The Ethics of Qualitative Secondary Analysis

This chapter explores key debates on the ethical questions raised by the use of Qualitative Secondary Analysis (QSA) over the past two decades, covering familiar ethical concerns such as consent, representation and confidentiality. Our discussion also demonstrates how the ethics of QSA involves more than reworking familiar issues (Neale, 2013; Wiles and Boddy, 2013) and necessitates a conceptual reframing of research contexts themselves. Organised along chronological lines, the chapter charts how the debate on the ethics of QSA has developed. First, we introduce early concerns and prohibitions against the re-use of data. Second, we examine the impact of a changing data landscape including a growth in data archives and infrastructures and new methodologies of QSA. We consider how these ushered in ethical attention to the ‘duties’ of the ‘stakeholders’ in the longer chains of relationships and networks involved in the production and curation of research data (Neale and Bishop, 2012; Neale and Hanna, 2012). Third, we discuss the usefulness of a temporal, relational framing of the ethical challenges raised by the long chains and complex networks of research relationships involved in QSA. We consider the broader social context of ‘datafication’, including how this has prompted a new focus on data protection and a resurgence of ‘rights-driven ethics’ stressing data privacy. Finally, we advance an ethics of legacy and explore the multi-directional and layered character of ethical reflexivity involved in QSA methodology.