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4.5 The ethics of researching minority ethnic communities
According to Edge and Richards (1998: 334), any investigation of ‘contextualised
experience’ such as the present study, ‘requires that the researcher’s findings take
sensitive account of the interpretations and constructions of other who live in the
context being explored.’ One of the defining ethical issues in
the present study is that
the researcher is not a member of the Traveller community. Furthermore, the
education profile of the Traveller community is vastly different to that of the settled
community, reflected in the differences in educational attainment between the
members of SettCorp and TravCorp (see Section 8.2.2). Ryan (1996: paragraph 7)
maintains that the members of ethnic communities that participate in research
projects:
...are often in relatively powerless positions, lacking cultural and/or institutional
power. In this respect, the question of ethics assumes salience – the researcher is
generally not a member of the community, she or he is generally qualified, with
specialised technical language and she or he has the final say about the content of a
research report and the dissemination of research findings (largely through the
medium of print).
Therefore, it can be argued that the members of TravCorp do not have access to the
language of research and, as a result, have little power over how the research is
carried out and reported (although this argument, to a lesser extent admittedly, could
be made regarding the SettCorp also). However, every effort was made on the part
of the researcher to ensure that members of both TravCorp, and indeed SettCorp,
were broadly informed about the purpose of the research. This effort to ensure an
ethical research practice on the part of the researcher will be discussed under the
headings of
informed consent
and Ryan’s (
ibid.
)
notion of
do no harm
.
In relation to informed consent, in order to avoid arising issues from the researcher
not being a member of the Irish Traveller community, possible project participants
from the Traveller Community were approached through an intermediary. The
intermediary identified was the Limerick Traveller Development Group (LTDG).
The management of the group was approached initially and they agreed to approach
a group of Traveller women on the researcher’s behalf. When the group had been
informed of the project, they agreed to meet the researcher in order to raise any
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questions that they had. This meeting took place on the LTDG premises. The
researcher met the group and questions regarding the nature of the project, issues of
confidentiality, the amount of speaker information required and, interestingly, the
perceived reluctance of Traveller men to become involved in the project were
discussed. The group was then given the opportunity to approach the researcher on a
one-to-one basis should they want their participation in the project to remain private
from the rest of the group. Initially, four of the group approached the researcher and
they were given recording equipment and instructions on how to use it.
Ryan (
ibid.
) identifies the need for sensitivity, the need to ensure participation is
voluntary and the need to ensure confidentiality as key issues in ensuring that no
‘harm’ is done to research participants. At all times during the initial stages leading
up to recording, it was made clear that participation in the project was on voluntary
basis. In relation to confidentiality, any identifiable markers were removed from the
spoken transcripts and names were replaced by pseudonyms (see Extract 4.1 below),
with fictitious place names also inserted where necessary. Issues of confidentiality
are particularly relevant in the case of Irish Travellers due to the compactness of the
community. Initially, it was thought that the Traveller community might provide a
research assistant that would transcribe the data, resulting in more accurate
transcription and the active involvement of the community in the research. However,
Travellers with the sufficient educational attainment needed to transcribe the
recorded spoken data were only available outside of the family represented in
TravCorp and it was felt that some of the data recorded was of too sensitive a nature
to allow then to transcribe. Accordingly, all transcription was done by the researcher.
Transcribing spoken data presents a unique set of challenges to the language
researcher (see McCarthy, 1998: 6 and Baker, 2006: 35). For example, as
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
