I am preparing a case study of a social work professional organisation which is non-existent now but had a glorious past. For this, I interviewed around 20 members of the association to understand the organisation's trajectory and fall. The respondents are well known academicians and are also people who contributed to the growth of the organisation through its various stages.
Now, in the report, while presenting the results of the study, I am using the quotations from the interviews to capture the journey of the organisation and the role played by these people. Would it be violating confidentiality or ethics, if I tag their names to the quotations used? Except one, none of them asked me to keep their information confidential. I strongly feel that giving names to quotations is important to add historical documentation value to the research report. I look forward to suggestions and advice.
From a perspective of research ethics, you can do so only if your interviewees see how you quote them in what context and give you explicit written permission to do so. This is also institutionalised in data protection laws in many countries.
You might have some kind of explict agreement already if you have signed informed consent sheets where people confirm that they know what your investigation is about, know their role in it, and agree to participate.
All this is highly country specific but the country-invariant ethical rule is that publishing your report must not harm your study participants.
Jochen Glaser Thank you for your response. Though my respondents know about the investigation and their contribution to it, though the quotations if made public with their names tagged would not cause harm, and even though using real names has important historical documentation value, it appears that I need to obtain their explicit permission from them. The challenges are - quite a few of them have become very old, and bed ridden and around 4 respondents passed away. Thanks.
I would not use clear names. Who knows how things develop, politics change and you can not be sure, that there won't be harm in the future. I don't see any advantage in generalizability either.
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