Audio-visual recordings or photographs can be handled by the same kind of consent procedures as other research materials. Similar information sheets and consent forms which include explicit consent for publication and data sharing can be used.

Consent should be obtained to use unaltered data for research purposes, including, where possible, the sharing and archiving of data. It may be tempting to explore digital manipulation as a way of removing personal identifiers.  However, there are significant disadvantages to this:

• altering data post-collection is not always a viable strategy for assuring confidentiality
• multimedia data altering techniques, such as voice alteration and image blurring, are labour-intensive and expensive to apply for large quantities of data
• data alteration is likely to damage the research potential of data - distorted speech can significantly reduce the research value of a recorded interview and blurring faces represents a major loss of information where facial expressions might be of interest

Visual ethics is a rapidly changing area. The ESRC National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) is a useful source for recent research.

GO TO NCRM SITE