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Covert research has a mixed reputation within the scientific community. Some are unsure of its moral worth, others would proscribe it entirely. This reputation stems largely from a lack of knowledge about the reasons for choosing the covert method. In this chapter, these reasons will be reconstructed in detail and all the elements that will allow one to judge the level of ethicality of covert research will be laid out for the reader. In particular, the chapter will answer the following questions: What harms can result from covert research to the subjects participating in the research? Is covert research necessarily deceptive? In which cases is it ethically permissible for a researcher to deceive? What is the scientific added value of the covert research, that is, what does covert research discover that overt research does not? What are the risks to researchers acting undercover? Finally, some suggestions will be offered to research ethics reviewers to help in their appraisal of covert research.

In light of the many crises and catastrophes faced in the modern world, policymakers frequently make claims to be ‘following the science’ or being ‘governed by the data’. Yet, conflict based on inequalities continue to fuel dissatisfaction with the decisions and actions of authorities. Research into public security may require surveillance and covert observations, all of which are subject to major ethical challenges. Any neat distinction between covert and overt research is difficult to maintain given the variety of definitions used for all the terms addressed here. Covert research may be ethically justified and is not necessarily deceptive. In any case, deception may be ethical if engaged in for the ‘right’ reasons. Modern research sites and innovative research methods may enhance opportunities for covert work. In all surveillance and covert work, care must be taken about how consent is managed, how observed subjects are protected and harm to all involved minimised in all situations.

This paper aims to consider the contentious issue of covert research in studying the social contexts of vulnerable groups. It explores its potential utility in areas where overt strategies may be problematic or denied; and examines and problematises the issue of participant consent.

Using a literature-based review and selected previous studies, the paper explores the uses and abuses of covert research in relation to ethics review proceedings governing social research, with an especial focus on vulnerability.

Findings indicate that although the use of covert research is subject to substantial critique by apparently transgressing the often unquestioned moral legitimacy of informed consent, this carries ethical and practical utility for research related to safeguarding concerns. Arguably covert research enables research access to data likely to reveal abusive and oppressive practices.

Covert research assists in illuminating the hidden voices and lives of vulnerable people that may otherwise remain inaccessible. Such research needs to be subject to rigorous ethical standards to ensure that it is both justified and robust.

Emphasising the need to consider all angles, questions and positions when addressing the social problem of adult protection and safeguarding.

Increasingly social research is treated as being as potentially harmful as medical research. Ethics review tends towards conservative conformity, legitimising methodologies that may serve less social utility than other forms of investigation that privilege the safeguarding of vulnerable people.

The purpose of this paper is to present empirical evidence that focuses on the use of covert participant observation as a method of data collection and consider the ethical nature of this method as a means to create knowledge that leads to direct management action. This ethical debate centres on issues such as informed consent, rights and consequences. This paper develops the consequentialist argument by reflecting on experiences of using covert participant observation and the consequences of using such a method in empirical management research.

Conducted independently of one another, two empirical case studies highlight the choices made and the justification for using covert participant observation as a means to investigate organisational issues.

The paper concludes that this research method can be used effectively within an ethical framework and suggests that researchers need to be more aware of the potential consequences on themselves in terms of the personal, emotional and trust issues that centre around deception when using covert participant observation.

Researchers are now asked to consider the consequences on themselves of conducting covert participant observation and, in particular, to assess the potential problems arising in the form of emotional or personal implications when being deceptive.

The ethical debate concerning the rights and consequences of conducting covert participant observation is extended to include a consideration of the consequences for the researcher pertaining to the collection and use of data using this research method. The paper goes beyond the traditional aspects of the debate by extending it to consider the consequences on the researcher of using what is essentially a research method based on deception.

This study aims to critically expose and explore “taking sides” in the context of a covert ethnography of bouncers in the night-time economy of Manchester, UK.

The methodology adopted is covert ethnography. The author reflects on the application and use of situated deception within an embedded and insider ethnography of bouncers, alongside other relevant covert ethnographies. Fieldwork vignettes are drawn upon to articulate the management of situated ethics and moral dilemmas.

The findings argue that bouncers are a deeply maligned occupational group, who perform a valuable regulatory role in the night-time economy. Moreover, a covert role ethnographic presents an interesting liminal stance of being on both sides, rather than a reductionist choosing of a single sides. Theoretically, phenomenological bracketing and ethnomethodological indifference are used to justify the position taken in the paper.

Covert research has limitations around fieldwork time consumption, instigation tactics and “going native” distortion, alongside common fears of ethical belligerence and cavalier morals.

The lessons learnt, particularly for early career researchers, are about pursuing creative ethnographic methods.

Occupationally, bouncers should be less demonized and more accessible to more women. This rather hyper-masculine domain should be disrupted and democratized.

The field is relatively niche, with a purist covert ethnographic approach being an innovative way to unpack it.

Scholarship on the state control of social movements has predominately focused on overt repression, resulting in comparatively less attention to more covert forms of control. Researchers have suggested that government surveillance of social movement organizations (SMOs) has become increasingly widespread and routinized in the post-September 11, 2001 era, but this hypothesis has remained untested. Since contemporary surveillance is grounded in a logic of information gathering that has diffused across law enforcement agencies since the September 11 attacks, government actors now cast a wide net and monitor a large variety of groups. This study shows that a result, traditional factors predicting surveillance, such as contentious behavior, have less explanatory power. Using a database of 409 SMOs active in Philadelphia between January 1996 and October 2009, the research asked who and why particular groups are monitored by the Pennsylvania Office of Homeland Security (PA-OHS) between November 2009 and September 2010. Bayesian logistic regression analysis is used to examine the variables predicting surveillance. Findings show that 23% of the SMOs in the sample were targets of surveillance. Organizational ideology was the strongest predictor and there was little evidence that history of contentious protests or previous conflict with the police influenced coming under surveillance. However, groups with less visibility in traditional media sources were more likely to be monitored.

The purpose of this paper is to explore ethical issues associated with using the shadowing method.

Ethical issues that arose during a 12-week shadowing study that examined the work activities and practices of Canadian healthcare CEOs are discussed.

Dividing the ethics process into two phases – those addressed by ethics committees (procedural ethics) and those that revealed themselves in the field (ethics in practice) – issues and relating to sampling, informed consent, researcher roles, objectivity, participant discomforts, the impact of research on participants, confidentiality, and anonymity are investigated. This paper illustrates that while useful, procedural ethics committees are unable to establish ethical practice in and of themselves. In response, it suggests that the concept of reflexivity be applied to ethics to help researchers consider the implications of using the shadowing method, and develop a contingency for possible challenges, before they enter the field.

This paper provides researchers considering using the shadowing method with critical insights into some of the ethical issues associated with the method. A number of questions are posed and a number of suggestions offered as to how ethical practice can be attained in the field. Given practice-based similarities between shadowing and other qualitative methodologies such as participant observation and ethnography, many of the lessons derived from this case study are also pertinent to researchers using other techniques to examine organizational and management phenomenon.

Building on the formal and critical discussion about the shadowing method ignited by McDonald (2005), this paper identifies and discusses ethical issues associated with the shadowing method that have not been examined in either ethics or research methods literature.

Throughout this chapter you will be exposed to the meaning and types of ethnographic research. An emphasis will be made on the use of ethnography in hospitality and tourism settings. Variations of ethnography such as netnography, chrono ethnography, and ethnographic interviews are explained along with their benefits and drawbacks. This chapter includes guidance on how to conduct an ethnography including the scope and context, length of the project, access to and selection of informants, position of the researcher, issues of concealment or disclosure, and the language used to write the ethnographic narrative. Furthermore, you will be exposed to some of the principal forms of analysis in ethnography including thematic, domain, taxonomic, componential, sociograms, and typologies. Finally, this chapter provides examples of some of the main decisions involved by a researcher engaged in ethnographic inquiry.