Of course, in making choices, and in finding a balance that is “right for them,” researchers are not free agents.35 They need to meet certain critically important ethical obligations: they must inform people that they are being studied, get their explicit agreement to participate in the research, tell them in advance that the results will be published, and protect the confidentiality of information respondents would prefer to remain private.36 Following the Golden Rule, ethnographers should not ask study participants to do anything that they would not be willing to do themselves or have their own children do. Still, finding a balance that is “right for them” raises a quagmire of ethical challenges for researchers. All possible pathways have problems. In my own case, I have concluded that sharing research results with study participants in order to gain their approval should be optional. Since sharing research results has numerous drawbacks for all parties (despite some potential advantages), it should not be required any more than other researchers or journalists should be required to gain approval from their informants and participants before publication.37 In my view, for better or worse, a research project is controlled by the researcher. It is the researcher, not the research participants, who frames the research topic, asks the questions, figures out the probes, decides what information to record, selects what to analyze, chooses the quotes to highlight, and does the writing.38
TO EXPECT FORGIVENESS IS TO EXPECT TOO MUCH
It is exceedingly rare for researchers to give a finished book to research participants and then go back to them to learn how they feel about it, as I did. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who did the same, describes in her book Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland, the pain and anger her book caused in an Irish village. In her view, some of the pain was an inevitable and inextricable part of the project, given that ethnographic research requires the public exposure of personal warts: “Any ethnography ultimately stands or falls on the basis of whether or not it resonates: it should ring true, strike a familiar (even if occasionally painful) chord. It should not leave the ‘native’ reader cold and confused. Angry and hurt, perhaps, but not confused or perplexed.” Doing ethnography raises difficult ethical questions, as Scheper-Hughes further notes: “To whose advantage or for whose good do we cast what is so often a critical gaze on the contradictions and paradoxes implicit in the character of human relations, institutions, and organizations?”39 From Scheper-Hughes’s writings, and from my own experience, I reluctantly conclude that some of this anger and hurt is the “price of doing business” in writing ethnography and having the research participants read the results. For some, it is a high price to pay. To act as if there is no price—to act as if ethnographic research is “free”—is to be naïve. Indeed, some would say the failure to acknowledge to oneself the cost of research goes beyond naïveté and shades into ethically irresponsible behavior. Ethnographers must acknowledge the difficult, angst-inducing questions about whether the price is worth it.40
Accepting that there are costs for those who participate in a research project is only the first step. It is also important that ethnographers think carefully about how to reduce that price. If I were to do Unequal Childhoods again, before I asked potential participants to sign a consent form, I would explain in more detail what research entails. Notably, as Ms. Taylor said, it is not a “story” but an analysis. I would give individuals who expressed interest in participating in my study a book such as The Second Shift and encourage them to look it over carefully. I would say something like, “This is what my book is going to look like. Is this okay?”41 I would not promise participants a copy of my study’s published results, as I did with the Unequal Childhoods families. Instead, I would create a color brochure or newsletter that would include a prominent thank you to the research participants and would highlight project results that would be of interest to general readers. (The brochure could also be used as an informative handout for journalists, research groups, or other generalists.) This level of information is all most people really want; they are interested in whether the project came to a close and whether the research revealed anything significant. By giving each family a book, I was in a sense forcing the respondents to look at themselves from others’ perspectives. Some, such as the Yanellis, interpreted the way their lives were portrayed in the text as demeaning and false—a “slur.” Some readers, on the other hand, have told me that the Yanelli chapter made them understand how families who use corporal punishment could see the school as a threatening and powerful force. These readers said they found that insight truly helpful. But the fact that I, and some readers, may disagree with a family’s interpretation is irrelevant to the family and thus does nothing to lessen their pain.42 That is the key point.
There could be class differences in the likelihood of study participants seeking out the book on their own: middle-class respondents are likely to have the educational skills that would allow them to do so, and some may be more motivated to find the book than others. Still, the feelings that result from bringing study participants a copy of the book, and thus compelling them to consider a portrait of themselves that does not match their own self-vision, are likely to be more troublesome than those that arise after participants who actively sought out a copy of the research results read those results. If participants sought out and read the research report(s) and became very upset as a result, then, as with the families of Unequal Childhoods, I would try to engage them in a process in which we worked through the problems together. I would not withdraw from them (although, admittedly, this is a strong temptation). I would not ignore their feelings. Instead, I would directly and clearly interact with them about those feelings—that is, if they were willing to continue to see me. I would drop by from time to time, bringing bakery cakes and perhaps some wine or beer, to say hello and to see how they were doing. Even if research participants are blisteringly angry, I believe that it is still possible, in some cases, to be engaged in conversation in a way that can lead to a diffusion of anger.43 If the respondents are willing to continue a relationship with the researcher, clearly acknowledging their position and doing so at repeated intervals may eventually lead to people’s anger subsiding. I also think it is fitting for a researcher to invest time and energy in return visits, given that she or he is the cause of the respondents’ anger.