Research protocols

We not only care about our work; we like it. Though the content of our work is often tragic, we are for the most part happy people and our office is often a joyous, relaxed place. We think we are friendly people -- we try to be -- and we don't dress up.

Please do not mistake a friendly atmosphere for a casual work attitude. We are very serious about what we do. There are gray areas in our work, but there are also right and wrong ways to talk to people, to make or answer phone calls, to send letters. There are ethical and unethical practices.

The following are our formal research protocols:

protocols for personal narrative interviews
&
protocols for public actor interviews

We prepared these formal protocols for several purposes:

~ First, writing the protocols forced us to think about and answer for ourselves all the questions that an Institutional Review Board (IRB) would ask. We had to clarify our procedures with precision. The Texas After Violence Project is independent, free-standing, unattached and unbeholden to any institution, so there is no IRB for us to report to. Nevertheless, we want to be as strict with ourselves as other researchers must be. We want to hold ourselves to the highest standards, even if no one is going to force those standards on us. So we went through a practice IRB exercise.

~ Second, the personal narrative protocol (which we wrote first) formed the basis for our brochure for potential interview subjects.

~ Third, the protocols help us check our actual practice against what we say we are doing. It helps keep us on the right track; it helps keep us from getting sloppy; it helps us from agreeing to do things that we've already thought about and decided were bad ideas.

~ Fourth, these documents serves as a basis for an individual researcher (a student, for example) who wishes to work with us to write her own specific proposal for submission to an institutional review board (IRB) at her institution.

Exceptions to protocols: We have conducted two interviews that did not conform to our own protocols. The Texas After Violence Project conducted these directed interviews at the request of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights, and they specifically address mental illness.

Please also see
- our Code of Conduct;
- our pages about ethical responsibilities;
and
- our very detailed operating procedures.