Implementing continuous consent in qualitative research

Abstract

This article examines ways of approaching informed consent as a relationally constituted process in qualitative research practices. It argues that a researcher’s operationalization of informed consent should be coherent with the overall epistemological framework of the project. Based on empirical examples from an ethnographic inquiry in an educational setting, the principle of informed consent is discussed as a reflexive and ethical tool throughout the inquiry, including its pre-fieldwork, fieldwork and post-fieldwork phases. Strategies of explicitly and implicitly (re)negotiated consent and dissent are discussed and illustrated by drawing on some of the recent discussions of continuous consent practices. The article’s conceptualization of a continuous, situated and relational approach to informed consent is also supported by the concepts of response-ability and thinking with care in research ethics.