Sample:
To create an inclusive sample, I would interview old people from different genders. I would also consider the race of my participants to ensure that my sample is representative of the whole population. I would not like my research to be labeled as one-sided. I would also like my audience to identify with the things they read and to feel part of my research. To ensure participants are recruited equally, I would select random participants to be part of the study. Most importantly, I would send a letter to the potential participant’s house, or retirement home ask for consent before enlisting the individual as one of the participants in the study (Sanjari, Bahramnezhad, Fomani…et al., 2014).
Interviewing an elderly person without the consent of the caregiver in the private home or retirement home is unethical (Sanjari, Bahramnezhad, Fomani…et al., 2014). The caregiver can sue the researcher. To avoid a potential problem with the caregivers, and to ensure that the research has credible information, I would take all the precautions to ensure that the participants do not feel coerced but instead participate in the research willingly.
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Data Collection:
The confidentiality of the participants is crucial to the success of the research project. When participants volunteer to be part of a survey, they believe that their names, careers or position in the society are not made public. Publicizing participants’ names may expose them to a public backlash if they said something that is not acceptable in the eyes of the masses (Kaiser, 2009). What is more, if an institution’s name is publicized, the institution may be wrongly associated with personal views. For this reason, I will take all precautions when handling confidential data. For instance, I will not use the participant’s names in the data. Moreover, I will ensure that no one other than the research team can access original data that may contain participants’ names.
My data access staff will undergo thorough training on how to act and to handle data. In particular, they will be educated about the dangers of exposing private information. They will also go through an integrity test to determine whether they can keep the original contents of the research private and out of the public eye (Kaiser, 2009). The integrity test will help in determining who is to handle critical information and who is to handle the general information. What is more, the data collection team will be educated about the consequences of revealing confidential information and the effect of the reveal to the research project.
Given that the participants volunteered to be in the study, it is my prerogative to ensure that they are not burdened by data collection. Most of those I will interview will be old people. For this reason, I do need a brief questionnaire instead of a long and tiring one. More so, I will ensure that the interview questions do not digress from the real purpose of the research to save time and to ensure the participants feel at ease.
Reporting:
To ensure that the participants’ information is kept anonymous, I will change all the identifying factors such as city, occupation, and ethnic background. I will also present the nursing homes and retirement homes a confidentiality agreement that will spell out my commitment to protect the participants’ private information. This process will take place at the beginning of the data collection stage. What is more, I can address data confidentiality at the data cleaning stage. I will remove all the identifiers such as name or address. It is worth noting that the confidential data will be stored in protected files. As such, I will ensure that the files are accessed and all the unwanted data is removed.
The names of the participants will be replaced with pseudonyms. While data cleaning is a thorough process, it cannot filter out the contextual identifiers in an individual’s narrative. This is particularly the case with participants who have undergone unique experiences. For this reason, I will consider whether the examples and direct quotations used in the paper can expose a participant’s identity. I am however aware of the fact that changing too much information to ensure the data is unidentifiable has the potential of altering the facts of the narrative and therefore render the data useless for the research.
Also worth pointing out is the fact that some respondents have strong feelings about how their words and personal characteristics are represented. They may, therefore, have a problem with the complete research. To prevent such a scenario from presenting itself, I will talk to all individuals whose stories or quotes will be used in the final study. I will then agree with them on the alterations. If we fail to agree then the quote or story will be expunged from the data. The other alternative to protecting the participants’ confidentiality is not publishing the data due to the issue of deductive disclosure. This option has been used by a substantial number of authors who want to present the real facts of the research and also protect the identity of the participants. This research seeks to impact clinical practice. I would, therefore, want to ensure that all the critical information is included in the research. I believe that the experience of even one respondent may impact clinical practice positively and help in reducing the number of elderly persons injured daily.
References
Kaiser, K. (2009). Protecting Respondent Confidentiality in Qualitative Research. Quality Health Research, 19 (11), 1632-1641. doi:10.1177/1049732309350879
Sanjari, M., Bahramnezhad, F., Fomani, F. K., Shoghi, M., & Cheraghi, M. A. (2014). Ethical challenges in qualitative research: examples from practice. Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine, 7 (14). Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4263394/
