I have thought a bit about the possible ethical concerns that present themselves with my project. A potential cause of some ethical problems might be the fact that I will be interview an identifiable party about intimate details of their life. Where it gets tricky though is that the person I am interviewing is my grandmother. This makes any ethical concerns about my project harder to identify. Since my project is closely connect to me personally, it is not possible to avoid identifying my grandmother, as her identity is central to the project. Thus the privacy of my grandmother is much more difficult to protect.
As part of my research question, I have decided to use non-standard interviewing practices in order to gauge their effectiveness and importance in an interview project. The method I have chosen to adopt requires me to adopt an impersonal attitude toward the interview. This might be an ethical concern as this method might cause confusion and social discomfort to the interviewee. I will have to be careful to explain the method in before the interview begins, so that the discomfort to the interviewee is minimized.
Further to the previous point, there is also a problem with my grandmother being in a vulnerable group of the population: the elderly. She is over 90 years old and, though her mind is still good, would require extra care and consideration when I am interacting with her. The point above about using a non-standard interview practice makes this second point a greater concern.
Finally, there is the problem that I am related to my (first) interview subject, and therefore might not be able to operate without encountering a conflict of interest. Like it was mentioned in class, using someone for research that you have another established relationship with outside the research project can create a difficult situation. For example, if a family secret is revealed during the interview, there is a possible conflict. This is because if the information that is revealed is meaningful to the project, but is harmful to my family, I will not be able to able to choose whether on not to publish the information with impartially. I would have to choose between harming my family, or harming my research.
Overall, there are some ethical concerns with my project but, fortunately, they will not be a problem for me since I am not going to seriously consider this as an academic research project (but as a personal project, I might consider it as an undertaking...)
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