THEORETICAL / PHILOSOPHICAL PAPER

Introduction to the Special Issue: ‘‘Ethical Issuesin Collecting Interactional Data’’

Isabella Paolettti

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Ethical issues are part of ordinary practices in conducting research involving the

collection of interactional data in a variety of disciplines: sociology, linguistics,

anthropology, etc. Established codes of practices define acceptable standards of

conduct within the profession. Moreover, in many countries, ethics committees,

which titles such as the Institutional Review Board (IRB), Research Ethic Board

(REB), Research Ethic Committee (REC), have been established, and gaining

authorization from such boards has become part of the ordinary activities in carrying

out social sciences research.

In relation to ethical matters, there is a growing awareness among researchers of

the importance of confronting the actual contingencies and the complexities of

ethical dilemmas on the ground. Some authors (Fogel 2007; Guillemin and Gillam

2004) find the literature relating to ethics in social sciences research lacking, in

particular, in relation to the discussion of ethical problems emerging during actual

research practices. Guillemin and Gillan point out: ‘‘Although this ethical

dimension of research practices is often apparent to researchers, there is little

conceptual work available to draw on to make sense of it’’ (2004: 265). Recently

empirical studies (Barton 2011; Blee and Currier 2011; Currier 2011; Einwohner

2011; Ellis 2007; Gonzalez-Lopez 2011; Goodwin et al. 2003; Guillemin and Gillan

2004; Hurdley 2010; Irwin 2006; Kohler Riessman and Mattingly 2005; Rupp and

Taylor 2011; Wood 2006) have been developing that describe actual ethical

problems researchers face during research activities, and critically discuss the

ethical and methodological solutions that were adopted.

Different terms are used to indicate an approach to the study of ethical problems

as they emerge in actual research situations: ‘‘important moments’’ (Guillemin and

I. Paolettti (&)

Universidade Nova de Lisboa, CLUNL, ID, Av. De Berna 26 C, 1069-061 Lisbon, Portugal

e-mail: isap@fcsh.unl.pt

123

Hum Stud

DOI 10.1007/s10746-013-9306-9

Gillan 2004), ‘‘situational ethics’’ (Ellis 2007), ‘‘microethics’’ (Komesaroff 2008),

‘‘context based ethics’’ (Kohler Riessman and Mattingly 2005), ‘‘ethics as a

process’’ (Swauger 2011), ‘‘ethics in practice’’ (Ellis 2007). Ethical problems can

emerge at every stage of the research process (Currier 2011), as Goodwin et al. point

out: ‘‘[Ethics] pervades every aspect of the research process from conception and

design through the research practice, and continues to require consideration during

dissemination of the results’’ (2003: 567). The actual research relationship and

research activities have become the focus of attention and analysis, and of critical

reflection, in this respect ethnomethodological studies can provide useful analytical

instruments.

The ethnomethodological tradition has always treated research activities as

member’s artful practices that can be studied as topical phenomena (Garfinkel

1967); there is a long tradition of ethnomethodological studies of documenting

research activities (Bjelic and Lynch 1992; Garfinkel 2002; Garfinkel et al. 1981;

Lynch and Michael 1985, 1993; Sormani et al. 2011). Moreover, data collection

practices, such as interviews, are treated as relevant interactional data that can be

studied for documenting identity work (Cavallaro Johnson and Paoletti 2004;

Paoletti and Cavallaro Johnson 2007; Paoletti 1998, 2001, 2002 Widdicombe 1998).

Speer and Hutchby (2003a, b), discuss ethical and methodological issues in

practices, showing how research participants adapt to recording devices. This

special issue contributes to the situated discussion of ethical issues emerging in the

carrying out of actual research activities within a conversation analytic and

ethnomethodological perspective. Ethical problems are described and discussed as

relevant researchers’ and participants’ concerns.

Two Main Conceptualizations of Ethics in Research

Among the main forms of conceptualizing ethics in research we have on the one

hand instances particularly concerned with the protection of research participants

from risks involved in, or deriving from, the research activities (Fogel 2007;

Guillemin and Gillam 2004; Haggerty 2004; Murphy and Dingwall 2001, 2007; van

den Hoonaard 2003). On the other hand, ethics in research is conceptualized as

assuming responsibility in relation to the social reality under study. In social

sciences research there is a long tradition of concern with social justice and social

intervention. This could be traced back to the Karl Max’s (1845) famous 11th thesis

on Feuerbach: ‘‘Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various

ways; the point is to change it’’. A concern with social justice is central in the work

of many authors in linguistics, sociology and anthropology. For example, Dorothy

Smith (1974; 2005) produced a radical critical approach to sociology, Institutional

Ethnography: ‘‘a sociology for people’’; as Smith points out: ‘‘Institutional

ethnography working at the level of people’s everyday lives orients to the discovery

of the social relations and social organization that articulate the everyday to the

ruling relations’’ (2005: 134). Critical discourse analysis focuses on the ways social

and political domination are reproduced by text and talk (Fairclough 1995; van Dijk

1993; Wodak 2013). Many social interactionists’ studies were devoted to reporting

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the subjective experiences of socially excluded people (Denzin 1992). Bernstein

(1972) described the role of language in education and in relation to the

reproduction of the social order. Cazden and Hymes (1972) studied issues of

unequal access to education. The list is certainly not exhaustive. What is common

between these studies is a sense of social responsibility in relation to the subject

studied. The researcher aims not only at describing a social reality, but feels the

moral duty to take sides and to denounce social injustices and attempt to remedy

them.

The reflection on the social responsibility of researchers is often focused on the

consequences of research results on the participants in the research, more than on

the impact of research activities on participants during the carrying out of data

gathering (Vasconcellos Sobrinho 2003). In particular, the consequences that the

publication of research results may have in relation to the participants and the

communities involved in the research are taken into consideration. In this respect,

Liberman exhorts caution by stating: ‘‘There are not only difficulties one can create

while in the field but one can also do damage by communicating too much to the

outside world and by exposing vulnerable people. Caution is required’’ (1999: 62).

Wing, writing in relation to an environmental impact study, points out the

researcher’s duty of being loyal to the knowledge acquired in the course of the

research process: ‘‘When research findings sheds light on issues that could create

legal problems for institutions that provide jobs and funding to researchers,

researchers may be motivated to withhold or delay publication, or to provide benign

interpretations even when there is evidence of harm. Such actions fail to meet

responsibilities to research participants, exposed communities in the study area and

elsewhere, policy makers, and researchers working on the same or related

problems’’ (2002: 442f.). Social responsibility in research generally refers to

researchers’ commitment to social justice, but reflection on social responsibility in

research in relation to actual research practices concerning data collection is scarce.

The most usual form of the conceptualization of ethics in carrying out social

sciences research refers to protecting research participants from harm.

The conceptualization of ethical issues in research conceived of as protection of

research participants can be related to the Nuremberg trials and the Nuremberg

Code (1949): ‘‘The beginnings of procedural ethics are usually traced to the

Nuremberg Trials that occurred after World War II. Among those tried at

Nuremberg were Nazi doctors who had committed terrible abuses on concentration

camp inmates in the name of medical research. One of the outcomes of the trials

was the so-called Nuremberg Code that expressly stated the obligation of medical

researchers to gain the consent of those on whom they conducted research and not to

harm them’’ (Guillemin and Gillam 2004: 267). Avoiding the risk of damaging

participants involved in research is the key concern of most ethical practices in

conducting social sciences research (Fogel 2007; Guillemin and Gillam 2004;

Haggerty 2004; Murphy and Dingwall 2007; van den Hoonaard 2003). Ethical

guarantees often concern anonymity, informed consent, etc.; traditionally they have

been based on the assumption of professional competence and the responsibility of

researchers and established codes of practices within specific professions (Haggerty

Ethical Issues in Collecting Interactional Data

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2004). Nowadays, in many countries, ethics committees have been created and

appear to be the main instrument in regulating ethical matters in research.

Ethics Committees

Seeking approval from ethics committees has become an ordinary part of doing

social sciences research (Fogel 2007; Haggerty 2004; Murphy and Dingwall 2007).

Initially, such committees were organized in relation to medical research, but they

were then gradually extended to all types of social sciences research involving

human subjects. In fact, in many countries, research funds depend on obtaining

ethical approval (Haggerty 2004). In Canada and the USA there has recently been a

heated debate on the utility of such committees (Fogel 2007; Mueller 2004;

Haggerty 2004; Hedgecoe 2008). Some authors question their very existence. Fogel,

for example, describes Ethics Committees as a ‘‘tool for harassment in the academic

workplace’’ (2007: 111). Liberman sceptically comments about Ethics Committees:

‘‘the primary concern is to protect universities from legal suits’’ (1999: 60).

Haggerty in particular criticizes the logic of ‘‘institutional distrusts’’ on which such

committees are based, that cast doubts on the professional integrity and respon-

sibility of researchers: ‘‘The ethical status of research was historically governed

through a combination of discipline-specific codes of conduct and the professional

standing of research scientists. The training that academics received in research

methods, ethics, and, most importantly, their practical experiences in conducting

research were previously presumed to offer sufficient protections against unethical

behavior. That system has now been supplanted and effectively replaced by a formal

process of bureaucratic oversight. This marks a move away from a system based on

an assumption of professional competence and responsibility to one based on

institutionalized distrust, where researchers are presumed to require an additional

level of oversight to ensure that they act ethically’’ (2004: 393). No authors question

the importance of considering ethical issues in conducting social sciences research,

but the efficacy of ethical committees in this regard. The procedure often involves

very complex regulation, based on hypothetical worst-case scenarios, that can

probably be relevant in some cases, but which for the majority of the research

situations prove to be needlessly onerous (Haggerty 2004).

Many authors think that bureaucratizing ethical issues in research risks being

counterproductive in terms of the ethical aspect and it can also jeopardize research

quality (Haggerty 2004; Fogel 2007; Mueller 2004). Haggerty (2004) points out that

unreasonable requests from Ethic Committees can jeopardize academic achieve-

ments, having evident unethical consequences in terms of students failing to obtain

a degree or damaging scholars’ career. Moreover, they may affect methodological

choices. In fact, researchers may tend to avoid innovative research methodologies,

because they are riskier in relation to seeking approval from ethics committee: ‘‘An

unfortunate consequence of these developments will likely be that researchers will

chose to employ certain types of unproblematic and often predictable research

methodologies rather than deal with the uncertainty and delays associated with

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qualitative, ethnographic, or critical scholarship which do not fit easily into the

existing research ethics template’’ (Haggerty 2004: 412).

Hedgecoe (2008) defends the utility of ethics review committees, conducting an

ethnographic study on the activity of the Research Ethics Committee (REC) in the

UK. He points out the importance of conducting empirical research on this type of

institution, and he disagrees in particular with the criticism made of REC in relation

to ethnographic research and the difficulties researchers have in defining a clear

research design from the start. Nevertheless, describing his method of data

collection on REC, Hedgecoe (2008) points out how he was able to decide which

people to interview for his study after considerable observation of the REC

activities. Moreover, in his study, REC members only were asked to sign informed

consent forms for the observation and recording of the REC meetings. Applicants

were not informed about the data collection, and had no chance to object about

being observed. The ethicality of this procedure is questionable, even if his project

received REC approval. Recent studies (Einwohner 2011; Gonzalez-Lopez 2011;

Swauger 2011) show instances in which researchers resisted REC procedures for

various reasons.

Opposing REC Procedures

In her study on sexual violence and incest in Mexico, Gonzalez-Lopez (2011)

explains how she became very concerned about the protocol she had designed and

had to follow in order to obtain informed consent from her interviewees. According

to the procedure, informants were asked to sign a form with a detailed description of

her study and a copy was given to them. Gonzalez-Lopez was worried about the risk

that such a form could be discovered: ‘‘What would my informants do with this

signed document? Would they have a safe place to keep it? Would those who lived

in extreme poverty have a private place to keep things like this document? What if

someone in the family found the document, someone who had not known about the

abuse? What if the person who committed the abuse found the document?’’ (2011:

447). Gonzalez-Lopez successfully requested obtaining only verbal consent from

her informants.

Einwohner grew increasingly uncomfortable about the anonymizing process that

was part of the ethical protocol she had designed. She points this out with regard to

erasing identities from holocaust survivors’ archived testimonies: ‘‘I could not

ignore the very upsetting feelings I experienced when ‘protecting’ the data by

removing the name of each individual. I began to question whether a strict

adherence to my IRB protocol was worth the uncomfortable experience of

maintaining the data in this fashion’’ (2011: 423). Depriving victims of their

identities was an important part of the violence perpetrated in the Holocaust. The

anonymizing process was perceived by the researcher as reproducing a similar

victimization. Other authors have pointed out how protective procedures towards a

vulnerable group often resulted in actually silencing them; for example, in relation

to her study on adolescent girls Swauger declares: ‘‘The IRB’s commitment to fixed

procedures and rules and its discourse about the vulnerability of certain populations

inadvertently blocks the ability of scholars to represent girls’ voices, and

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homogenizes youth subjects by assuming a shared familial experience, particularly

that both biological parents are present and capable of consenting for their child’’

(2011: 497).

Above all, the criticisms directed to ethic committees appear to underline the fact

that ethics in research cannot be reduced to ‘‘rule-following,’’ divorced from moral

and ethical reasoning, reflecting, and deciding (Goodwin et al. 2003; Hurdley 2010;

Ellis 2007). Murphy and Dingwall, point out: ‘‘When ethics become institution-

alized, rule-following replaces a commitment to working out the ‘right thing to do’

as researchers negotiate the complex moral territory of fieldwork’’ (2007: 2231).

REC procedures certainly have a positive function in forcing researchers to reflect

on the ethical dimension of their research projects (Guillemin and Gillan 2004), but

some authors point out that an important aim of the REC procedures is to protect

research institutions (Liberman 1999; Cloke et al. 2000).

It would be worth distinguishing the institutional need for self protection (Cloke

et al. 2000) from the actual protection of research participants. In other words,

having a board that informs and makes sure that researchers are aware of rules that

can protect the University from legal actions appears a sensible practice at an

institutional level. But it is doubtful that this same board can actually advise and

support researchers in confronting the complexity of ethical problems and dilemmas

that often unexpectedly emerge during field work. In particular, it appears quite

improbable that a researcher, confronted with an ethical dilemma, would appeal to a

board that, at present, has the power to withdraw funding and stop data collection

altogether. The researcher will not risk getting in trouble. Generally, researchers are

quite alone in confronting those ethical issues. Recently, an increasing number of

studies have been published describing and discussing actual ethical problems

(Barton 2011; Blee and Currier 2011; Currier 2011; Einwohner 2011; Ellis 2007;

Gonzalez-Lopez 2011; Irwin 2006; Kohler Riessman and Mattingly 2005; Paoletti

et al. 2013; Rupp and Taylor 2011; Stein 2010; Wood 2006), marking an empirical

turn in the approach to ethical questions in conducting social research.

Ethics in Practice

In social sciences research, there is growing interest in ethics in practice (Guillemin

and Gillan 2004: 262). Ethical guidelines and REC procedures are described as

insufficient to confront the complexities of actual ethical problems emerging from

research activities. Researchers should be involved in a constant reflection on the

ethical dimension of all research activities. Cloke et al. (2000: 151) propose the

creation of ‘‘moral maps’’ that help researchers to navigate the complexities of

research relations. Guillemin and Gillam talk of an ‘‘ethically important moment’’

(2004: 264), referring to a variety of situations in which the researcher is confronted

with moral choices, during research activities. They argue for the importance of

ethical principles and frameworks on which researchers can draw on to take

decisions, at the actual moment when they occur. In fact in many instances

researchers have to take decisions there and then and this can happen at any moment

during the entire process of data collection and analysis. Ethical problems can

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emerge at any phase of the research process: negotiating access, during data

collection, in relation to data transcription and analysis, archiving data, and in

relation to the dissemination of research products.

Many authors characterize ethical issues as complex and context specific (Cloke

et al. 2000), vague and uncertain (Brinkman 2007: 134; Swauger 2011: 498),

impossible to predict (Swauger 2011), and posing thorny questions with no simple

answers (Gonzalez-Lopez 2011). For example, Cloke et al. state: ‘‘throughout the

practice of our research, ethical issues have, if anything, become less clear, more

contested and noticeably more personalised amongst the research team’’ (2000:

134). Above all, many researchers underline the importance of being open to the

specific contingencies that will arise during data collection: ‘‘The craft of field

research rests, first, in keeping oneself open to these vital contingencies and, second,

in responding to them skilfully with innovative methodological and ethical

solutions’’ (Liberman 1999: 62).

The process of reflection on ethical issues is valued in itself as a useful exercise

allowing a change in awareness and consciousness in relation to research practices;

Currier points out: ‘‘I have become more aware of how my ethical and political

motivations shape my inquiry’’ (2011: 478). This exercise refines researcher

sensitivity and ability to perceive the nuance of ethical aspects in research activities,

as well as broadening the range of possible choices of different conducts. Ellis says:

‘‘The conflicts I have experienced have taught me a great deal. By repeatedly

questioning and reflecting on my ethical decisions, I have gained a greater

understanding of the range of choices and the kind of researcher I want to be with

my participants’’ (2007: 5). Moreover, reflecting on ethical issues effects the

research relationship, changes researcher’s attitude toward research participants,

stimulates presence and alertness towards participants’ perspectives and needs.

Gonzalez-Lopez says: ‘‘Through this process, I have become an introspective and

critical observer of my own fieldwork experiences, which has helped me become

more conscientious and alert to the emotional, physical and political safety and

well-being of people participating in my research’’ (2011: 449).

Ethics in practice consists of empirical studies that document in detail the

emerging of actual ethical problems in the carrying out of research activities. They

describe the ethical decisions that were taken and the methodological solutions

adopted, which are critically discussed.

An Ethnomethodological Contribution to an Empirical Approach to Ethics

Contributions from an ethnomethodological perspective on ethics in practice can be

very significant, not only because Ethnomethodologists treat research activities as

topical phenomena, as was pointed out above, but also because of the ethnometh-

odological reflection on the pervasiveness of moral accountability: the social order

is primarily a moral order. As Garfinkel points out:

‘‘A society’s members encounter and know the moral order as perceivedly

normal courses of action-familiar scenes of everyday affairs, the world of daily life

known in common with others and with other taken for granted. They refer to this

Ethical Issues in Collecting Interactional Data

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world as the ‘natural facts of life’ which, for members, are through and through

moral fact of life. For members not only are matters so about familiar scenes, but

they are so because it is morally right or wrong that they are so’’ (1967: 35).

The ethnomethodological tradition is an area of research that has systematically

reflected on the moral character of social activities (Bergmann and Jorg 1998;

Garfinkel 1967; Jayyusi 1984). Practical reasoning is morally organized, not only

moral judgments and evaluations, explicitly moral in character, but ‘‘the entirety of

our interactional reasoning is morally and normatively constituted’’ (Jayyusi 1984).

Jayyusi (1984) has described categorization work as morally implicative; for

example the description of a person as a doctor implies a series of duties and

obligations, such as intervening in the presence of an injured person. Such duties are

constitutive of the description, and are implied in the category. Moral matters are

strictly bound up with categorization activities. ‘‘Membership categories’’ such as

mother, friend, doctor, etc., have category-tied rights and obligations that inform

their practical use and members’ practical assessments: ‘‘Action ascriptions, action

projections, inferences, competences, expectations, judgments, description of ‘what

happened’ etc. are organized through and through in a moral way, and with respect

to moral or other normative standards’’ (Jayyusi 1984: 181). The ethnomethod-

ological reflection on ethical matters usefully contributes to an empirical approach

to ethical issues in social sciences research, since practical reasoning and the

situations of ethical issue are central in the ethnomethodological approach to the

study of the moral organization of practical activities. According to ethnomethod-

ology, ethical issues are primarily practical matters that depend on the contextual

judgment and evaluation of possibly conflicting values, responsibilities, and

consequences of specific course of actions, in particular settings (Jayyusi 1984).

Ethical issues in research have seldom been the focus of ethnomethodological

studies (see Speer and Stokoe 2012 for a recent review of the literature). In

particular informed consent acquisition procedures (Wade et al. 2009; Maynard

et al. 2010; Maynard and Schaeffer 2002), and participants’ spontaneous

anonymization practices during data collection recording activities (Mondada

2006) have been the object of empirical studies. Speer and Hutchby’s (2003a, b)

discuss the issues of reactivity in data collection, which they term the one-way

mirror dilemma. Ethical issues are not the central focus of their study, nevertheless

they are incidentally presented. That is, Speer and Hutchby (2003a, b) discuss

participants’ behaviour modification because of their awareness of being observed,

in relation to the use of recording devices. The ethical issues involved in the one-

way mirror dilemma are also highlighted: ‘‘the one-way mirror dilemma is

irresolvable, except, perhaps, by recommending the use of totally covert data

collection methods. Yet there is general agreement nowadays on the undesirability,

on ethical and other grounds, of conducting research on humans without their

‘informed consent’’’ (2003a: 317). They suggest adopting a different perspective,

problematizing the distinction between ‘‘natural’’ and ‘‘researcher-affected’’ (2003a:

317) social interactions. They propose making the presence of the tape recorder into

a describable phenomenon. They describe how participants adapt to recording

devices, and how such orientation is used by participants in the on-going

construction of specific situated interactions.

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In an ethnomethodological perspective, researchers’ and participants’ reasoning

on ethical matters in conducting research activities is transformed into a

phenomenon that can be analysed in detail, showing its organization, features,

production, and intelligibility. In this sense, the ethnomethodological perspective

can fruitfully contribute to an empirical approach to ethics in social sciences

research.

The Aim of this Special Issue

The scope of this special issue is to open a debate on ethical issues in collecting

interactional data within an ethnomethodological perspective, stimulating theoret-

ical reflection and empirical research into the social dimension of data collection.

All the contributions in this special issues focus in various ways on participants’

understandings of the research activities and the ethical issues that emerge in

relation to such activities. The research participants’, including the researcher,

ethical reasoning about research activities becomes the focus of analysis. The issues

discussed are: participants problematizing the recording of delicate passages,

informed consent as a process, the respect of the integrity of informants’

perspective, the social dimension of carrying out ethical procedures, and partici-

pants using the research for their own ends. In presenting these studies we aim to

develop an empirical approach to studying ethical problems that goes beyond

procedural ethics and strengthens the reflection on existing contingencies and

specificities of actual ethical problems arising during research activities.

In the first article ‘‘Ethics in action: anonymization as a participant’s concern and

a participant’s practice’’ Lorenza Mondada proposes an ‘emic’ approach to ethical

issues as a member’s concern (see Speer and Hutchby 2003a, b; Mondada 2006).

She explores the way in which participants display orientation and even explicitly

negotiate ethical concerns while being involved in audio/video recorded activities.

In this sense, issues of ethics, informed consent, and anonymization of data are

studied here as topics for research and not as methodological problems or resources.

The article analyses the situated practices by which participants request/resist

authorization, and the moments and sequential environments treated by the

participants as being ‘delicate’ and thus to be erased/to be anonymized; the practices

by which participants themselves ‘‘erase’’ or ‘‘anonymize’’ the recording in the

course of the action, for example by overlapping with a louder voice, the stating of a

person’s name during the conversation.

The procedure of obtaining informed consent from participants, in a gynaeco-

logical hospital setting’’ is the focus of the article: ‘‘From principles to practice:

information giving in written consent forms and in participants’ talk recorded in a

hospital setting’’ by Marilena Fatigante and Franca Orletti. They distinguish an

‘‘ideal’’ procedure to obtain consent from an actual one. They start examining the

written consent forms of their study, describing how they were written and revised

in consecutive versions. Above all they show how during data collection, the

research aims and procedures become an object of discussion among research

participants. They analyses extracts from videorecorded medical visits, in which the

Ethical Issues in Collecting Interactional Data

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different participants (doctors, nurses, and patients) make relevant issues associated

with informed consent.

The third article: ‘‘Preserving the respondent’s standpoint in a research interview:

different strategies of ‘doing’ the interviewer’’ by Francesca Alby and Marilena

Fatigante, is focussed on the implicit agreement between interviewers and

informants concerning the knowledge produced through the research process, in

particular, informants are trusted as authoritative sources of knowledge on the one

hand, and the interviewer is trusted as a respectful, responsive listener on the other.

Through the analysis of group interviews on domestic family life, the authors

describe the interviewer displays a ‘‘neutral’’ posture, and instances in which she

positions herself as an ‘‘embodied subject,’’ showing the ethical dimension in

listening and understanding insofar as it implies to respect the respondents’

perspective.

In the last article, ‘‘Ethics and the social dimension of research activities,’’ I

propose that the awareness on the inescapably interactional dimension of research

practices can be considered as a useful standpoint from which to take ethical

decisions. Any form of data collection is achieved through social interactions. Issues

of face, relevance, appropriateness, politeness, etc., are relevant in research

interaction as in any other interaction. Ethical procedures are not exceptions.

Informed consent, for example, has often to be negotiated in actual circumstances,

while research participants are carrying out their activities; two examples are

examined in detail. Above all, researchers need to be aware and responsible for the

impact they have in the setting they study. Any practice of data collection implies an

impact on the setting and on the participants in the study. It is also important to

consider the fact that participants may be using the research for their own ends, in

some occasions. The article presents some ethical problems encountered in actual

research experiences and discusses them critically as illustrative examples.

Finally, Susan Speer critically examines the contributions to the special issue

highlighting the ethics and politics of field research. Overall, the meaning of these

contributions is that making observable and describable ethical issues in social

sciences research we can contribute to producing more fair and effective research

relationships, but we can also build an understanding of how we construct the

knowledge we produce as social scientists in our interaction within specific settings.

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