“Strategies for the Discussion of Research Participant Data

Although you don’t cite data you gathered from research participants, you can discuss them, provided that you preserve the confidentiality you guaranteed the participants when they consented to participate in your study (see PM § 1.11). In practical terms, this means that “neither the subject nor third parties (e.g., family members, employers) are identifiable” (PM, p. 17) from the information presented.

Strategies for the ethical use of data from research participants include the following:

• referring to participants by identifiers other than their names, such as

  • their roles (e.g., participant, doctor, patient),

  • pseudonyms or nicknames,

  • initials,

  • descriptive phrases,

  • case numbers, or

  • letters of the alphabet;

• altering certain participant characteristics in your discussion of the participants (e.g., make the characteristics more general, such as saying “European” instead of “French”);

• leaving out unimportant identifying details about the participant;

• adding extraneous material to obscure case details; and

• combining the statements of several participants into a “composite” participant.

Choose the strategy that makes sense given the degree of confidentiality of information you must maintain and what details are important to relate to the reader.”

“Examples of How to Discuss Research Participant Data

Here are a few examples of how participant data might be presented in the text. The most appropriate presentation will depend on context.

• One respondent stated she had never experienced a level of destruction similar to that caused by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

• “Madge,” a 45-year-old Red Cross social worker, was in Sichuan province when the earthquake struck. “It was unlike anything else I have experienced,” she said.

• MJ, a European social worker, said the earthquake was “unlike anything else I have experienced.”

• A non-Chinese social worker said the 2008 Sichuan earthquake “exceeded levels of devastation I have ever seen before.”

• Case 24 was injured in the earthquake.

• Participant M said she had never experienced anything like the earthquake or its level of devastation.

• Several employees of a humanitarian aid organization said that they were emotionally distressed by the devastation the earthquake left behind.

Data can also be presented in a table or figure provided these same standards are abided by.”