Gillian Savage
It's not quite like going to the dentist,
but taking part in visitor research has its risks. What if dinner
burns while you are on the phone answering survey questions? What
if an in-depth interview raises disturbing issues and leaves you
feeling annoyed or upset? Over the years, ethical guidelines have
been developed to help social researchers avoid these unhappy
outcomes.
Voluntary participation and informed consent.
The principle of voluntary participation requires that people
not be coerced into participating in research. In addition, their
agreement to participate should be based on true information about
the research procedures and the risks of taking part. This means
that you shouldn't say, "It only takes five minutes", when you
know the interview takes 15-20.
Privacy
Confidentiality and anonymity help to protect the privacy of research
participants. Participants should be assured that their identity
will not be revealed to anyone who is not directly involved in
the study. Where identifying information (name, phone number or
address, or a recorded image) is collected, it should be kept
separate from the data and access should be restricted by security
measures.
If you are observing or recording meetings
or behaviour, you should inform participants beforehand that this
is occurring and how the recordings will be used. Recent privacy
legislation outlines clear requirements about how personal information
may be collected, stored and used.
In response, the Market Research Society
of Australia (MRSA) is developing specific privacy guidelines
for the market research industry. These guidelines will be highly
relevant to visitor research in museums.
Risk of harm
Ethical standards require that researchers not put participants
in a situation where they might be at risk of harm (either physical
or psychological) as a result of their participation. This means
that your prototype display should not give research participants
a black eye during formative evaluation! And it means that your
attitudinal research should not leave participants with important
misconceptions (see box at right). You can protect against this
kind of 'unintended learning' by watching for responses during
interviews and by concluding the interview with a short debrief
during which you rectify any misunderstandings.
MRSA Code of Conduct
The MRSA Code of Conduct covers these principles and adds two
more requirements:
- Respondents must be able to check without
difficulty the identity and bona fides of researchers.
- No child under 14 years shall be interviewed
without parental consent.
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Professional guidelines like these help us
to put into practice the golden rule of social research: leave
your informants in the same, or better, condition that you found
them. This is particularly important when your informants are
also your visitors.
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Sidebar: Do No Harm In a recent study,
we conducted group interviews with young children in their homes
about a forthcoming exhibition. The discussion turned to crime,
punishment and the death penalty. Some of the children showed
concern and anxiety that an Australian government had executed
Ned Kelly (they thought that killing people, even bad ones, was
quite wrong). At six and seven years of age, they had no sense
of historical distance and suddenly they found themselves facing
the prospect that they lived in a country where the government
kills people. Rather than leave them with this misconception and
the anxiety it brought, I explained in terms they could understand
that this does not happen in Australia today and that it has not
happened for a long time ("It used to happen a hundred years ago,
but it doesn't happen now"). Their anxiety eased and the discussion
moved to other subjects. Gillian Savage, Environmetrics.
- Gillian Savage, Director, Environmetrics.
Gillian manages the website of the Evaluation and Visitor Research
SIG: www.amol.org.au/evrsig/