question the prevailing orthodoxy surrounding it. First, in social research, it is sometimes difficult to define what can be considered as the harm caused by revealing participants" identities (e. g. nespor, 2000). In addition, there is increasing awareness that research participants in some circumstances may be happy or even prefer to be mentioned by name. Other researchers prefer non-anonymity because they consider their participants or the studied organization to be so unique and well known that anonymity is, in their opinion, impossible to maintain.