LIST OF TABLES
4.4 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
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actively for a change. This corresponds with King (2015) and Pillay (2016) that the critical paradigm is one of the most interesting tools for an in-depth construction of a transformative model to societal issues.
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the researchers. In addition, Wiles (2012) supports the importance of ethical procedures serves to guarantee participants easy participation.
On this account, the researcher intends to adhere to the general recommendations to procure their consents by publicity via university notice boards, thereafter send out the consents forms to all participants. The permission to conduct the study from the university was sought and granted within a short time. All participants of this study ranged from 18-60 years old, so there will be no parental/guardians’ permission since the participants were all mature enough to make their own decisions and suggestions by themselves. Kumar (2014) disagrees that there are many ethical issues to consider concerning research teams and researchers, while De Vos, Strydom, Fouché and Strydom (2011, p. 113) avowed that research should rely on mutual trust, acceptance, cooperation, promises and well-accepted conventions to fulfill the expectations between all research teams in a research project. Therefore, consents of the research team be sought, therefore, question of confidentiality ensure pseudonyms usage instead of real names for any transcriptions, aimed at shielding privacy and identity of participants. Guillemin and Heggen (2009) suggest that the necessary procedure be qualitative research, which advocates well informed participants of the study to permit free access on authentic findings. Otherwise, the scientific nature of the study will not be real and otherwise can jeopardize the study.
The issues of anonymity in a qualitative study is very important to seek permissions from the appropriate organization involved such as school/ministry/participants.
Regarding anonymity, Miller, Mauthner and Jessop, (2012) proposed guiding steps to ensure that research maintains ethical principles by observing anonymity, informed consents and confidentiality. In addition, Murphy and Dingwall (2007) confirm that participants need be informed and reassured by the researcher that confidentiality will be maintained. Guillemin and Heggen (2009) explain that free negotiation between researcher and participants is considered important for the effectiveness of the study.
Therefore, the researcher requests that the research team at university only provide relevant responses and answer critical questions on the importance of this study.
Participants are free to give their views and opinions. Lastly, the true responses to design a transformative approach to embracing LGBTI communities at a University
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campus, be audiotaped from focus groups and according to their chosen instrument of data generation. After all, the generation of data from the participants, the researcher will extend feedback to the participants one by one giving them manuscripts of their responses to confirm if is accurate and concise, and thereafter to the LGBTI communities, after proofreading the manuscripts. The researcher will give a copy of the thesis as a participatory benefit and a surprise to LGBTI communities as appreciation once the study is completed.
In this study, the researcher gave out consent forms which were signed by the all participants (research teams), there are no parental consents to sign in this regard as all participants are of mature age of (18-60), and capable to make their decisions without interference of parents or guardians. The researcher ensured that research teams participated spontaneously and willingly. Participants were guaranteed of anonymity, confidentiality, and gained the right to withdraw freely from participation in the study at any stage, and given liberal access to support with their interest on particular issues of dialogues to embracing LGBTI communities. The participants were not given money to participate in the research project, however, researchers could incur minor expenses to refresh after research and alternatively transport participants on research project purposes. The researcher was not biased during interaction with the research teams, findings generated are strictly ingenuous and friendless used the information for research purposes. The researcher debriefed the research teams when the research project was confirmed as completed. In future, the researcher will by no means indulge to use any data generated in this research for any other purposes than to take excerpts for research publications.
However, this research was conducted in an ethically answerable way and data was not generated at the expense of the research team. The gatekeeper letter of permission was applied for and given by the University of KwaZulu-Natal School of Education. Ethical clearance approval was granted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal Higher Research Ethics Committee (see Appendix 1). Participants were guaranteed of anonymity, confidentiality, and were told that they were free to withdraw from the study at any stage. The participants were not given money to participate in the research. The rights of the participants were safeguarded at all times during the research project. Participants’ names were not be used anywhere in the study, and
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instead pseudonyms were used. All the students (participants) signed consent forms (examples of the consent forms signed by participants (research teams), attached as Appendix 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,16, 17, 18,19, 20, 21 and 22. All the students (participants) signed consent forms, attached as specified above, accordingly. That this was free and voluntary participation for the study are attached in the appendix).
This study unveiled that sensitive research of this kind be flexible and allow anonimity like answering by writing, whatsapp chat and body language, could be helpful to generate more indepth rich data which ensure originality and truthfulness.
Table 4.1 RESEARCH TEAM DEMOGRAPHIC DATA Serial No: Gender Age Academic
qualification
Working experience
Professional qualification
1. Male 24 BEd 3rdyr Nill BEd FET
2. Female 24 BEd 4th yr Nill BEd edu
3. Female 21 BEd 2nd yr Nill BEd Mgt
4. Male 22 BEd 3rd yr Nill BEd Sc.
5. Male 21 BEd 4th yr 2yrs BEd ECD
6. Male 24 BEd 4th yr 3yrs BEd His
7. Male 27 BEd 3rd yr 1yr BEd
Commerce
8. Female 24 BEd 2nd yr Nill BEd Social
justice
9. Male 21 BEd 4th yr 2yrs BEd Bus.
10. Male 20 BEd 3rd yr Nill BEd Edpsy
11. Male 47 Lecturer 8yrs MEd
12. Female 36 lecturer 6yrs MEd ECD
13. Male 50 Lecturer 9yrs PhD
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14. Male 23 BEd. Hons 1yr BEd
15. Male 38 Social
worker
5yrs Dip.
16. Male 22 BEd 3rd yr Nill Bed
17. Male 29 Staff 6yrs Med
The above table was limited to the brief demographic data representation of the research team for this study according to serial number, gender, age, academic qualification, working experiences and professional qualification.
4.5 PROFILES OF RESEARCH TEAM