Completing the ethical enquiry form is a vital part of the ARP. Firstly because it makes me consider and account for the ethical implications of my project, but also because in doing that I need to design and detail my research approach.
My completed ethical enquiry form is included for download below:
Summary of research ethics form:
My research area focuses on digital sustainability and current levels of knowledge and best practice of this in the UAL digital learning community. I therefore will carry out a questionnaire with that community to understand this and what kind of intervention I can create to support practice in this area.
I identified the following ethical considerations and corresponding tactics for reducing harm to participants:
- Fear or embarrassment about knowledge levels of sustainability best practice for the web, similarly around technical knowledge with regard to web design/development.
- Anxiety about climate change in terms of the fear that this invokes but also the powerlessness to tackle the scale of the problem.
- To counter these points, the survey will also be anonymous so no one will be identifiable.
- I have also included in the information sheet (Appendix A of download above) that I am new to this topic and have no expectations or judgements about other’s levels of knowledge.
- In terms of tackling the powerlessness of climate change I have included that their participation will help to shape our proactive response to this issue through our practice.
I identified the following ethical considerations and corresponding tactics for reducing harm to myself:
- There is the potential for this to be emotionally demanding in terms of anxiety about the climate crisis.
- Additionally, as this project needs to be achievable within the timeframe, there may be a feeling of wanting to do more but needing to stay within the confines of what is possible for this ARP.
- To offset this I will use this project as an opportunity to be involved in UAL climate justice initiatives so that I can work with other beyond this project to continue including sustainability in my work.
Development of the ethics form
Above is the original ethics form I submitted to my tutor along with their comments for revision. Their comments prompted me to make important clarifications including:
- how would I approach the digital learning team (I amended this make clear it would happen online via Teams)
- to ensure I created participant consent form (which I did as part of the electronic questionnaire)
- to state how long the data would be held for, which I clarified would be one year in order to be able to compare a future survey (after my intervention) against the findings of this survey
References
British Educational Research Association (2018) Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research. 4th ed. Available at: https://www.bera.ac.uk/publication/ethical-guidelines-for-educational-research-2018 (Accessed 25 October 2023)
University of Sheffield. (2018) Emotionally demanding research: risks to the researcher. [Specialist Research Ethics Guidance Paper]. Available via: https://moodle.arts.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/1587855/mod_folder/content/0/SREGP-Emotionally-Demanding-Research%20-%20University%20of%20Sheffield%202018.pdf?forcedownload=1 (Accessed 25 October 2023)