The other day in class, we were talking about confidentiality in our projects. Though I agree with maintaining confidentiality, I could not really think of a reason in my project of cold statistics and academic communications of why I would need to go to incredible lengths to secure confidentiality. I even joked with Averyl that the only cause of concern would be an inappropriate relationship between a student and a professor. But that doesn't happen, right?
If only.
Anyone see the headlines about a Californian teacher? Who left his wife and kids to move in with an 18 student? Anyone? First off, I just need to say: oh bad, oh disgusting, oh selfish. Yuck. But apparently, there is a need for strenuous confidentiality. Class and that horrible article made me realize I need to rethink my views on confidence. Now, I am terrified of using any names of people, places, articles, computer programs, anything. Should I even be mentioning Southampton or Dr. Woods? After calming down a bit, I realized I do not need to be so drastic as to change every name. But I cannot be as cavalier as I thought I could. Most certainly, I will need to mask identities of anyone I observe or interview for the academic communication portion. It might be harder to do this for the statistics part (because I kind of want my name on a paper if there is going to be one, and I don't think I can use pseudonyms of any colleagues on the paper), but I need to be open with people on both ends of my project. Those I work with need to know why I am at Southampton and what I am observing. My observations do not need to be blinded; I do not think I will introduce bias into my sample if students and professors know I am observing any academic communications. In fact, it might help as people may voice their opinions without my formally interviewing them.
And above all, I will not go snooping for academic affairs.
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