Re: Ethical Issues: Anonymous Child Participants

["Ellen deLara" <ewj2@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

In this kind of inquiry, though the respondents will be anonymous, it is 
especially important to consider the ramifications for the children and 
young adults of divulging their personal experiences with violence. It is 
my experience in both my research and in clinical practice that the 
re-telling of stories of personal victimization or witnessed violence can 
produce its own form of re-traumatization or, at minimum, produce a stress 
response. I believe that this aspect of the study needs to be carefully 
addressed  before beginning.

Ellen deLara, PhD
Family Life Development Center
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
School of Social Work
Syracuse University
Syracuse, NY 13224


At 02:40 PM 11/13/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>We are planning a study that would allow children and young adults to 
>describe their experiences with violence via anonymous internet data 
>collection. While this represents some ethical challenges, we would 
>attempt to build in protection through a system that would require certain 
>safeguards to be met before child participants could be provided with a 
>password that would allow them to access the survey.
>
>We are trying to identify some published discussions of the ethical issues 
>around these kinds of research methods. Does anyone know where we can find 
>such discussions or find studies taht use some of these methods?
>
>Thanks
>--
>Dick Sobsey, Director
>JP Das Developmental Disabilities Centre
>University of Alberta
>6-123 Education North
>Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2G5  Canada
>phone: (780) 492-3755
>fax: (780) 492-1318
>dick.sobsey@xxxxxxxxxxx