Participant consent and metadata, analyses

[James Crippen]

On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 16:25, Dr Christina Eira - VACL
<ceira at vaclang.org.au> wrote:
> Yes. And also, in response to an earlier contribution by i think Steven bird, the
> question needs to sit there about who gets to decide what can be public and what
> can't. as the researcher I can't take full responsibility for that decision - how would i
> know?

But as the interface between the public and the materials produced by
your research, I would argue that you *must* take full responsibility
for the decision. You are the only one who in the end has any direct
control over your recordings and notes, whether you believe that you
own them or whether you believe that the community owns them. You are
responsible because they’re physically in your possession. It’s highly
unethical to abuse the confidence of your consultants, but it’s also
unethical to blame them for either a decision you make or one which
you fail to make. At some point you have to decide something, and that
decision is your responsibility. Your consultants give you consent
with the implicit understanding that you are the one responsible for
proper dispensation of the data. You have to own that responsibility,
otherwise their consent is meaningless.

The whole point of documenting consent is to demonstrate that your
decisions were made according to the opinions of the other people
involved in the production and use of your data. But you in the end
are the one who assigns the data some status in your presentation (or
lack of presentation) of the data to the public. Documented consent is
not a magical form of absolution from responsibility.

Cheers,
James