NEWS & EVENTS
Reception with the Human Rights Documentation Initiative (HRDI) on September 14: save the date!Submitted by Virginia Raymond on Sat, 07/31/2010 - 00:12.
Sep 14 2010 - 5:00pm - Sep 14 2010 - 7:00pm
Garage sale on October 2! Help us buy a digital camcorder!Submitted by Virginia Raymond on Sat, 07/17/2010 - 23:13.
UT Libraries' Human Rights Documentation Intiative (HRDI) partners with Texas After Violence ProjectSubmitted by Virginia Raymond on Fri, 12/04/2009 - 18:12.
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praxisSee also our study page 1. Our our code of conduct 2. Our formal research protocols research protocol for personal narrative interviews These are formal documents prepared 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. 3. Ask yourself what ethical responsibilities we owe to whom. Ask yourself whether it possible to make clear, well-defined, black and white rules that always work? Or are these ethical questions that we will continue to struggle with over time, balancing important values that are sometimes in tension or outright conflict? Think hard about how you might answer these questions if you were positioned differently: a narrator rather than an interviewer, older or younger than you actually are, more or less financially privileged, of a different "race" or ethnicity, able-bodied or disabled in different ways, a person of higher or lower or a different kind of social status, religious or not religious in particular ways, a U.S. citizen or not, a native English speaker or not, physically small or large, with access to personal and private space or not? How do all these -- and other -- factors affect what you value, and how you would resolve particular ethical tensions? 4. Our operating procedures The following pages serve as as an online "handbook" (or even "employee manual," though none of us are employees!) for everything we do at the Texas After Violence Project. They're meant primarily for interviewers, videographers, video editors, transcribers, & everyone else who works with the Texas After Violence Project. Other people are also welcome to read this material. (We would love to hear from people engaged in similar or overlapping work!) Please send your suggestions, comments and questions to info@texasafterviolence.org. Many of these materials are based on the original Texas After Violence Project Oral History Handbook by Antony Cherian and Mark Westmoreland, Seed Documentary Cooperative, prepared for our February, 2008 training, and the revision of that handbook by Antony Cherian and Gabe Solis, Fall 2008. Copies are available at the office. about phone calls and correspondence what to do ahead of time - well before the day of the interview what to do in the day or two before the interview - interviewer & videographer what to take to the interview - interviewer & videographer setting up for the interview - interviewer & videographer videographers - setting up for & recording the interview (coming, will be based on the Westmoreland, Cherian, & Solis revised handbook) interviewers: what to do at the interview interviewers: what not to do at the interview interviewer & videographer team: what to do immediately after the interview what to do after the interview back at the office: transcribing the interview: "Yours is not to complete the task, but neither are you free to abstain from it." (Rabbi Tarfon) auditing the transcription (checking the interview transcription against the tape) (to come) revising the transcript following the narrator's review (to come) consent to be interviewed form donation of interview materials form consent to web publication form preparing interview for posting at Human Rights Documentation Initiative (these instructions are in process) - Access HRDI editing page (by permission only) |