Pawan,
From the sound of it you haven't got through an IRB (Institutional Review Board) process. Let me suggest that you temporarily suspend your research until you do so. At universities in the US that receive Public/Federal funding, any significant human research must get vetted by the schools IRB board (for better or worse). Since you're dealing with sexual material and the issue of whether the data you are recording is confidential or public, you're definitely in the territory of the IRB. And if you proceed without the go ahead, you may not be able to use the research that you gather -- I've known a number of people who've been through hell and back getting the IRB to allow research that was conducted prior to getting the requiste permissions to be used for thesis and disertations.
- Matt On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 6:00 PM, <air-l-request@listserv.aoir.org> wrote:
Message: 1 Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:27:54 -0700 From: "Pawan Singh" <pawansinghh@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Air-L Digest, Vol 50, Issue 18 To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Message-ID: <8f8920530809191827h6ab7940apb4acfd6930dd1d3f@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Thank you Koen, Steve and Nishant, First off, I just joined UC San Diego, so it'll take them a bit of time to put up my page on the website. I know it's important to have a page describing one's research and academic work but due to bureaucratic procedures this might only happen during the mid of the quarter.
Koen, I did contact the people with those profiles and also requested interview appointments but their perception of their participation in a research concerning their sexuality is a major concern. So I've run into a bit of an impasse there. But I'll try again with a different set of respondents and see what happens. Thanks, I am reading Nakumura's work and will hopefully use it in my paper.
Steve, I'll have to figure this out with my department. So definitely a suggestion to keep in mind. Thank you.
Nishant, thank you for an elaborate message and I think your suggestions are valuable. I'll need to restructure my paper in order to look beyond the profile content. Maybe the offline context in which sexuality is experienced and then how it is actively constructed online in these spaces. Profiles provide a lot of rich raw data for producing analytically thick descriptions but I guess what you suggest is certainly a way around the problem.
Just one clarification. Do you think my personal interaction with the respondents is less subject to ethics than using profile data? Do I still need to obtain permission to use it for research.
Thanks for all your suggestions guys.
Pawan
-- ----------------------------- Matthew Bernius mBernius@gMail.com http://www.waking-dream.com