Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Roll the credits

A huge part of research is confidentiality and protecting the identity of one's participants. I completely understand the need for this (I had an assistantship with the IRB) and I think it is very important. However, I am feeling a dilemma related to the fact that my participants said some brilliant things and I am using their words over and over again, and somehow two little quotation marks just don't seem like enough to give credit to those who provided the words and thoughts. I have so much respect and admiration for the educators whom I interviewed and the students in the groups that analyzed the data. I know it is my job to analyze, synthesize, and present the findings in a way that gives them voice and does justice to their contributions, but naming them might be important too. Here I am, asserting that the rural poor are a quieted and oppressed group that are too far away to be heard, and yet I am keeping them hidden myself. I just have to reconcile this for myself and find a way to recognize them without revealing their identities. But how do I do that?

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