Ethical issues in qualitative studies

Research interviews can expose individuals' inner thoughts and beliefs. The researcher must consider the participants' interests. Those interests might be best served by a well thought-out scheme for ensuring anonymity. The researcher must guard against inadvertent clues to participants' identity, through well-known individual views or language idiosyncrasies. Ownership of data must be considered. Ethically speaking, permission to undertake research does not automatically grant permission to publish the results.