Deception

Naturalistic Observation and Interviews

Qualitative research projects vary in the degree to which they intrude into the lives of those they study. Deceiving participants about the nature of the research becomes a more serious issue as the research becomes more intrusive. Naturalistic observation is relatively nonintrusive. Standing at an intersection and watching whether people roll through stop signs is an example. Presumably, the behavior would occur whether the researcher is present or not. If the researcher dresses in a police uniform and stands on the corner watching, there is mild intrusion and mild deception.

Celia Kitzinger discussed “structured eavesdropping” as a method of data collection. Such research might be considered as deceptive if the researcher arranged to be invited to an event with the express purpose of listening to conversations.

Interviews may or may not involve deception. A researcher who cannot gain access to an executive may have a revealing “conversation” with the boss's secretary that yields the desired information. Other secondary informants may include court clerks discussing how judges behave and dental assistants talking about the billing practices of dentists.

Participant Observation

Participant observation always involves some intrusion into the lives of participants whether it is deceptive or not. Many projects are nondeceptive; for example, a researcher may ride in police cars to write about police work with no deception involved. But a researcher may also ask a police officer to describe a shift without telling his or her colleagues that they are being observed for research purposes.

A researcher may need to become immersed in the setting to understand it fully. William Whyte spent years in a working-class section of Boston interacting with a broad spectrum of people to understand their lives. The result was documented in his classic Street Corner Society. To the extent that not everyone he met, talked to, bowled with, and so on knew that he would write about his experiences, deception was involved.

Deception obviously compromises informed consent. In some situations, people would not participate if they knew that a researcher was involved. Medical [Page 202]anthropologist Ralph Boulton tested the Belgian government's claim that it had been successful in persuading gay men to use condoms for casual sex. He went to places where such encounters took place and kept track of whether gay men suggested using a condom before they engaged in oral sex. The findings dramatically contradicted the government's claim.

The usual argument for deception is that the data cannot be gathered in any other way. The anthropologist studying sexual practices in Belgium argued that deception was essential; if he had told participants he was doing research, it would have changed behavior and reduced participation rates.

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