Wrestling with researchers’ ethics – what to report and the consequences to follow.

When any researcher undertakes ethnography in a covert manner (undercover research) it is an absolute priority that the highest ethics must be adhered to. This is in order for clarity and integrity of truthful, honest and factually accurate data collection and later objective professional analysis and conclusions, be maintained.

TheSocRes has undertaken many covert research studies with many facets of society observed, partaken and recorded in. For this blog example; one of TheSocRes’ ethnographic studies was for a researcher to partake in a becoming a teacher in order to understand what these civil servants experience in their civil service field.

To competently partake in researching teaching - this included undertaking qualified teacher training course, recording all the terrible breaches of safety and lack of professionalism on behalf of the training college and the actual schools who acted in a very poor manner.

With some time involved in supply teaching; recording the vulnerability supply teacher culture, a more long term role was gained in a very challenging school which led to uncovering some highly unethical events. All events were recorded and regularly assessed, yet not reported to the authorities as they too would later come under scrutiny.

Although in many industries, some brave individuals will step up and report illegal and negative activities; those referred to as ‘whistle blowers’ who attract media and government attention to very wrong-doings – TheSocRes ethnographer found it a necessity to record how far the rabbit hole went and no legal action would be considered until the conclusion of the ethnographic work.

With a long overdue change in management, when so many high expectations – the research predicted a change with which to end the long term ethnography study on a positive note and give examples of how a poor performing school can be turned around. Sadly the school went into a continual degrading curve and the ethnographer had exhausted all options and departed professionally and discreetly.

Utilising mixed methods of research including [detached] pure observation, participant observation and interviewing some highly unethical events had been recorded into the daily journals that had been maintained. Although regularly consulting with the core research organisation, one must ask when one must break with covert research and report terrible things to the Government.

·        A head teacher who lied regularly to their staff – yet although the staff’s rebukes were well documented; no one took any action for fear of reprisal. Careers destroyed and short term stress and long term illness becoming very apparent amongst many staff.

·        Inspections were incompetent in their undertaking not to be able to undercover the ‘living lie’ that the staff told the ethnographic researcher, what they felt the school was. The inspectors left on the Friday, the children were back in charge of the school on the Monday morning.

·      Frequent observations made of when violence or trouble escalated frequently with challenging teenagers, the head teacher was frequently seen disappearing leaving the remaining staff to deal with problems.

·        When the staff were sent to occupational health, doctors or unions were brought in, the problems were made to disappear yet no real remedial actions were taken by the school management. Sick people were made to feel inferior or inadequate in their tasks.

Had a legal action been taken, the councils would have stood firm with the management who would have all conspired together to protect the lies. It is plausible the law would have stood on side of the lies – This is mainly based on fear of poor media attention and financial loss, the council losing face as they had backed the lies of a highly unethical professional bully. It is little wonder teaching is stated as being in crisis.

Can the publication be made? The end result will be all identifications and locations would be altered, not for fear of reprisal that negative characters can threaten action – yet to protect the majority of good people who were sadly forced into difficult situations throughout their professional careers.

There is no agenda to any ethnographic research. Majority of ethnographic studies have no particular closed end result, nor is it funded by Government bodies or industry. The public have a right to know and equally each country have a citizens’ duty to stop decent public servants falling into unpredictable and unnecessary situations for which they will never be given fair support.

Although such research may suffer a backlash from certain forces who wish to conceal what they have done. It is the right and honourable thing to do to report, as it is in the general publics best interest to have knowledge of what has been researched and recorded.

There are things that occur in society that continue to erode our common decency and culture. Only by reporting academic and media (transparent) reporting – without agenda can the public make their own decision based on good information.

Society has a long way before it is truly transparent. The research that TheSocRes undertakes wishes only to support our better cultural aspirations. Together we all make our humanity evolved to a better standard.

Invigorating UK apprenticeships and supporting/empowering our younger working generation!

With university applications dropping successively, many would blame the impending debts that many prospective undergraduates will face – yet there is a clear shift that the 14-19 year old population have been re-evaluating the bombardment of the last 10-20 years and asking – ‘do I really need to go to university?’

Apprenticeship applications have seen a doubling in the last year as more young men and women look into carpentry, car mechanics, skin therapy (hair and beauty), bricklaying, childcare etc. TheSocRes actively encourages young people in the 14-25 (-35?) range to start by looking at local college websites and contacting the colleges.

Many are deterred as they feel their low grades will hold them back, they ponder if they had no chance of university – why would a college offer them an apprenticeship? Believe you have the skills! The colleges will help you build your foundation!

Such fields of building, childcare or mechanics warrant attention – it may be the individual that makes a breakthrough in building technologies, skin/hair care or practices – yet we still need the actual thousands of trained people to undertake nationwide implementation of such skills and applications.

The blatant unfairness of many schools ramming university down the KS4/KS5 throats causes rifts and a latent depression in younger people as many know they don’t have a prayer of going to university, which makes many feel very undervalued – yet why all the pressure to go there? Projection based on the previous generations’ failures, or a need to stay well clear of a non-existent manufacturing/extraction industry?

What many people don’t understand (of any age) is that up to the early 1990’s the UK only had 50 traditional universities. By the turn of the century it was 103 old/new universities (as fifty polytechnics were told by the then Conservative Government to change their respective titles). As the 2010’s begun UK now has 150 universities – as colleges jumped on the bandwagon and unnecessarily upgraded their namesake and joined up with other colleges to have a larger presence.

That is a ridiculous amount of growth, feeling quite forced and just administration name tuck up’s as people clamber for the title of university which is totally unnecessary. It voids the integrity and value of colleges and polytechnics/ apprenticeship and hands on training – this is not acceptable.

Pushing for all these university titles twenty years ago, ridicules internationally recognised strong words of polytechnic and colleges (which other countries proudly still retain). Polytechnic should be a UK recognised term for strength with ‘hands-on’ qualifications of HNC and HND (one should never underestimate the value of HND; which many establishments have dropped such qualifications now) in engineering, sport science, teaching/education, media/film school, construction technologies etc.

Being a Polytechnic or a College should be a UK recognised proud title – not some foolish snobbery where people, professionals and industry consider traditional Universities to be superior to polytechnics. The value of college apprenticeship should not be underestimated. It can lead onto more accreditation within many industries of HND’s, a further two years and apprentices/trainees can gain a degree on top of the HND.

Such qualifications should be cited as gradual benchmarks over the 16-25, 30, 35 years of age range – not emptying out the 6^th forms and ramming thousands of ambivalent young minds into degrees which may serve these great teenagers no real beneficial use.

Not to mention the debts at the end of it ….. there are thousands of 30-40 year olds in UK who have still NOT began repaying their pre 1998 old student loan system (whereas many 2000’s graduates have already begun repaying student loans upon their first pay day under a system that is less worse!) and are trapped with increasing debts that they have little chance of repaying!

We need our universities, for Knowledge Exchange, for Research breakthroughs – yet do we really need 150 of them when 50 will be more than sufficient? It will only take one former college or polytechnic to revert to their previous name …. Others will follow.

The value and integrity of apprenticeship, HNC’s and HND’s, hand on training should never be undervalued – for it is one of the best formats that we can empower our younger generation who sadly will be saddled AND survive the burden of this recession that the world has suffered since latter 2008.

What can you do?

Measures for reducing Cyber Crime attacks upon the general public

The majority of us perceive basic human needs as Water, Food, Shelter, Sex, Income and security. The latter plays a big part of our privacy; the safety of our homes, our personal and banking details - which should never be compromised by others.

Sadly the reality check of this is very different and multi-billions of Euros, UK pounds, US Dollars etc. go missing literally without a trace with the proverbial digital footsteps cleverly masked. To many times the average global citizen will just not report the incidents to the authorities or police, for embarrassment of feeling incompetent that they could not retain their security. A secondary reason is many feel helpless and that nothing can be done about it so refuse to report it (as reported at the e-Crime Wales November conference in 2011.)

What many Police agencies are not aware of – they cannot act upon and therefore it is imperative that such fraudulent internet infractions be reported to the Police. Many countries respective Police forces now are running campaigns, conferences and advertising to engage the general public and actively encourage everyone to report ALL cybercrime – no matter the scale of attack.

Internet fraud:

With the UK suffering losses of £’s billions in internet fraud, scamming and other undesirable antics which infringes our privacy on the domestic and industrial front we should all be reminded of the basic rules to apply to our lives to ensure fraud against us is minimised.

These are the common recommendations that local authorities, police, credit rating agencies and naturally the IT industry are encouraging everyone to undertake to gain more protection from these increasing cyber-attacks. Please share this with your friends and family.

ACTION:

·         Install a reputable Anti-Virus Program Guards on your computer.
·         Do not recycle or bin personal documents/bank statements – put them in a cross-shredder.
·         Do not put personal details (Date of Birth!) on social networks/professional pages.
·         Carefully store your driver’s license and more importantly passport.
·         Get a yearly check of your Credit Rating Score – this is imperative and costs less than £10-00

Nuisance calls:

One jarring effect is the massive increase in cold calling from autonomous machines and silent calls (when you pick up the phone is goes quiet, many people execute the 1471 number recall – dial said number and get charged a great deal for a brief phone call) with people claiming to get five calls a day equating to 150 calls a month! This is real harassment and an infringement of our basic privacy entitlement.

ACTION: By contacting two organisations The Telephone Preference Scheme and the Telephone Silent Calls Hotline you can register your number and it will take up to 28 days to stop the nuisance calls.

Junk Mail letters:

Virtually all the general public are aware of junk mail. When it commences we just recycle/bin it without giving it further consideration. Yet over the years many suffer a substantial increase in junk mail and feel helpless and merely persist in binning the unwanted letters in the hope that it will stop. Sadly this will not happen and you will continue to get junk mail.

Basic street surveys TheSocRes have undertaken over the years have highlighted the helplessness many of the general public feel, yet it’s such a low level background nuisance and families and businesses have many more priorities and responsibilities - the junk mail pile just keeps increasing and they is nothing people feel they can execute to remedy the situation.

ACTION:

Contact your post office to get advice or contact the following:
http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/mpsr/
http://www.stopjunkmail.org.uk/

The more people take action – the causal effect will produce a positive wave that will reduce national levels of junk mail.