RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

120 SENSITIVE EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
is threatening both to researchers and
participants (De Laine 2000: 67, 84).
Methodologies and conduct, e.g. when junior
researchers conduct research on powerful
people, when men interview women, when
senior politicians are involved, or where access
and disclosure are difficult (Simons 1989; Ball
1990; 1994a; Liebling and Shah 2001).
Sometimes all or nearly all of the issues listed
above are present simultaneously. Indeed, in some
situations the very activity of actually undertaking
educational research per se may be sensitive.
This has long been the situation in totalitarian
regimes, where permission has typically had to
be granted from senior government officers and
departments in order to undertake educational
research. Closed societies may permit educational
research only on approved, typically non-sensitive
and comparatively apolitical topics. As Lee
(1993: 6) suggests: ‘research for some groups ...
is quite literally an anathema’. The very act
of doing the educational research, regardless of
its purpose, focus, methodology or outcome, is
itself a sensitive matter (Morrison 2006). In this
situation the conduct of educational research may
hinge on interpersonal relations, local politics
and micro-politics. What start as being simply
methodological issues can turn out to be ethical
and political/micro-political minefields.
Lee (1993: 4) suggests that sensitive research
falls into three main areas: intrusive threat
(probing into areas which are ‘private, stressful
or sacred’); studies of deviance and social control,
i.e. which could reveal information that could
stigmatize or incriminate (threat of sanction);
and political alignments, revealing the vested
interests of ‘powerful persons or institutions,
or the exercise of coercion or domination’,
or extremes of wealth and status (Lee 1993).
As Beynon (1988: 23) says, ‘the rich and
powerful have encouraged hagiography, not
critical investigation’. Indeed, Lee (1993: 8) argues
that there has been a tendency to ‘study down’
rather than ‘study up’, i.e. to direct attention
to powerless rather than powerful groups, not
least because these are easier and less sensitive
to investigate. Sensitive educational research can
act as a voice for the weak, the oppressed, those
without a voice or who are not listened to; equally
it can focus on the powerful and those in high
profile positions.
The three kinds of sensitivities indicated above
may appear separately or in combination. The
sensitivity concerns not only the topic itself, but
also, perhaps more importantly, ‘the relationship
between that topic and the social context’
within which the research is conducted (Lee
1993: 5). What appears innocent to the researcher
may be highly sensitive to the researched or
to other parties. Threat is a major source of
sensitivity; indeed Lee (1993: 5) suggests that,
rather than generating a list of sensitive topics,
it is more fruitful to look at the conditions
under which ‘sensitivity’ arises within the research
process. Given this issue, the researcher will
need to consider how sensitive the educational
research will be, not only in terms of the
subject matter itself, but also in terms of the
several parties that have a stake in it, for
example: headteachers and senior staff; parents;
students; schools; governors; local politicians and
policy-makers; the researcher(s) and research
community; government officers; the community;
social workers and school counsellors; sponsors and
members of the public; members of the community
being studied; and so on.
Sensitivity inheres not only in the educational
topic under study, but also, much more
significantly, in the social context in which the
educational research takes place and on the likely
consequences of that research on all parties. Doing
research is not only a matter of designing a project
and collecting, analysing and reporting data – that
is the optimism of idealism or ignorance – but also
a matter of interpersonal relations, potentially
continual negotiation, delicate forging and
sustaining of relationships, setback, modification
and compromise. In an ideal world educational
researchers would be able to plan and conduct
their studies untrammelled; however, the ideal
world, in the poet Yeats’s words, is ‘an image of
air’. Sensitive educational research exposes this
very clearly. While most educational research