Backroom Research

I wanted to follow up on a question that Luke asked during the talk given by Dean Sharpe on research ethics.  Luke asked whether or not the scope of the research ethics board included the researchers themselves, and Dean said basically "no" and that there were other offices that concerned themselves with the researchers and their welfare.

I understand in the bureaucratic sense why these areas would be kept distinct. It makes sense, particularly in light of the potential risks to participants and subjects of research studies to keep the focus so exclusively on them and let other offices focus on the researchers.

However, there were a couple of things that I have been mulling over since then in relation to my feelings about research methods that involve other people. First, I wonder if the line between the welfare of the participants and the researcher is so clear. Coming into this class, I had strong reservations about conducting research that involved other people as subjects. As the term progressed, I definitely have become more open to research methods involving work with others; however, there still remained this reservation about studying people. After listening to Dean's talk, I feel reassured by the rigor of the ethics vetting process. I guess even though it seems that the focus of the ethics is on the welfare of the participants, I feel that the ethics process is win-win for the researcher, as well.

This benefit to the researcher, got me thinking about the perhaps too cleanly drawn line, perhaps even artificial between the welfare of the researchers and the participants. We saw the blurriness of this line most clearly when we covered ethnography and participant observation. There was always the danger of the line just completely disappearing. I wonder, though, if even in other research methods the line between the two is not as distinct? We have discussed biases throughout the term, and how the perspective of the researcher shapes and influences the study. Maybe it could be argued that in some way the researcher is also a subject (definitely a participant!) in some way of the study.

This leads me to another point that Dean brought up about creating some kind of ownership or possession of the project for the participants. I really resonate with this idea of a research project designed more as a collaboration and community involvement where the researcher acts as a facilitator and less as an authoritarian presence. This would go a long way, I think, towards addressing the power imbalance between researcher and participants and would create a win win for everyone. I think it's the only way that I would feel truly comfortable with a research project that involved other people.

Confession: I had never even considered research ethics up until this week's readings. Well, I suppose from an abstract stance I'd thought about research ethics, especially in the sciences - I'm not completely ignorant of the horrors of Mengeleian ethics. But not coming from an extensive research background, and possessing a research question that seemingly passes the ethical sniff test, the topic has largely been neglected in my consciousness.

My research proposal involves teenagers and their texting habits, specifically whether frequent texting affects speech patterns, both in terms of phonetics and vocabulary. Data collection consists of two parts: texts and speech. While I haven't yet determined the method for speech data (I'm waffling between some sort of "natural" method that would be more linguistically sound or the more efficient, but possibly influencing method of direct interviews), the method for text collection is simple, involving the transcripts of text messages. I thought this was ethically sound, but I'm starting to have doubts.

Informed consent is tricky. I have no doubt that the demographic I'm looking at is able to consent, and because there's no involvement of institutions (the problems of which were expounded in Sue Heath's article), it seems fairly straightforward. Moreover, the actual analysis isn't concerned with the content of the messages themselves, but rather the linguistic forms that support the content, so privacy is less of an issue because personal content will never be published. What I hadn't considered was that texting is a two-way process; in order to obtain the record of the other texter, I will also require additional consent, and given the amount of data I'd like, this could get extensive pretty fast. Of course, I could omit the other side altogether, since I'm only analyzing one side of the conversation, but that would devoid the analysis of context, a slippery slope to go down.

This isn't insurmountable, it will simply involve more preparation prior to data collection and analysis. However, this is something I honestly had not considered before, and could potentially through a wrench into the consistency of my data if not properly dealt with.

For this week’s posts, my group and I are collaborating on our group member, Christopher Yasin’s post, on the ethnography of infrastructure, specifically that of the TTC.  Therefore, in using the TTC as a case study we are choosing Option 2 of the mini assignment.

Christopher makes some interesting points.  He states for example that “issues of interoperability between older delivery systems and newer information processing units could result in an information system that may not work”.  I want to expand on this statement by discussing the addition of the Presto Card to the TTC subway system.  The Presto Card is an electronic, reloadable fare card with an RFID chip.  PRESTO is supposed to make it easier to pay your fare while travelling within and between different transit agencies by the simple tap of a card; it is essentially intended to integrate fares across the GTA, Ottawa and Hamilton transit systems.  The system calculates the fare for your trip and deducts it from the balance stored on your card – all in less than a second.

The Presto Card is more effective when applied to the GO Transit and some bus lines (depending on the region) but when integrated into the TTC it has proven to be quite a challenge for some commuters.  For one thing, Presto devices are available at all Go stations but not at all TTC subway stations; this includes the readers, customer service outlets and self service kiosks.  The Presto Card has proved problematic in that commuters have reported that it has deducted the wrong fare amount when tapped, has many troubleshooting issues, and there are different guidelines on how to use it depending on which transit system you are using, where you are going, and if your card has been set on a default trip – it is not as simple as just tapping your card on and off your trip.  Moreover, it is taking too long to roll out as it is expected to be fully integrated into the TTC by 2015.  The long roll out is apparently due to political issues, i.e. the TTC Union.

I think the Presto Card is a great example of a new information processing unit that is combined with an older delivery system; one where not only technology but social, political, and organizational factors impact its interoperability.  For some commuters, the Presto Card is a failed process.  Maybe by putting more consideration into the social, political and organizational factors that affect the Presto Card, it could become more effective for subway riders.

Star's The Ethnography of Infrastructure is a difficult text for me. This feels like my fiftieth read through; after applying it to a project last year, I thought I had a handle on it, but I revisit it again for this class, and am just as confused.

I understand her concepts in theory, but once I try to apply them to something, to an actual infrastructure, it all starts getting a little fuzzy. I'm not completely sure why this is, but I have an inkling that it may have something to do with her idea about embeddedness. According to Star, infrastructure is embedded; it's hidden, invisible, underlying the system. Thus, for the initiated at least, it's the taken-for-granted, the assumed. I find it hard to critique something that I subscribe to, at least tacitly; my perspective is limited, I only have a part of the picture because I can't get past the embeddedness.

Following her notion that infrastructure becomes visible (and thus not so embedded) upon breakdown, up until that breakdown I feel somewhat in the dark. Facebook is an excellent, if over used, example. Prior to the changes in the timeline feature, or any of the previous site redesigns for that matter, I would be hard-pressed to dissect it's assumptions, limitations, and embedded infrastructure. But now, having experienced the infrastructure overhaul with the introduction of timeline, I can better analyze the previous design and it's core assumptions; I can use it as a comparison, at the very least. Moreover, when timeline was first introduced, I was abuzz with criticism, concern, and critiques (issues of privacy, security, chronology, representation, ad nauseum), but now...it's again in the background, thoroughly embedded in the routine of my mundane, online existence.

Star only touches upon the cultural ramifications of this, but I think it's a significant contributing factor to the embeddedness. Once infrastructure becomes culturally embedded, the culture reinforces the embeddedness; it's cyclical and self-reliant; I don't question Facebook's infrastructure because Facebook is omnipresent in my social life. For us out here, whose research interests exist far away from the realm of technological infrastructure, how do we get outside of the embeddedness? How do we gain the perspective to see past it?

The study of infrastructure appears complex, and my understanding of it is only slightly clearer after reading Star’s article.  Star explains infrastructure as ‘invisible, part of the background for other kinds of work’ (p. 4).  She also states that infrastructure is a relational concept and that one person’s infrastructure is another’s topic, or difficulty (p. 4).  This can be mystifying, how do you know, for instance, if you are dealing with an infrastructure within your study?  To clarify this, Star further defines infrastructure as having specific properties including embeddedness, transparency and links with conventions of practice, to name just a few (p. 4-6).  She also offers some tricks of the trade based on her own experiences in studying infrastructures (p. 8-11).

I definitely see the importance of studying infrastructures, in that it provides a complete picture to whatever you are investigating, but I am still confused on how it should be studied.  After reading another one of my classmate’s post, outside of my blog group, one of their questions really resonated with me; that is how do you study technological infrastructure when you have a limited knowledge of technology yourself?  This is certainly my problem, I’m just not tech-savvy!