[RNLD] Video of children and permissions

[Felicity Meakins]

Hi Simon,

I agree with your approach entirely. (And as it links in with the discussion about open access and archives:

http://www.paradisec.org.au/blog/2014/03/7940/

Many people working in child language research make transcripts and maybe audio available but not the video. In terms of archives heading towards complete open access, it is worth bearing in mind the unfortunate fact that there is a big trade in online child pornography and inadvertently adding material to this trade would be an appalling consequence of our research.

Regards, Felicity

From: Simon Musgrave <simon.musgrave at monash.edu<mailto:simon.musgrave at monash.edu>>
Date: Wednesday, 2 April 2014 2:23 PM
To: "r-n-l-d at lists.unimelb.edu.au<mailto:r-n-l-d at lists.unimelb.edu.au>" <r-n-l-d at lists.unimelb.edu.au<mailto:r-n-l-d at lists.unimelb.edu.au>>
Subject: [RNLD] Video of children and permissions

Dear RNLDers,

In preparing an ethics application with a student, some questions have come up about who can or should decide about access to recordings (in this case video recordings) of children.

I think we all accept that parents/guardians can give permission for children to participate in research, but is it appropriate for such people to make a decision about whether resulting recordings might be publicly accessible in an archive?

My current position is that parents can give consent for video recordings of their children to be made, but that they do not have the right to give consent for such recordings to be publicly exposed. I think that only the people recorded can give that permission and that for that permission to be meaningful, it has to be given by an adult. The consequence is that no video of a child can be publicly exposed before a] the child has grown up and is able to give informed consent; and such consent has been given, or b) enough time has passed that the (then) child can safely be assumed to be no longer living.

The possible scenarios under a) are that the community continue to use the materials which have been recorded in a project and as children reach adulthood they want access to their recordings (for the use of the whole community at least) and they approach the archive to alter the access conditions; or researchers approach the archive wanting to view material and then have to seek relevant permissions themselves.

I realise that this may seem a rather extreme position, but I feel uncomfortable with the idea that a decision might be made on behalf of someone else which that someone else (the child) might not be happy about later. And that it is ethically preferable to impose a restriction that can be relaxed by the affected person rather than that person having to act to impose a restriction to remedy an undesirable situation.

I am interested to know other people's thoughts about this.

(And I'm certainly open to a charge of hypocrisy - I have posted pictures of my children on Facebook.)

Best, Simon

--
Simon Musgrave
Lecturer
Co-ordinator, Undergraduate Major in Linguistics<http://www.monash.edu.au/pubs/handbooks/aos/linguistics/ug-arts-linguistics.html>
School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics
Monash University
Victoria 3800
Australia

Simon.Musgrave at monash.edu<mailto:Simon.Musgrave at monash.edu>
+61 (0)3 9905 8234[X]+61 (0)3 9905 8234 (phone)
+61 (0)3 9905-5437 (fax)
Official page:
http://profiles.arts.monash.edu.au/simon-musgrave/<http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/linguistics/staff/smusgrave.php>


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