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Title: Second Thoughts: The Uses of Software as Your Research Question Changes. The Harassment Complaints Project.
Author: Helen Marshall
Setting up the project
We tend to think of setting up qualitative research projects as a matter of getting access to, and permission from, the people in whom we are interested. Sara's interest was in the cases recorded in files, and what the records could tell her about how sex discrimination was understood. She did not need permission to make direct contact with people, but this did not mean it was easy to set the project up!
The Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission (in 2004 when the research was carried out it was the Victorian Equal Opportunities Commission) administers the state's Equal opportunities act, the Racial and Religious tolerance act and the 2006 Victorian Charter of human rights and responsibilities act. It is an independent statutory body whose roles are to resolve complaints through conciliation, to provide education on equal opportunities and to monitor and advise on EO performance. (http://www.equalopportunitycommission.vic.gov.au/home.asp.) The project analysed all sex discrimination complaints lodged with the commission in the first three months of 2004. It was governed by four sets of legislation.
1. First, material in the commission's files is subject to the secrecy provisions of the 1995 Equal Opportunities act (Victoria). Section 192 permits disclosure of information where it is necessary to the Commission in performing one of its functions, but generally prohibits disclosure of information. The Commission has tended to interpret this very strictly. Sara signed a confidentiality agreement with the Commission before undertaking the research.
2. Second, the state of Victoria has privacy legislation protecting the personal information from which an individual's identity could potentially be determined. The information Privacy Act 2000 (Victoria) applies to universities and TAFE colleges as well as to government organisations and private organisations contracted to government.
3. This privacy legislation also affects the human ethics requirements of RMIT, where Sara works. At that university (as at many others) researchers handling records collected for purposes other than their research need to complete a special Privacy Module form as part of the process of applying for ethics approval. The general principle is that the research is approved as long as the public interest outweighs privacy considerations, and appropriate precautions have been taken for security of data etc.
4. Fourth, data in Equal opportunity Commission files is actually the property of the Victorian Department of Justice which services the Commission. DOJ requires that any research involving the use of or access to information held by the Department of Justice be approved by its own Research Ethic Committee.
So setting up the project involved gaining ethics approval from two separate bodies and negotiating an agreement with the Commission. Basically Sara undertook that she would not publish her research in such a way that any individual could be identified, which (as noted in Reporting) had some particular consequences for the reporting of data. While gaining permission to carry out the research depended on this undertaking, none of the organisations with whom she dealt asked to scrutinise the reports before publication. Back to Project Home Page
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