Anonymization
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Confidentiality is a key principle of institutional ethics along with beneficence and (free, prior and informed) consent. Respecting the privacy rights of participants is a core aspect of ethical research. This may involve ensuring that the identities of participants are kept confidential and that they cannot be identified in research produced with the information that they have provided. In some kinds of scientific and social scientific research information can easily be presented as anonymous – i.e. with no name – in large data sets for quantitative research, for example. But in other types of research, particularly in the arts and humanities, this may not be possible due to the kind of research practice undertaken, for example, visual work, or even desirable, especially if issues of subjectivity are important and narrative styles are integral to the practice. Certain kinds of research are based on self-identification and require situated and positioned self-reflection, for example autoethnography, and so maintaining confidentiality through anonymity runs counter to the conceptual framework adopted. However, fiction can be used, or if not, other ways for the information to be shared which are not harmful to the participant can be explored.
When working with small groups and communities, or with well-known individuals or institutions, that are ‘famous’ or clearly recognisable, it may not be possible to ensure that particular pieces of information are dis-connected from certain specific identifying features. In these instances, it is vital that researcher make clear to participations the risks of being exposed, especially if the research is in anyway sensitive.
Lee Ann Fujii’s work on ‘dilemmas of proximity’ allows us to consider how questions of anonymity are made more complex when researchers enter the communities they are researching, and how issues of consent are figured through relations of power and distance:
Just as power hierarchies give rise to dilemmas around consent, the researcher’s social proximity to participants and interlocutors can give rise to dilemmas about how to maintain people’s privacy and confidentiality.[1]
Fujii notes that even when the researcher has ‘left the field’, dilemmas around consent persist through publication, with ‘professional incentives and ethical obligations … pull[ing] in different directions.’ [2] She discusses how in advancing careers, researchers must publish, but that this may mean not protecting confidentiality and privacy to the extent required, ethically. She writes about the approaches she uses for hiding identities In her own work through the use of pseudonyms and deletions of identifying references to place and landscape, hinting at the craft and care required to do this in a way that draws out the relevant interpretations while also protecting identities. [3]
Participatory research and practices of co-production also pose interesting cases for anonymity and ethics. Given that they aim to respect intersubjective positions, and to develop relations as part of processes of collaborative engagement, these kinds of research practice may actively work against institutional demands for anonymity, by requiring that participants are recognised and acknowledged – potentially named and linked to the information they contribute to the research as well as their roles in the process.[4] A collaborative or co-productive approach might then require that participants are not only named in the research, but become named researchers.
As visual methods in research have become more common due to the rise in digital and social media and the development of practice-led and artistic research, this has posed challenges for conventional ethical procedures, especially around informed consent and anonymity.[5] Informed consent is ‘particularly challenging with photographs because it is difficult to ensure that every subject has given their consent to the photo being taken and used for research purposes.’[6] This means that researchers might have limited options for sharing visual materials publicly: to only use photographs taken in public spaces where this is allowed, and internationally the law on this differs, or to decide not to include photographs of people who haven’t given explicit consent. Anonymity is also difficult to maintain when using images of people in public places they frequent, and visual tactics for obscuring people in images by either inserting black boxes or pixilating faces can appear as censorship. And in addition, with the rise in digital and visual research, it may not always be possible to guarantee how research outputs are circulated or used, and there is an increased potential for research to interpreted and re-contextualised by third parties in unexpected ways.
A number of social research organisations have developed new ethical guidelines the focus on issues related to visual research and anonymity, for example, the International Visual Sociology Association and the British Sociological Association, and their Ethics Guidelines for Digital Research, the Social Data Science Lab’s guidance on Social Media Research Ethics. ‘Visual Ethics: Ethical Issues in Visual Research’ an ESRC National Centre for Research Methods Review Paper, provides a coherent and comprehensive discussion of the ethical, moral and legal issues around visual ethics, with a section devoted to anonymity and confidentiality.[7] Here the tension is discussed between the demand for anonymity from regulatory bodies, and the importance, on the one hand, for the researcher to present unedited visual images because of the richness of the information contained, and on the other, for the participant to remain actively associated with images of themselves, or to be named as the author of images they may have produced. Issues of internal confidentiality, are explored, as well as methods for obscuring details and removing identity which are understood as particularly problematic and requiring further exploration. [8] The recommendation is that visual information is presented in full with consent, and there is not attempt to anonymise individuals, noting that the use of pseudonyms is not generally possible in this research. [9]
Researchers have a duty to talk to participants about the possibilities, implications, and restrictions for maintaining anonymity or being identified at the outset of the research. implications of being identified, and to explain methods and plans for publishing research early and clearly. It is important to find ways of sharing the research, primary data, draft and completed articles and artefacts that participants are happy with, and to allow plenty of time for responses to materials to be given, suggestions offered and decisions made on whether and how participants wish to be identified in the research. For these reasons the drafting and sharing of information sheets and consent forms needs to become part of the practice of the research, and where possible, ethics procedures and paper-work remodelled to respect different cultural, visual and linguistic codes. Making decisions on confidentiality and anonymity together, has been described as ‘pre-ethics’, and this can be especially important when working with sensitive material and vulnerable people.[10]
Anonymity can also be linked to issues of disclosure. A researcher may decide that they need to disclose an illegal or immoral activity shared with them confidentially, which may lead into the area of whistle-blowing, where balances have to be made between private and public interests. Issues around covert research may also be encountered, where researchers are under obligation to operate under cover themselves, and/or to protect their participants as vulnerable sources, given the dangers of exposing certain forms of knowledge. In certain cases where the participants are bound by obligations to institutions or corporates they work for, researchers may find requests to sign non-disclosure agreements, and to ensure that the information gained is not shared, or only made public in particular ways, with requests for names not be included.
Researchers must comply with particular legal requirements in relation to the storage and use of personal data, as stipulated in the UK by the Data Protection Act (1998) and any subsequent similar acts, including, from May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Researchers must have participants’ explicit permission to disclose personal information to third parties, and are required to ensure that such parties are permitted to have access to that information.
The UK Data Protection Act (1998) and the GDPR that supersedes it also confer the right to private citizens to have access to any personal data that is stored, and which relates to them. Researchers seeking to exploit legal exclusions to these rights must have a clear justification. The Freedom of Information Act (2000) is applicable to requests for access to data held by public authorities, including state schools, but research data in these settings would be exempt from such requests where explicit confidentiality arrangements are in place. The release of such information would be a breach of personal confidence.[11]
Written by Jane Rendell.
[1] Lee Ann Fujii, ‘Research Ethics 101: Dilemmas and Responsibilities’, PS: Political Science & Politics, (2012), 45 (4): 717–23.
[2] Lee Ann Fujii, ‘Research Ethics 101: Dilemmas and Responsibilities’, PS: Political Science & Politics, (2012), 45 (4): 717–23.
[3] Lee Ann Fujii, ‘Research Ethics 101: Dilemmas and Responsibilities’, PS: Political Science & Politics, (2012), 45 (4): 717–23.
[4] Caitlin Cahill, Farhana Sultana and Rachel Pain, ‘Participatory Ethics: Politics, Practices, Institutions’, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies – Special Issue on Participatory Ethics, (2007) 6(3): 304-18, 301.
[5] https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/thinkingmethods/2015/07/01/ethics-and-visual-research/
[6] https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/thinkingmethods/2015/07/01/ethics-and-visual-research/
[7] Visual Ethics: Ethical Issues in Visual Research, an ESRC National Centre for Research Methods Review Paper. See http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/421/1/MethodsReviewPaperNCRM-011.pdf.
[8] Visual Ethics: Ethical Issues in Visual Research, an ESRC National Centre for Research Methods Review Paper. See http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/421/1/MethodsReviewPaperNCRM-011.pdf.
[9] Visual Ethics: Ethical Issues in Visual Research, an ESRC National Centre for Research Methods Review Paper. See http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/421/1/MethodsReviewPaperNCRM-011.pdf.
[10] See E. Barrett, B. Martin, J. Koolmatrie, D. Dank, D. Swan. C. Creed. M. Stephens, A. Matthews, B. Webb, L. Solomon, D. Gilson, and D. Toby, ‘Guidelines and principles for pre-ethical approaches to Indigenous Australian research,’ in 2016: Proceedings of the Art Ethics and Indigeneity Symposium, (Melbourne, Vic.: University of Melbourne, 2016), 1–3.
[11] See for example, BERA Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research (4th ed.), paras. 40-51.