Ethics

What role will you play as a researcher in relation to your subjects/participants? I will be an involved party in the course of my research.  I will act as interviewer.  These seven participants are my peers and I have a friendly though not personal relationship with them.  I feel that this will make the interview process easier, but it is not without some concerns. What ethical considerations and concerns seem most relevant to your research project? I think concerns of anonymity are probably most relevant to my project.  The questions that I will be asking are not of a very personal nature, but there may be answers the research subjects would rather not have others know.  Because this is a small group of colleagues who are friendly with each other, some may feel comfortable sharing and discussing the interviews with each other and some may not.   What is the best way of addressing these? I will clearly outline the terms of confidentiality to each subject.  Interviews will take place one on one, away from others, or over private email correspondence.  I will make it clear that I will not be using names or other identifiers, and that all data will be kept confidential and only discussed on class assignments - not on facebook or other sites.  Throughout the data collection, I will check in with each subject to make sure that they are feeling comfortable with how the research is going.