I wrote the title in French because I would like to know the uses in France, but any international point of view is also welcome !
Bonjour à tous et à toutes,
Ma thèse repose sur des entretiens semi-directifs avec des professionnels, et je suis donc amenée à me poser la question de la protection des données personnelles. J'ai commencé les entretiens, et j'ai pu remarquer que mes enquêté.e.s étaient parfois mal à l'aise et réticent.e.s à l'idée que leurs propos soient publiés. Je me demande ainsi si, plutôt que d'ajouter les transcriptions en annexes, il ne serait pas plus simple de ne pas les publier, tout en les analysant bien sûr dans le manuscrit (à travers des citations notamment). Cependant, je me demande si cela ne ternirait pas le sérieux de mon travail car il serait alors impossible pour les lecteurs de se reporter aux entretiens.
Qu'en pensez-vous ? Existe-t-il un consensus à propos de la transcription d'entretiens dans les annexes ?
Bien à vous
Laura Bousquet
Hello everyone,
My thesis is based on semi-directive interviews with professionals, and I therefore have to pay much attention to protecting personal data. I have already conducted a few interviews, during which I noted that my interviewees were sometimes not at ease and reluctant to the idea of their words being published (mostly because they did not want to reveal too much about their company). I am thus wondering if, instead of adding the transcripts to the annexes, it would not be easier not to publish them, while of course analysing them (through quotes for example) in the manuscript. However, I also wonder if it could damage the seriousness of my work because the readers could not refer to the interviews (their transcripts).
What do you think? Is there a consensus of the presence of interviews' transcripts in the annexes?
Yours sincerely
Laura Bousquet
In English-language journals, it is traditional for the Results section to include relatively short, anonymous quotations for the participants, and the same is true for a thesis. When you anonymize the quotations, you should be sure to remove any identifying information (i.e., anything that might help to identify a company or person).
One suggestion for putting your informants at ease might be to show them examples of the kinds of short quotations that you plan to use.
I agree with Prof David L Morgan and especially like his suggestion of showing the informants examples of the kind of short quotations that might be used. I found that using anonymised quotations in my thesis and then in the published articles that followed, illustrated the points that I was making. In my thesis, I used italics and inverted commas when I inserted anonymised quotations and indicated which informant had been quoted by following the quotation, bracketed, the numerical indicator that I had given the informant, the gender and his/her age e.g. (#15 female 66).
Dear David L Morgan and Mary C R Wilson,
Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. Your recommendations are very helpful and will help me to design my methodology.
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