Ethics in Qualitative Research (in the past and now) | Anonymity, Confidentiality, Informed Consent

Ethics in qualitative research isn’t just a bureaucratic checkbox for dissertations—it’s a practical set of duties aimed at protecting participants from harm while ensuring they can make an informed choice about taking part. Modern university requirements reflect hard lessons from past studies where deception, coercion, and inadequate consent left participants distressed or abused, outcomes that would fail today’s ethical standards.

Milgram’s study on obedience to authority is a central example of what goes wrong when ethical safeguards are missing. Participants believed they were administering increasingly strong electric shocks to another person; in reality, the “victims” were actors. Participants were pressured to continue even when they hesitated, with prompts like “come on” and “you must do this,” and they were not told they were part of a deception. The ethical problems were twofold: participants lacked informed consent because they didn’t know the true nature of the task, and many experienced significant distress during the study, with consequences extending beyond the experiment.

The Stanford Prison Experiment illustrates how quickly harm can emerge when participants are denied meaningful control. People were assigned roles as prisoners or guards, with the study designed to test conformity to social roles. Yet the ethical breakdown began immediately for the “prisoners,” who were taken from home without warning, blindfolded, stripped, and placed in cells. Within hours, some “guards” escalated into harassment and physical, verbal, and psychological abuse. Prisoners were told they could not withdraw, and as psychological strain increased, some attempted resistance—locking themselves in their cells and even planning escape. Even when later critiques argued that participants’ behavior was shaped by the experimental context, the most serious ethical failures remained clear: participants were not properly informed about what they were signing up for, and they were denied the right to leave.

These cases motivate a set of planning principles for contemporary qualitative research. Researchers should aim for fairness, minimize discomfort and stress, and avoid physical, mental, or psychological harm. Because participant experiences vary, ethical planning requires anticipating multiple ways harm could occur and building protections into the study design.

In practice, ethics are operationalized through two main steps. First, universities require ethical approval via an application process that assesses risks of harm and other participant protections. Second, informed consent must be obtained through a consent form given before recruitment or before participants sign up. A strong informed consent form typically includes: researcher identity and affiliation; a clear description of the study’s aims and procedures; what participants are expected to do (including interview frequency and duration); potential risks; the right to withdraw at any time without having to justify the decision; and explanations of confidentiality and anonymity.

Confidentiality and anonymity are treated differently. Confidentiality means the researcher may know identities but takes steps so others cannot link identities to findings (for example, using nicknames). Anonymity means the researcher does not know participants’ real identities at all. The consent form should also specify how data will be handled—especially if audio or video recordings are used—by explaining that identifying information will be anonymized, data will be stored securely (ideally in a password-protected folder), and files will be deleted or destroyed after the study concludes or after publication/assessment. These elements are typically described in the methodology chapter, reinforcing that ethical research is both an institutional requirement and an active commitment to participant safety.