Posted on 2024-01-30

Read Time: 1 minutes | 212 words

Interviews, Research, and Muckraking in “Academic” Clothing

This is as close as I get to a “sub-comment”.

Speaking as an academic whose research does occasionally involve interviewing people: not all people with academic credentials are academic. Academic researchers know that informed consent is a real thing. If they do not provide you with a release and a description of the research they are doing and how your interview will be used, they are not interested in academic research. If they are affiliated (in the US at least), they should provide an institutional review board (IRB) form and/or be approved through that IRB. I am currently unaffiliated, so I don’t have an IRB to go through. That is not a win. I consider that an even greater hurdle that requires more transparency, not less.

A flagrant misuse of interview data diminishes trust, hurts everyone involved and would probably be flagged in any peer-reviewed journal. Credentials are great, but not enough. Trust but verify. I and any researcher should more than happy to sign a document saying that if, in the course of research, we find some new cool thing that we want to use a part of your interview to highlight, we must get your explicit sign-off for that.

It’s interesting how consent seems to be an ongoing issue, here.

Tags: #research  #ttrpg  #academia 

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