Researching professional identities of female law students: Ethical issues and dilemmas

This paper discusses the ethical issues encountered in preparing for and carrying out the initial stages of a project to investigate the extent to which the Legal Practice Course (a one year, postgraduate vocational course for intending solicitors)influences the formation of female students’ professional identities. It examines the ethical issues which the researcher has had to consider in the light of the decision to collect data by interviewing (particularly those of harm to participants and privacy and confidentiality), including the potential problems of conducting insider research, before going on to reflect on the institutional approval process and concludes by looking at how ethical issues might be relevant when assessing the quality of a qualitative research project such as this. It concludes that ethical issues must be constantly in the mind of the researcher even once ethical approval has been obtained and data collected. In addition, the presentation of research findings
may in itself pose ethical dilemmas and those assessing research quality will expect any description of the research to make it very clear that ethical issues have been carefully considered at every stage.