An ethical question

[bernard smith]

I am exploring the social construction of “errors” and “mistakes” and am looking at how members label certain actions as mistakes and failures. The data I am using come from a set of online responses to an article published in a British newspaper about the horrific death some years ago of a child at the hands of his parents. Social workers were lambasted for this. My interest is neither in social work nor in child abuse. My interest is only in member’s practices in the construction of their social world – in this case how people account for errors. My IRB gave me the green light but I am a little concerned about “using” a case of child abuse to look at a question of member’s practices. Thoughts?

[Ilonka Sargent-Capron]

hi

I do not know the whole context of what you are using..but I will take a stab at it.

what sort of approach are you using? a life history ..which would  be a single case approach? or several persons (children)? If it is a one person or several..you would need to get consent from the parents, child abuse agency for records of incidents or as you indicated..some of the records are in the public domain?…

You would have to declare your position up front in terms of reflexivity..and then start collecting data.. If it goes against what you feel..maybe ..another approach?  perceptions maybe??

 

just my thoughts

 

Kind regards

Ilonka

Bahamas

PhD Student

[bernard smith]

Thanks Ilonka, The data I am using come from responses to a newspaper article. The article and responses were posted on the internet a few years ago. The discussion has been closed so no one may add to it. The people posting read the article and responded. They are not directly involved in the case except as members of the public and readers of the newspaper online. I am analyzing the posts (more than 200). As I said, my IRB (iInstitutional Research Board )- the committee that is set up by my college to make sure that human subjects involved in research are treated with the highest ethical standards by anyone engaged in research – had no problem with the design of the project itself. My question is not about the ethics of the methods but about the ethics of using this subject (child abuse) to look at things like assigning blame.  

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