The ethics project

Introduction

This project was funded as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Collaborative Research Training Scheme; it took place between September 2005 and July 2006. It involved collaboration between the following institutions: University of the Arts London, University of Central England, Coventry University, Nottingham Trent University, Sheffield Hallam University and Staffordshire University. The project consisted of an initial research phase, a series of workshops with research students and supervisors at the collaborating institutions and the publication of the case examples on our Research Training Initiative website.

Why Research Ethics?

Art, design and media are relatively young research disciplines. They are also disciplines with distinctive characteristics, for example, the close relationship of research to creative arts and design practice, or the strong visual dimension. For these reasons, training for doctoral students in research ethics is an area of current development, where best practice is yet to be established. Whilst researchers in art, design and media can learn a great deal about good ethical practice in research from more established disciplines, there also needs to be regard for the specificity of the subject domains and the particular research practices that are becoming established. Research and professional practice in art, design and media may challenge conventional responses to ethical issues developed in other disciplines. Fine art practice research involving audience participation, participatory design research projects and projects involving visual representation through photography all raise particular ethical issues. Furthermore, ethics should not be seen simply as a matter of bureaucracy and compliance. In many projects where there is a close relationship between research and practice, there is an intrinsic ethical dimension. This can be seen, for example, in design for disability research, or sustainable design research.

It is only in recent years that there has begun an explicit debate about research ethics in art, design and media. The increased level of public funding available for research in our disciplines as well as institutional concerns about responsibility and accountability can both be seen as driving this current interest. Yet, we also believe that engaging with research ethics is part of the maturing of research in art, design and media. Ethical awareness and sound knowledge of ethical practice in research in one’s discipline is a key attribute of the trained researcher, and all researchers should be able to articulate an ethical defence of their approach, yet what this means for our subjects has still be fully worked out. To what extent should we embrace ethical guidelines developed in other, longer established disciplines? Can design research develop ethical guidelines together with fine art research, or are they fundamentally different? Are the ethical principles underlying existing practices in creative art and design practice applicable to research in these areas? To what extent do existing practices conflict with and challenge conventional approaches to research ethics? If we take ourselves seriously as research disciplines then these are questions we cannot neglect.

Research Questions

Although the aim of this project has been to enhance research training in art, design and media, our starting point was the sense that we really do not know enough about the ethical dilemmas that researchers are facing. The initial phase of the project therefore focused on two key questions:

What kinds of ethical issues are being encountered in research projects in art, design and media?
How are researchers in art, design and media responding to the ethical dilemmas and challenges that they face?

It is only after we have begun to answer these questions that we can fulfil the broader aim of the project.

Methodology

The project adopted a narrative case study approach. Rather than think about ethics in the abstract we wanted to gather actual examples of the dilemmas that researchers were facing in their projects. Our primary source of data was participants’ own accounts of their research projects. We recognise some potential omissions this approach may lead to, for example, there is an element of self-selection, i.e. there may be a bias towards participants who already recognise ethical issues in their projects, and we may miss researchers who do not volunteer that they are dealing with important ethical issues simply because they do not recognise them as such. Nevertheless, the approach is one that fitted with our overall philosophy, and was practical within the time and resource constraints of the project.

Recruitment of Participants

We adopted a purposive sampling strategy, seeking out research projects which seemed to be particularly interesting or rich in ethical terms. In order to identify potential participants we used two sources: the collaborative partners in the project; and an email call for participants sent to a small number of online discussion lists. The level of response was very high, taking us somewhat by surprise, in total we generated over sixty participants with potential case examples, far more than we were able to deal within the time we had available. Within this sixty we had to prioritise in order to have a manageable final list. As well as a range of practical criteria, such as availability for interview, we tried to capture a range of ethical issues; and, though this was more difficult, represent research across the range of art, design and media.

The sampling approach we adopted was suited to an initial attempt to assess the kind of ethical issues arising in art, design and media. Having now begun to map out the range of ethical issues, we would expect future research to be able to develop more systematic and/or guided approaches to sampling, for example looking at a particular range of ethical issues or focusing down on particular research areas within what is a rather broad range of disciplines. We are also aware that there are some areas where we know there are ethical issues, but which we failed to capture any examples. For example, the use of covert filming and the appropriation of images are two issues that are apparent in fine art, but are not represented in our sample.

Interviews

From those who had responded to our call, or been identified through the partner institutions, we drew up a shortlist and conducted interviews with approximately 20 participants. For practical reasons we used telephone and email as well as face to face interviews, however, neither the telephone or email approaches produced particularly satisfactory results. Interviewees were introduced to the project and asked to give their consent to participate. The interviews were semi-structured to give the participants the opportunity to describe their research and the ethical issues they were dealing with in their own words. In most cases the interviews were tape-recorded.

The Case Examples

The project researcher used the material gathered in the interviews to construct a short summary description of each research project; these were then returned to participants to confirm that the descriptions were accurate. Our intention was to give enough information on the project to enable a discussion of the ethical issues. Although in many cases ethics cannot be entirely separated from methodology, we were not primarily concerned with the latter. Each case example also has sections identifying the ethical issues involved, noting how the researcher had responded to those in this case and asking a range of questions which invite the reader to think beyond the specifics of the individual case. It is important to recognise that we are not offering the case examples as models of practice, but rather as material to stimulate debate.

Ethical Issues in the Project

The project also raised its own particular ethical issues, two of which are worthy of comment. First, in the interviews, there was potential for the project researcher to be asked for advice on the ethics of a particular approach, or to identify ethical issues that the participant had not. Our approach was to avoid being drawn into advising researchers, although on occasion the project researcher did ask the participant whether they had thought about a particular issue where it did not appear to have been considered; this served the aims of the project, but also prompted reflection on the part of participants. In most cases where the participant was a research student, the project researcher also discussed the projects with the supervisor. It is interesting to observe that the level of interest in the project, and the keenness of participants to discuss ethics, suggest that the project provided a highly valued opportunity for debate. Second, whilst we have anonymised all of the published case examples, given the specialised nature of research at this level it is clear that the researchers are potentially identifiable by those who know their research, or anyone sufficiently interested to make an effort to track the project down. Our response has been to explain the intended use of the material clearly to participants, to get their agreement to the published research descriptions, and to respect the right of participants to withdraw their material at any stage.

Ethics Categories

As we gathered the case examples, we began to develop inductively a list of headings that we could use to group and analyse the issues. Towards the end of the project we re-organised this list to represent a more comprehensive map of ethical issues, including those that we were aware of but which were not represented in our sample. The list is based on the following major categories:

Communal or General Good
Academic Integrity and Responsibility to the Discipline
Safeguarding the Well-Being of Participants
Research Participants and Informed Consent
The Management of Data
Dissemination

These have been used to organise the case examples on the website (a full list of the sub-categories can be found in the PDF categories file).

It is important that these categories are not seen to prescribe particular approaches. For example, the heading ‘communal or general good’ does not imply that all research should have an immediate applied value beyond the context of the research; it can clearly be argued that there is a place for research in fine art where no such immediate application can be demonstrated, and no doubt this is true in other disciplines. On the other hand, it is certainly legitimate to ask whether a particular research question is sufficiently interesting and valuable to justify any investment and risk that answering it entails.

We have tried to be comprehensive and the list therefore covers ethical issues common to many disciplines, as well as some specific to art, design and media, or which occur in these subject areas with more frequency. The concept of ‘informed consent’ has a long history and is central to research ethics in the social sciences for example. Researchers in art, design and media might wish to pay attention to the commentary by social scientists on this idea and how it translates into ethical research practice. Dissemination seems to be an area in which ethical issues arise in forms particular to our disciplines; the use of photography and the blurred boundary between research outcomes and public exhibition in fine art are two areas represented in the case examples.

Purpose of the material

Our aim in publishing the material on the website is twofold. First, we want to provide material that is directly useful to research supervisors and their students as part of research training courses. We hope that the case examples on the website will be of interest to individual researchers, but we have also packaged the material in the form of a downloadable workshop pack. We feel that guided debate and discussion of the issues raised by these examples may be the most appropriate format for their use.

Our second aim is to inform and stimulate debate about research ethics in art, design and media. Ethics is often seen as a very dry subject, or worse as a proxy for an increasing bureaucratisation of research, and inevitably conservative. Whilst there may be elements of truth in these arguments, we believe that a concern for ethics can strengthen and enrich the research we do, and that researchers in art, design and media should take the opportunity to think through and define for their own research communities what they consider to be the key ethical issues and appropriate responses to them.

Future Developments

Although it has touched on some large and important issues, this project has been relatively small in scale. We are conscious that we have only been able to dig just a little under the surface of research ethics in our subject areas. We believe that there is both scope and a need for further research and debate. This something we aim to develop further through the collaborative network we have established. We would also like to invite contributions from others in the subject communities, whether that is in the form of further case examples, contributions through the website or opportunities for collaboration.