Bella Rubens and Dr Jennifer McGowan, Experimental Psychology Department, University College London
Recruiting participants from schools is no easy task and a lot of consent is required to keep the research within ethical boundaries. We began recruitment for our focus groups in January 2022. First, we made contact with schools in Haringey borough, where the Anchor Approach is offered. This was facilitated by Ceri May, Anchor Approach Strategic Lead for Haringey Public Health Team. As Ceri works closely with all the schools, she was able to talk to them about the research and its benefits for their school and beyond. Where schools expressed interest, Ceri shared the names and email address of Headteachers with us (with each individual’s permission).
Once Ceri had passed across these details only the UCL research team (Dr Jennifer McGowan, Bella Rubens and Dr Nicola Abbott) could make contact with schools about the research. This is standard practice in research and protects the confidentiality and anonymity of all schools – those who chose to participate and those who chose not to. Once Headteachers provided us with consent to access their school community, we were able to start recruiting parents and staff. Parents and staff were approached via the school mailing lists, with digital letters about the research. They were then able to share their availability with the researchers via an online form.
Confidentiality and ethics in general are a central component of any research project. For research in Psychology, we adhere to stringent ethical guidelines laid out by the British Psychological Society. The four central tenets of good ethical practice in psychological research are: respect, competence, responsibility and integrity. Adhering to ethical guidelines includes everything from providing all participants with information sheets, consent forms and a debrief; to specific adjustments, for example when working with children or other vulnerable groups.
As a lot of research has been conducted online during the pandemic, academics and researchers must consider the ethical and legal implications of this. As we are conducting our focus groups digitally, additional considerations must be made surrounding general data protection regulations (GDPR) and the use of videoconferencing technology for example. We are using Microsoft Teams as opposed to Zoom because this ensures the data is not sent outside of the European Economic Area (meaning it remains GDPR compliant).
Another component of ethics is considering what is least disruptive to the everyday lives of participants. Many school communities continue to experience significant disruption as a consequence of the pandemic. Many staff and parents are burnt out, stressed in both their personal and professional lives. As such, through discussion with Haringey Council and a parent and teacher linked to schools involved in the intervention, we were able to schedule focus groups to cause minimal disruption to participants (and to pupils).
Thank you for joining us again. Next time we will introduce you to the process of designing and conducting focus groups.
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