Walking the Tightrope: Ethical Issues for Qualitative Researchers

Christine Hughes is manager, Policy Coordination, Developmental Services
Branch, Ontario Ministry of Community, Family and Children’s Services.

Walking the Tightrope features a collection of 13 previously unpublished
essays, many of which were originally presented at the 1999 and 2000
Qualitative Analysis Conferences in New Brunswick and the 2000 Annual
Meetings of the Pacific Sociological Association in San Diego. The
authors are Canadian, American, and British researchers and range in
their experience from graduate student to seasoned scholar. Their
contributions illustrate the tensions that exist in the policy and
practice of applied research ethics in qualitative research.

Editor Will van den Hoonaard is a professor of sociology at the
University of New Brunswick. He sets the tone for the collection with
his introductory chapter on ethical norming and qualitative research. He
highlights the volume’s comprehensive nature, which uses a broad range
of examples to articulate the ethics of field research and describe the
problematic nature of formal ethics reviews based on hypothesis- and
variable-driven research.

Collectively, the contributors challenge the “bio-medical” basis of
research-ethics review policies and suggest that such guidelines, which
were designed for quantitative research, impose inappropriate
restrictions on qualitative work that is not hypothesis-driven.
Individual chapters examine the themes of differentiating between ethics
and morality, dealing with ethics committees and policies, and research
processes.

A number of interesting physical settings and social science research
projects (e.g., a maternity home, people with a developmental
disability, women’s employment initiatives, the career of a dental
assistant, high-school students, and cyberspace) are used to explore
current ethical review protocols.

Teachers of qualitative research methodologies, graduate students, and
practitioners in the fields of anthropology, sociology, social work, and
education will find this book to be a useful, timely, and
thought-provoking resource. The emphasis is on research policy in North
America, but qualitative researchers in other parts of the world will
also find the arguments applicable.

The book is indexed; however, references are compiled together at the
end of the book rather than being listed separately with each article.