Keeping you safe

Safety First Road Sign and Blue Sky

A vital part of our research is keeping participants safe. We have gone through a very careful ethical approval process to ensure that our participants are well protected. There are a number of ways we’re doing this:

DE-IDENTIFICATION. For many of our participants, not being identifiable is a crucial part of the decision to participate in the research. We are committed to processes that will ensure your anonymity.

  • if you are participating by interview, we will not mention your name during the interview; instead, we will use a pseudonym chosen by you before the interview starts. We will send the the transcript to you for checking – and you can remove any identifying details at that stage.
  • if you are writing your own story, we would ask you to choose a pseudonym for yourself, your institution, and anyone else involved in the story you’re telling.
  • we will keep names and pseudonyms on a single spreadsheet on a password protected database, behind a firewall, which only the researchers can access.
  • if we are going to use your full narrative as part of our book, we will ask you to remove all identifying detail from the narrative (or we can do this for you, and then check you are happy with how we have done this). We will ask for a second level of consent for anyone whose full narrative is being used in the book.
  • We will destroy all data from this research after 5 years.

MANAGING DIFFICULT EMOTIONS. Telling a story of bullying, even if it is some time after the event, can arouse difficult emotions in some people. We have provided a page of resources on our website for local sources of support – sites which provide legal advice, and sites which will enable you to find a counselor.

We will treat your feelings with respect and empathy. If you wish to stop or pause an interview you may do so at any time. You may decide not to continue with an interview – it’s OK for people to think they can tell their story and then realise that they don’t want to.

PULLING OUT OF THE PROJECT. You can decide to pull out of the project even after you have submitted your story or completed the interview. The last date for pulling out of the project is 31 December 2020.

KEEPING US HONEST. If you are concerned about any of our ethical processes, you may contact the Human Ethics committee that consented to the ethical processes used this project. This project has been reviewed and approved by the Massey University Human Ethics Committee: Northern, Application NOR 19/09. If you have any concerns about the conduct of this research, please contact Associate Professor David Tappin (Committee Chair), Massey University Human Ethics Committee: Northern, email humanethicsnorth@massey.ac.nz .