Understanding the Rhetoric of Research

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It is sometimes difficult to see the line between a violation of ethics and taking a necessary stance for the sake of research. For example, in the case of bias when reporting ethnographic studies, researchers will be relating stories from their perspectives. Doheny-Farina (1993) says, "our results are, in a large part, what we, as researchers, bring to the research event" (p. 254). Doheny-Farina argues that authority and credibility rests on the researcher's ability to be ethical about the role of the researcher, the manipulation and/or interpretation of data, and the construction of the research report. When researchers observe groups, they must be aware of the influence they personally have on the group and the context. With regard to the manipulation and interpretation of data and the presentation of research, Doheny-Farina (1993) says that "the problems come when the claims that researchers make do not match the approach that they took in conducting the study" (p. 257). An ethical study is also a valid study in that the claims refer to what the researcher set out to measure.

In his book The Politics and Ethics of Fieldwork, Maurice Punch (1986) details cases that illustrate how the researcher, in negotiating a position when becoming a participant-observer in a group, necessarily becomes a part of the research that will have an effect on the outcome and the data (p. 12). Punch says that in their presentations, researchers "should come clean not only on the nature of [the] data-how and where it was collected, how reliable and valid he [or she] thinks it is, and what successive interpretations he [or she] had placed on it-but also on the nature of his [or her] relationship with the field setting and with the 'subjects' of the inquiry" (p. 15).