CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.12 Ethical issues
Strydom (2011, p. 113) defined ethics as the “mutual trust, acceptance, cooperation, promises, and well acceptable conventions and expectations between all parties involved in a research project”. The dignity which encompasses how people think to socialise and live is described as ethics by Kvale and Brinkmann (2009). Thus, as a researcher, I took the dignity of my participants and the gatekeepers into account during this study. My study considered a variety of ethical issues to respect the rights of the people concerned in the study.
3.12.1 Permission to conduct the study
The permission to conduct a study in a place is crucial. Hesse-Biber and Leavy (2011, p. 201) stated that “settings often contain gatekeepers whose approval is crucial to gain access and acceptance, formal gatekeepers grant you formal permission to enter a setting”. The authors added that the gatekeeper could be the head of the institution or organization which will serve as the site for the conduct of the study. Sood (2016) emphasised that the necessary details of the study must be made available to the
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gatekeepers to secure their confidence, support, and approval. Consequently, the gatekeeper for my study was kept well-informed of my research by writing. After informing the gatekeeper with every necessary detail of my study, I was granted permission to conduct the study. Further after this approval from the gatekeeper, I applied for ethical clearance from the Human and Social Sciences Ethics Committee of my university. Appendix 1 is a copy of the gatekeeper’s permission given for me to conduct the study.
3.12.2 Informed consent from participants
According to Dooly, Moore, and Vallejo (2017), the researcher and/or research team will always obtain informed consent from all parties involved in the research prior to implementing the research project. The informed consent should explain the intricacies such as the rationale for the study, hazard, methodology of the research and the time demand on the respondents, who are involved in the research (Dooly et al., 2017; Drew et al., 2008). Significantly, “the informed consent process constitutes an exercise of the principle of autonomy and must be carried out free of persuasion, manipulation, and coercion. The document must be clear, precise and understandable for the population where it will be applied” (Acevedo Pérez, Rapiman, Cáneo Orellana,
& Rueda Castro, 2017, p. 23). Thus, written informed consent that was endorsed by my supervisor was given to the pre-service teacher participants to sign. The purpose, objectives of the study, methods of data collection, the participants’ choice to decline or withdraw from the study without any consequence were detailed in the informed consent document. See Appendices 2 and 3 for informed consent documents.
3.12.3 Anonymity and confidentiality
McMillan and Schumacher (2014) agreed that the identity of the participants and the location of the study must not be made public or printed. The authors stress the need to anonymize the identities of the place where the study is being conducted and the participants to maintain the trust of the respondents. “Privacy refers to individuals’ right to control the disclosure of what they deem personal or non-public information about themselves. This is a legal provision in most countries to protect the right to privacy”
(Punch & Oancea, 2014, p. 68). Hammersley and Traianou (2012) insisted that the recognition accorded to the privacy of a person guarantees confidentiality.
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Consequently, I ensured that the rights to confidentiality of the PSSTs and the NBPSTs’ participants who took part in my study were respected. Codes such as FGPSST1, IINBPST3 indicating focus group interview pre-service science teacher 1 and individual interview pre-service teacher 3 respectively, were allocated to the participants to assure their anonymity. The university where the study was conducted has also not been named in the writing of this thesis. Furthermore, where image data were used, in the case of photographs, faces of the participants were blurred to hide their identities. Names of participants were not revealed in the portfolios of evidence.
Yin (2014) concluded that participants’ confidentiality must be protected to the extent that the respondents must not be unsuspectingly put in a position where their details could be assessed by the researcher or any other researcher for future research.
Thus, I complied with the foregoing assertion and did not archive the details of the participants for my future study or for another researcher without the intention of seeking their consent.
3.12.4 Accuracy
Qualitative research is a methodological process that does not have a rigidly regulated procedure but possesses measures that must be in place to ensure the accuracy of the findings during the data collection and interpretation (Taylor, Bogdan, & DeVault, 2015). Nvivo, a software developed to support the analysis of qualitative research, makes coding of data faster, saves the time of the researcher and enhances the accuracy (Bazeley, 2009; Zamawe, 2015). I utilized the 11th version of the Nvivo software for coding of the transcribed data and generating of their categories before continuing with the manual process of analysing. During the manual process, I coded the data from the reflective journals and also the portfolios of evidence. I also held regular consultations with my supervisor during the stages of the data analysis after she had reviewed my submission of work.
3.12.5 Data use and disposal
The use of data and its disposal were outlined to the participants and the gatekeepers in writing. These stakeholders were informed that the data would only be used for my Doctoral study and academic publications to contribute to the body of knowledge.
Additionally, the data would be stored in a safe place that is agreed to by my promoter and supervisor within the university where I am registered as a Doctoral student, for a
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period of five years. The disposal of the data would be done after five years and in this way, transcripts of the interviews, copies of the research journals and the portfolios of evidence would be shredded. The audios of the interviews would be permanently deleted from all storage devices including the audio recorder and any external drive where they would be stored.