CHAPTER TWO
3. Methodology
3.7 Ethical issues
copy of the Participants Covering Letter, and Appendix I for a copy of the Interview Participants Consent Form).
Where focus groups were conducted with young people, a verbal agreement to undertake the
research was obtained from the counsellor and head teacher of the participating school. In addition, parents of the children who participated in the focus groups were informed about the study in a letter (refer to Appendix E for a copy of the Covering Letter to Parents), and consent for their children to participate in the study was obtained (refer to Appendix F for a copy of the focus group participants Parents Consent Form). At the start of each focus group discussion the researcher made it clear to the participant that they were not compelled to participate in the study, and that anyone who did not want to participate in the study, at any stage, was free to end their participation. Focus group
participants were asked to sign their own consent forms (refer to Appendix G for a copy of the Focus Group Participants Consent Form). Asking adolescents to sign their own consent forms was
intended to indicate to the adolescent participants that their authority in this regard was recognised.
3.7.3 Confidentiality
Each interview was tape recorded and transcribed. In the course of transcribing the tape recording participants names were replaced with pseudonyms and any other identifying information such as the names of people, places, institutions and so on was changed or omitted to ensure that the
participants could not be identified. The tape recordings and hard copies of the interview transcripts were stored in a locked cabinet in the researcher's study. Data collected in the course of this study was kept for research purposes.
3.7.4 Risks and benefits
It was acknowledged that sex and sexuality related issues can be a difficult topic for discussion.
Given the sensitive nature of the topic the researcher was aware at the outset that it might be difficult for participants to talk about their experiences. For this reason it was clearly indicated to all
participants that their participation in the research was entirely voluntary, that they reserved the right not to talk about anything that they did not want to talk about and that all information was highly confidential and anonymous.
The researcher was mindful that some participants may have had traumatic experiences, which they might not have had an opportunity to talk about prior to participating in the research. For this reason the researcher arranged with a professional person qualified to deal with such matters, to provide psychological counselling in such an event.
The risk of causing any harm in this research was low. Some risk of psychological or emotional stress was possible because of the sensitive nature of the research topic. For this reason the
researcher endeavoured to establish rapport with the participants in the research process. Attention was paid to non-verbal messages such as body language that might indicate that the participant was experiencing excessive discomfort.
The researcher started the interview with non-directive questions and asked participants if there were any questions or concerns that they had about the research before commencing with the interview process. To minimise discomfort the researcher avoided asking unnecessary questions of an emotive nature, or dwelling on, or pursuing a line of questioning that might cause distress.
One advantage of series interviewing is that it provides greater opportunity for a relationship of trust to develop between the interviewer and the participant, and this helped to make it easier and more comfortable to talk.
Some participants reported that they indirectly benefited from participating in the research, as one participant put it, "you kind of forget about it, it was like 20 years ago, if not more now, so I haven't thought about it for ages and it was kind of like, oh!, remembering boyfriends and remembering things that, you know, you haven't thought about for a long time, kind of wandering down memory lane, so that's been quite nice".
Participation in the research did not incur any cost for the participants and they were not paid for participating. Participation in this study was entirely voluntary.
C H A P T E R T H R E E
RESULTS
Themes identified in the open-coding process were developed into axial codes. Axial codes consist of a number of interrelated open-codes which collectively represent a particular phenomenon (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). In this study axial codes identified central themes in both parent- adolescent and peer talk. In the first part of the results section, axial codes for participants talk on the topic of sex are presented. They include participants' contextualisation of sexual initiation, the responsibility that women associate with becoming sexually active, and following from this, experiences of coercion in heterosexual relationships. Central themes arising in peer talk are identified and presented in this section.
The second part of the results chapter focuses on parent-adolescent sexuality talk. Axial codes developed from an analysis of parent-adolescent sexuality talk identified mothers' concerns to talk about the 'risks' associated with sexual initiation and the need for their daughters to avoid that, as well as their need to regulate their daughters' sexuality.
The presentation of central themes arising from the analysis of data will be illustrated with extracts from the interview and focus group discussions. They will be presented using Silverman's (2000) transcription guidelines, a copy of which is provided in Appendix D. All names appearing in the extracts are pseudonyms, and are being used to protect the identity of the participants. The presentation of results is organised around the central themes described above, and represent the end-point of the analysis.