Research Ethics: Observational Studies in a Public Setting

Research in a public setting is sometimes described as field research and sometimes as naturalistic research. A public setting is any social context to which members of the public routinely have access. Examples might include a railway station, a city centre, a large department store, a motorway, a public swimming pool, or parts of some educational institutions. Perhaps the most significant ethical problem when conducting research in such settings is the extent to which people are entitled to privacy. A related question is the establishment of a demarcation line between private and public settings.

Let us imagine an archetypical private setting, such as the board room of a large corporation. If we wished to conduct an ethnographic study of a meeting of the directors, we would expect to have to obtain the permission of those present, and to submit ourselves to detailed questioning on the purposes and likely dissemination of our research.

On the other hand, if we attended a public meeting to which people had been invited to listen to a marketing talk on a new product, this is a very different type of context. We might feel that we would be justified in keeping field notes, since the speaker had made a specific attempt to attract people to listen. In research terms, however, there may still remain a number of issues upon which to reflect. Even in a public meeting, it may not be entirely clear whether any type of data collection is appropriate, or whether only some may be ethically permissible. For instance, there may be ethical and indeed legal reasons why the taking of photographs or the use of a video camera might be inappropriate.