I'm currently editing a book on female teacher identities consisting of personal narratives. One of the submissions includes data obtained through personal diaries and personal experiences. The context and the person may be easily identifiable, and so she has made the stories in the third person rather than in the first person as a means to distance herself. My question is this. If the chapter reports the stories in the third person, how does the ethics of permission come into play? Can she write that she has obtained approval from the participants, even though the participant is actually her? She writes things like the following: "a story recounted to me was...blah blah blah". But she is actually telling her story. As an editor, I'm not quite sure how to handle this or what advice to give her on how to handle it. Any thoughts or comments would be greatly appreciated.
There needs to be a uniform way narrative is presented in a textbook. This would seem to be the overriding consideration
Have the author rewrite her chapter in the first person.
Ethics in research does not have be in written and signed documents, but rather, it is very often the observation of codes of conduct among the researchers in a given speech community. In your case, the permission concerning the disclosure of personal information has already been obtained and that is enough to make sure that ethical considerations are in place.As for the writing of her comments, using an indirect method of narrating (i.e., indirect speech) is stylistically appropriate for preserving the nature of the narrative . As an illustration, you can write, " regarding the question of X, one particular teacher said that she was ....".
Thanks everyone, but especially to Reza Biria for helpful answers. I don't think I was entirely clear in what I was asking. The person writing the chapter is writing about her own experiences. But to distance herself from them, she is writing as if someone else had told her the stories--that they were someone else's experiences. I wonder, if the first time she mentions "one woman told me that...." If she can put a footnote with "woman" stating: “All of the stories recounted in this chapter are done so with the permission of the speaker/speakers. To protect their identity/identities, reference to them is purposefully vague.” Of course she has "permission" because these are her stories. But this can help protect her personal identity as the owner of the stories. Does this seem like a viable solution?
Principally this is not reassured, for me, I would find a real third person, this is more comfortable and straightforward. If it is necessary, no need to mention anything about this "crime" (just joking).
I read your question with interest yesterday and it got me thinking. I'm not sure I have an answer but rather a musing. It's particularly interested me because I've recently worked on two different autoethnographies, where the subject and the researcher are one (me), and there are particular methodological isses that I needed to deal with, and limitations that I had to acknowledge, as a result of adopting this approach. During the review process some of these issues were raised to ensure that I was transparent in who collected the data and how, and the strategies employed to limit the influence of potential biases (e.g. social desirability bias).
It seems like here is a case of researcher conducting a kind of autoethnography or personal narrative inquiry, but is perhaps presenting it as something else. Of course the issue of anonymity and confidentialty are of critical importance, but I wonder how a researcher can be transparent (thus promoting reliability) in their reporting in this case.
RE: She writes things like the following: "a story recounted to me was...blah blah blah". But she is actually telling her story.
You are right to be concerned, since this would either constitute lying or else a manifestation of multiple-personality disorder. I agree with Rezia Beria's proposal as one solution. However, that solution presents the narrative in third-person indirect speech, which might raise concerns about whether the wording accurately reflects what was said. If a first-person direct-speech solution is preferable, one can simply put the narrative itself within quotation marks (or otherwise present it as quoted), replacing all proper names of people with letters. The chapter-writer can say that she is presenting a transcript of X's narrative. No need to say that she herself is X and that she has basically just transcribed her own thoughts. A permissions footnote would still be apt.
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