Just looking for a bit of feedback

I did roughly ~60 semi-structured interviews for my PhD and am currently writing up my findings. All my interviewees were promised anonymity so I am keen to respect that. Approximately 40 were teenagers, the remainder adults. Two of the adults said they were not concerned about their names being disclosed and these two are the main drivers of what I am researching and it's they who are largely responsible for policy in this area.

SO: should I change all names but still call participants by an actual name, eg change John to Paul etc and advise the reader that all names have been changed? Or, go with the more anonymous, more neutral but less personal 'Female participant'?

Any thoughts??

First check any ethics applications to see if anything is specified there.

If it's ambiguous, I would be inclined towards 'female participant' etc. Firstly, naming people who have agreed to be named is a problem if they subsequently withdraw their consent to be named. Secondly, making up your own names for people isn't a neutral process - it may be influenced by your own perception of people's names, or your readers may interpret them in a certain way. The important thing to get across is *what* they said and you don't want to distract from that.

Hi Ady,

I stated with the main text that all names were anonymised, then pointed to a table in the appendix of my participants with the first column entitled "participant code name".

I then went onto to give them code names from two tv series which were relevant to my study area.  So for example, if you were doing a study of hospitals then why not call them characters from ( and sorry I'm noting UK and US shows here) but Casualty, ER, Holby City, House etc.   If you have 40 teenagers you could name them all teenage shows which would differentiate them.

Just a thought, made me laugh anyway !   Best wishes, Chuff

HazyJane-that's similar to what my supervisor said. He felt it was problematic changing names but at the same time we discussed how llabelling people 'Female participant' could come across as cold. The basic premise of my entire study is the voice of young people. Personally I prefer reading studies where people have names but I have, when my mind wanders, wondered how the writer decided on those names. So yes it's not a neutral process. At the same time while I probably won't quote all my participants it gets tedious after a while reading 'Male participant', 'Female participant'.

Chuff- I love that idea! Plus it gives me a valid reason to watch Waterloo Road which I already do:$ - it's one of my guilty pleasures! I could go back to my eighties roots and watch archives of Grange Hill or Saved by the Bell! Your study sounds interesting - if you have a moment, did the question of what you called your interviewees come up in your viva?

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While it might be a nice idea to name them after Waterloo Road characters, it's not without problems. You're keen to make sure that it's *their* voice that comes across, rather than a bland FP1, FP2 etc, but if you give one kid the name 'Donte' for example, firstly you cloud the reader's mind by putting an image of a known character in their heads and secondly it could be perceived that you think the child resembles that character, in which case his own identity is replaced by one you've appear to have created.

For example, would you read a quote the same way if the name had been changed to Kat Slater, or Margot Fonteyn? Very few name labels are truly neutral.

Good point. I would be very happy if somebody replaced my name with Margot Fonteyn; Kat Slater, eh definitely not!

Thanks HazyJane :-)

Hi Ady! Well I'm only doing one small qualitative study as my PhD is mostly quantitative, but in the type of analysis I'm doing (IPA) it's normal and perfectly acceptable to just replace each person's name (first name only) with a pseudonym and just state that all names have been changed to protect anonymity. Some people still leave just a participant code number on or label it 'female participant' or whatever, but one of my colleagues recently submitted a paper for publication like this and was asked to substitute them for pseudonyms to make it less 'cold'. In my study I replaced all the names with names (first names only) with the names of my favourite old people I used to look after when I was doing care work years ago. In my mind, it was a nice way to sort of 'keep them alive', and given that nobody else knows/knew who they were and all their names were typical names for that age range (think Vera, Mary, Harry, Arthur etc!!) then there's no way that anonymity is compomised. Personally I think it's nicer to use names than codes etc, but there are probably different traditions in different fields. My IPA paper has been reviewed for publication and there were no problems with using pseudonyms, but I would see what's most typical in your subject area. Best, KB

Thanks for the input Keenbean, appreciate it. I do think it sounds cold labelling participants with codes and as I said I personally don't like reading papers where participants are just identified with codes. However, I hear what HazyJane is saying and she is in effect agreeing with my supervisor. There is some subjectivity attached to the decision to rename somebody with another name. The issue came up at my last supv meeting and we agreed that I would go away and think about it. I have pondered it but am still unsure. I know what I would prefer to do but for my thesis I have a feeling I will err on the side of caution and neutrality.

Hi Ady,

No, not at all. Not mentioned. 

I used first names only. So yes Grange Hill.  I can only remember Tucker and Stewpot and Gripper. Did any of them have real and or first names I wonder? :-)

My names were mostly common / ordinary but one or two were clearly from one TV show in particular. I think it shows there is a real person behind this thesis,  look I thought enough about my study to give codes names that were suitable.

From a very practical point of view, say you were reading a study where participant 1b said..  then 10 pages on participant 1b then said.  I doubt the names would cause the same connection but if Sandra said X and then later Sandra said something else you would, i would argue, connect the two - the participants have been humanised.  Leading to another point...

Like you I had thought, what do I say if my participant names are brought up in viva.  My answer would have been to appreciate them as people, not just a means to an end etc. Ethics etc.

Hope your research is still going well.  Regards, Chuff

Hey Ady! I think it depends on how you choose the new names and whether there are any characteristics or anything that would be likely to be attributed to that particular name. I wouldn't go for choosing your favourite TV characters' names because that might be something other people can identity with and could potentially lead to a bias in the person reading your work and how they interpret it. But if you just choose pretty common names at random I don't think there would be any issue. I mean, you could probably find the 50 most common male and female names for any particular year on the internet, so using names like that shouldn't be names that would automatically be associated with particular TV characters etc. Then again you could always choose a name that means something to the reader, ie. they have a relative with the same name so might interpret something differently, but you can't account for every single possibility so I wouldn't try to! I don't honestly think it will matter either way for your thesis- the worst that can happen is that if they don't like your decision, the examiners might ask you to switch it the other way round as a minor correction. I would just go with the most common method in your subject! Best, KB

Thanks KB and Chuff - I'm still not quite sure so for the moment I call them by their own names, so as to be able to remember who is who. Good idea about most popular boys and girls names - I have downloaded them and may very well do that; no judgments, no decisions, just a straightforward sideways swap.

I can tell you what I did...
I interviewed people in Greece, and I used names that were small and used in UK... one of the main reasons was that in Greece we have huge manes that no other person can read, so I decided to use small, everyday, English names.
Whenever I mention one of my participants, I use his/her "name", gender, role and age-group (e.g. emmaki, female student, 30-35)

Thanks Emmaki :-)

I've gone with a direct swap between my real names and the top boys' and girls' names as posted on the census website. I think I have too many different participants to code them and for it still to be readable so we'll see if it comes up in my viva - as KB says, hopefully the worst that will happen is that I'll be asked to change them. Oh, and convince my supervisor as well :$