Linking survey and social media data has gained popularity. However, obtaining consent from respondents to link social media is a known challenge. Using data from a nationally representative survey of the U.K. this study investigated whether respondents' a) activity frequency, b) activity variety and c) technical skills with smartphones are…

Virtual technologies gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic for use in research, including research with children. As scholarship from the field of science, technology and society (STS) suggests, technologies are never neutral, but embedded with social values and, as such, used by people to navigate identities and relationships. Building…

Over the last 30 years, there has been substantial debate about the practical, ethical and epistemological issues uniquely associated with qualitative data sharing. In this paper, we contribute to these debates by examining established data sharing practices in Conversation Analysis (CA). CA is an approach to the analysis of social interaction…

Direct contacts with research participants in online ethnography are an important tool to better understand complex social dynamics in cyberspace. The current ethical approaches guiding academic research, however, can be problematic in this regard, creating unintended tensions leading to potential research biases as well as safety and wellbeing…

COVID-19 has changed the way research can be conducted. The present literature review, based on 29 studies (2008-2020), investigates and compiles existing research to identify possibilities and limitations of using digital interviews within social work, sociology and adjacent disciplines. The results show that digital interviews can enhance…

Internet-mediated focus groups (FGs) have become a feature of qualitative research over the last decade; however, their use within social sciences has been adopted at a slower pace than other disciplines. This paper considers the advantages and disadvantages of internet-mediated FGs and reflects on their use for researching culturally sensitive…

This article deals with three topics: lying, privacy and anthropological research. Their complex intertwinement is analysed using fieldwork notes and through engagement with relevant literature from various disciplines. Experiences of privacy, among researchers as well as among respondents, is underexposed in the literature on social research…

This study constitutes the first longitudinal exploration of consent to link survey and administrative data. It examines variations in consent over time and explores the influence of the respondents' characteristics (both observed and latent) and the impact of the interviewers on consent co-operation. Respondent inclination to consent is modelled…

This paper discusses ethical issues surrounding Netnography, an innovative methodology, relatively unusual in Education research. It explores the ethical approach developed for a study of UK mother perspectives on primary school homework found on open-access parenting websites, reviewing issues considered at the project's outset and examining…

Existing literatures have discussed both ethical issues in visual research with young people, and the problems associated with applying 'universal' ethical guidelines across varied cultural contexts. There has been little consideration, however, of specific issues raised in projects where visual research is being conducted with young people…

Co-producing research is complex and messy. This paper draws on Tina Cook's argument for the systematic inclusion of 'mess' in research accounts as a conceptual framework through which to articulate areas of ethical mess from within a co-produced research project. Through narrating the 'messy' ethical complications the paper illustrates a number…

While qualitative researchers increasingly accept online video interviews as a reliable method, many maintain concerns about rapport and data quality. Drawing on two separate interview projects conducted in private in-person settings, public in-person settings, and privately via Skype, we compare interview contexts with regard to rapport,…

While the methods used to study 'elites' are of particular relevance in policy research, to date there has been little examination of the particular challenges associated with 'elite' interviewing in this field. More specifically, the issues associated with interviewing 'elites' while conducting qualitative research in a contested policy domain,…

Survey researchers are increasingly concerned that the presence of other people (bystanders) may affect data quality in structured, face-to-face survey interviews. In this article, we study bystanders using data from 15,309 face-to-face surveys about technology from Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Brazil and Guatemala. Our analysis (1) describes the…

This study expands our knowledge of consent in linking survey and administrative data by studying respondents' behaviour when consenting to link their own records and when consenting to link those of their children. It develops and tests a number of hypothesised mechanisms of consent, some of which were not explored in the past. The hypotheses…