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In defence of anonymity: rejoining the criticism
Anthony Kelly aaFaculty of Law, Arts & Social Science, University of Southampton, UK
First Published on: 19 August 2008

To cite this Article Kelly, Anthony(2008)'In defence of anonymity: rejoining the criticism',British Educational Research Journal,
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British Educational Research Journal
2008, iFirst Article, 1–15

In defence of anonymity: rejoining thecriticism
Anthony Kelly*

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Faculty of Law, Arts & Social Science, University of Southampton, UK

This article is a response to the growing criticisms of the British Educational Research Association(BERA) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) ethical guidelines on anonymity andpseudonymity as default positions for participants in qualitative educational research. It discusses
and responds to those criticisms under four headings—illusion, impossibility and undesirability,
access and quality—and extends the explication of difficulties to quantitative approaches using an
example from value-added effectiveness research. The article discusses potential flaws in thearguments made against anonymous and pseudonymous research, and presents some issues for the
research community to take forward. Finally, some suggestions are offered for a modified code ofpractice regarding anonymity and pseudonymity, which attempts a more subtle capture ofdifficulties in the field and qualifies the existing rationale to take account of previously
unconsidered technical concerns.

Introduction
Many and great are the vicissitudes of anonymity as an ethic in educational research.
Over the last few years, protocols have been issued by research and funding agencies
like the American Sociological Association (ASA, 1997), the American
Psychological Association (Sales & Folkman, 2000), the American Educational
Research Association (Strike et al., 2002), the British Sociological Association (BSA,2002), the British Educational Research Association (BERA, 2004) and theEconomic and Social Research Council (ESRC, 2005). As they have become more
embedded in practice, they have given rise to doubts, particularly in ethnographic
research, about the efficacy of offering anonymity to participating sites andindividuals as a default position. The right to dissent from the prevailing wisdomof the day is of course legitimate and to be encouraged: speaking frankly to thehegemony of supervisory organisations and individuals is a necessary feature of any
healthy research community. What has been lacking is a rejoin to these criticisms
and in that spirit this article attempts such a purchase.
*Faculty of Law, Arts & Social Science, School of Education, Building 32, University ofSouthampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK. Email: a.kelly@soton.ac.uk
ISSN 0141-1926 (print)/ISSN 1469-3518 (online)/08/000001-15# 2008 British Educational Research Association
DOI: 10.1080/01411920802044438

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2 A. Kelly
The challenge to ‘default anonymity’ (which subsumes pseudonymity) is perhaps
best put in the round by Geoffrey Walford (2005), who has been consistent in his
critique over several years and who musters best the forces on that side: Jan Nespor(2000) on the fact that anonymisation offers protection only insofar as what is
discovered is insignificant; Nancy Scheper-Hughes (2000, p. 128) on how selfpreserving and spurious such ‘cute and conventional’ protection can be; Alan
Peshkin (2001) and Gerald Grace (2002) as examples of how easily contextual
information can be used to uncover true identity; Alan Wolfe (2003) on the fact thattrust between researcher and researched is better achieved when there is no promiseof anonymity. In some respects, these challenges to anonymity do not go far enough,being as they are confined within the slightly solipsistic world of ethnography; inother respects, the arguments appear prosopographical and circumstantial, andoccasionally quite flawed.
Anonymity in ethnographic research: a discussion
The chief concerns of those who object to the rubric of anonymity—defined as nottrue-naming participants or sites and not providing information that enables them tobe identified—as the default position in qualitative research can be grouped underfour generic headings: illusion; impossibility and undesirability; access; quality.
The illusion of anonymity as a protection for participants
Trivially, there is no problem in the case where participants or sites wish to be
identified and are identified. At first sight, it might seem that the converse is also
trivial—that there is no problem in the case where participants wish to remain
anonymous and do (for a time)—but this is not so, say critics, because anonymity isa temporary and misleading illusion: a determined sleuth can always uncover thetrue identity of participants, who have been lulled into a false security by
manipulative researchers, and this is particularly true where research findings are
significant enough to arouse media interest.
In the situation where participants wish to be acknowledged but are not, they arebeing denied credit. In the case where they wish to remain anonymous but are
identified, it is simple betrayal. Critics therefore conclude that anonymity as adefault position among researchers is at best unimportant and at worst miasmic.
The impossibility and undesirability of offering anonymity in certain circumstances
It seems reasonable to claim that the more people that know of research and themore newsworthy its findings, the more vulnerable is anonymity to being broken,
but it does not follow from this that anonymity is therefore impossible or pointless,or that media interest is a proper measure of anything other than prurience. Whenthe substantive findings from a project merit wide public interest and are presented
properly, it should still be possible for communities of interest to discuss the
emerging issues without knowing the specificities in such a way as to be able toDownloaded By: [University of Southampton] At: 01:22 28 August 2008

In defence of anonymity 3
discover the characters, unless that is necessary for a proper understanding. And if in
extreme cases sites and participants are uncovered by a resourceful sleuth driven by
the desire to expose criminality, professional misconduct or moral hypocrisy, it is still
not an argument against anonymity as a default position in the first instance. If a
research site has doings so distasteful that public disquiet incentivises the press to try
to uncover its identity, is it reasonable to suggest that the participants there situated,knowing of the transgressions from the start but yet consenting, have the rightreasonably to assume perfect protection in every eventuality? Can this be considered abetrayal? I would suggest not. Critics have only demonstrated that anonymity in bad
research is seldom preserved against keen sleuthing, and that is probably as it shouldbe. It is not clear that significance is the determinant. If a site and its individuals havebeen anonymised properly, their identities cannot be uncovered, even though thefindings be significant. Even at the point of criminality, it is usually the researcher ora participant (and not the outside sleuth) who breaks cover. The identity of ‘Deep
Throat’ in the Watergate scandal, for example, remained a secret for 30 years until
the source revealed itself, despite the best efforts of hundreds of well-equipped andhighly motivated professionals. With this in mind, the ESRC (2005) ethicalframework obliges researches to consider: ‘the form and context of the publication ofresearch results … to ensure that media coverage does not compromise research
participants, co-researchers or funding bodies or breach confidentiality’ (ESRC,
2005, p. 26)
As critics rightly point out, promising anonymity where it cannot be maintained—aswith gatekeepers (Levinson & Sparkes, 2005) and focus groups, where it is
impossible to ensure that participants themselves adhere to the rules (Parker &Tritter, 2006, p. 33)—is unethical. Again, this is not a reason to abandon anonymity
altogether: it has not been proven that good research properly conducted ever has toget into that situation. Additionally, among non-vulnerable consenting andprofessional participants like teachers, there is usually (at least) an implicit
understanding that anonymity offered initially is subject to later limitations placedon it by the law and professional operating procedures. For example, in the UK,
research has limitations imposed upon it by the Data Protection Act (1998), theFreedom of Information Act (2000) and the fact that school inspection reports are
published on government websites. In the USA, there are limitations to anonymity
as a result of the Freedom of Information Act (1966). The BERA (2004) guidelines
are explicit in this respect:
Researchers who judge that the effect of the agreements they have made, on
confidentiality and anonymity, will allow the continuation of illegal behaviour, which
has come to light in the course of the research, must carefully consider making
disclosure to the appropriate authorities. If the behaviour is likely to be harmful to theparticipants or to others, the researchers must also consider disclosure. Insofar as it does
not undermine or obviate the disclosure, researchers must apprise the participants … of
their intentions and reasons for disclosure. (BERA, 2004, Section 27, p. 9)

The point here is one of expectation. Professionals should be made aware, if they do
not already know, that there is some information (already or likely to be) in the4 A. Kelly
public domain which if coupled with data from the research, might cause the level ofprotection offered ab initio to be lowered. If critics of anonymity have a case, it is this:that too seldom is this fact of limitation explained to participants; that the unspoken
presumption by some that anonymity is perfect and inviolable is left unchallenged.
Expectation and duty of care are linked, of course. They both depend at least inpart on the level of sentience of participants, and the coda here is that the researcher(at a minimum) must act with integrity while doing everything reasonable to ensurethat anonymity is preserved. If in some circumstances anonymity is broken,
advertently or inadvertently, the fault lies not in the aspiration to preserve it.

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Issues of access
It has been argued that sites for research, like schools, are too often chosen forreasons of professional or geographical convenience, which then enables the cover ofanonymity to be more easily blown. Critics use this (mal)practice as an argument
against offering anonymity in the first place, though it seems more an argument
against bad research:
There are obvious temptations to accept sites that appear to be readily available rather
than work harder to try to achieve access to the most appropriate sites for the research.
… Choosing a site on the basis of geographical convenience challenges the promises ofanonymity that are so often given. (Walford, 2005, p. 87)

It is a feature of criticisms like this that anonymity is frequently conflated with
substandard fieldwork or poor interpretation. It is not obvious how poor research
could be made better by not offering anonymity, even if it is a veneer easily cracked.
It may be that anonymity is an issue more in ethnographic research because
ethnographers themselves perceive there to be more bad research in the area; notbecause the method itself is flawed, but because it so readily embraces the risk of
intimacy (Proweller, 1998) within which it is easier to ignore cautionary precepts
and still produce ‘findings’.
One issue that critics of anonymity do not mention, but which would add to theircase, is the possibility that the default of anonymity has become more popular not asa means of securing access, but as a way of avoiding certain legal impositions, such as
those arising from the provisions of the UK Data Protection Act (1998), Section 33
of which offers certain exemptions:
The provisions of the DPA do not apply if complete anonymisation of data isundertaken. However, organizations and individual researchers should be aware thatdata ‘stripping’ to remove personal identifiers, and the concept of anonymisation itself,
are often problematic. Careful consideration is advised before using this as a basis for
exemption. (ESRC, 2005, Section 1.16.3.3, p. 18)

Issues of quality
The issue of access and whether the sites selected for research are appropriate or too
easily compromised leads to issues of quality. Walford (2005, p. 87) cites research byIn defence of anonymity 5‘one of America’s most well-known educational ethnographers’, the late Alan
Peshkin (2001), as an example of how pseudonymous reportage can fail:Downloaded By: [University of Southampton] At: 01:22 28 August 2008

Peshkin gave some ‘basic facts’ about the elite school in which he conducted theresearch. Geographically, it is in New Mexico, has a 312 acre main campus and another270 nearby mountain acres. Quoting from the prospectus, it is stated that the school has
25% pupils of colour and 30% receive more than $1,200,000 in financial aid based
entirely on demonstrated financial need. It can do this because it has an endowment ofapproximately $200 million.

Peshkin’s pseudonym—perhaps not surprisingly—failed in its mission to protect theschool from identification. In using it as an example, there is an implication that such
exposure is inevitable with pseudonymous research. Surely it is instead a case of‘noble Homer nodding’, which is to say, an instance of a good researcher getting it
wrong or being badly served by presentation. It is bizarre to go to such trouble tohide a site’s identity and then go to even greater trouble to reveal it! Can there be any
justification for telling the reader the home state, the acreage of the campus, the factof the school’s mountain estate and the extent of its endowment, while purporting tooffer the school anonymity? Perhaps Peshkin assumed—wrongly as it turned out, but
perhaps not unreasonably—that knowing the substantive purpose and findings of thestudy would be enough to sustain the school’s anonymity in that readers would be
induced to see its real identity as being of little importance. It serves as a lesson that
adding trivia to a story does nothing for its telling, but little else. Anonymity may
harm output quality in the later stages if, as critics claim, it encourages spurious
generalisation (though that is unproven), but it could just as easily be said to
encourage quality at the earlier data-gathering stage. The issue with ‘the Peshkinfailing’—giving superfluous information that enables pseudonymity to be broken—is
instead one of reportage.
Anonymity in quantitative research: a case against
Critics of anonymity have centred their concerns tribally on ethnographic and smallscale qualitative research (Shulman, 1990; Brettell, 1993). In that respect, they do
not go far enough. Anonymity is also a problem in nomothetic and large-scalequantitative work, even if the default position is even more unchallenged. Consider
the following scenario in which the link between value-added measures and raw
pupil attainment (at age 16) is measured. Figure 1 shows a (fictional) correlation
between the value added (VA) by schools between the ages of 11 and 16, and somebroadly-defined1 measure of attainment for a cohort of secondary schools. Figure 2
shows the correlation (again fictional) between the value added by the same schools
when the measures are contextualised (CVA) by ethnicity, social deprivation, genderand so on. In effect, these graphs tell how good a predictor is VA or CVA of‘attainment’. None of the schools has been identified or is identifiable.
The two scatter plots and their correlations—at a guess, about +0.8—are very
similar, which would lead one to the conclusion that contextualised value-added
measures (CVA) do not predict ‘attainment’ any better than non-contextualisedDownloaded By: [University of Southampton] At: 01:22 28 August 2008

6 A. Kelly

Figure 1. A fictional link between VA (KS2 to KS4) and GCSE attainment for a cohort ofsecondary schools

value-added measures (VA); or to borrow Stephen Gorard’s (2006) phrase, that
contextualised value added ‘is of little value’.
Data like this are never school-specific and in very large-scale research it is difficult
to see how it could otherwise be presented sensibly, beyond doing more statisticaltests within the data set. However, something is lost in this ‘anonymity ofaggregation’. Consider Figure 3 and Figure 4, in which eight schools within thecohort have been identified, not in the sense of being named, but in the sense ofbeing distinguishable. It can now be seen clearly that contextualising value added
makes a very significant difference to some schools and if, for example, local
authority funding were predicated on such measures, this understanding would havea practical and important bearing on how schools ‘triaged’ their pupils. In
circumstances of choice and consumerism such as prevail today, the extent towhich a school is perceived to be successful affects enrolment, which in turn is the
major driver of government funding.
Figures 3 and 4 tell us something that Figures 1 and 2 do not: that for someschools, the contexts of ethnicity, social deprivation and gender are important, andFigure 2. A fictional link between CVA (KS2 to KS4) and GCSE attainment for the same cohortof secondary schoolsDownloaded By: [University of Southampton] At: 01:22 28 August 2008

In defence of anonymity 7

Figure 3. A fictional link between VA (KS2 to KS4) and GCSE attainment for a cohort ofsecondary schools, showing eight identified schoolsfor others they are not. Clearly, the policy issues emerging from the research havechanged radically with the different presentations.
The same concerns over the detection of actual identity that were discussed
already in relation to qualitative research arise here too. In the quantitative example
given above, if the cohort of schools were (say) from a single local authority, it would
be possible for a determined sleuth to uncover the identity of the eight schools
distinguished on Figures 3 and 4. This fact suggests that it may be that anonymity ismore affected by research topic than by research approach. Not for the first time, thegreat contraries of qualitative and quantitative may offer only a false dichotomy.
Finally, there is an ethical side-issue in relation to school effectiveness research like
this, which relates to how it is presented: that the anonymised statistical findings canhave the unfortunate and self-fulfilling effect of lowering expectations. For thisreason, some value-added (estimated) measures, like the Fischer Family Trust SE
model for example, do not use contexts like ethnicity as factors in their measures ofvalue-addedness, even though research suggests it has an impact on attainment.2 If aschool with a large population of white working-class boys, for example, achieves a

Figure 4. A fictional link between CVA (KS2 to KS4) and GCSE attainment for the same cohortof secondary schools, showing eight identified schools

8 A. Kelly
level of attainment well below the national average (Abrams & Stewart, 2007), butwhen this is contextualised by race and gender the attainment is deemed to be‘good’, it may send out a message that has the effect of lowering the expectations ofwhite working-class boys and their teachers. The fact of aggregated anonymisation isunhelpful. It would be better to identify all the schools, without of course identifying
individual pupils. The ethical tension for quantitative researchers is to try to do thescience without doing the harm.
Some flaws in recent criticisms of anonymity

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Spurious generalisations from rational fools
It is always the case that spurious claims to external validity are ipso facto wrong, but
why critics of anonymity should claim that it results more frequently from projects
where anonymity is offered is unclear. With or without anonymity, small-scalequalitative research has always been criticised—unfairly, if it is done right—as being
prone to false generalisation, but this has nothing to do with anonymity as an ethicalprinciple. Bad research will always be bad research, irrespective of the presence orabsence of anonymity, and bad researchers will tend to error at every stage ofproceedings: the method will be inappropriate; the collection will be incomplete; thedata will be misinterpreted.
The breaking of anonymity from media prurience is presented in the literature as
being particularly unpleasant. Assuming that proper protocols were in place and that
exposure therefore resulted from self-identification or misconduct, the fact of having
hordes of consenting professionals thrust blinking into the public glare as a result
seems a slightly contrived concern. There seems to be a presumption on the part ofcritics of anonymity that professionals within schools are rational fools, unable todistinguish between different conditions and expectations. Why this assumption
should be made on that side of the debate is as unclear as the assumption that
researchers are acting out of laziness or incompetence in using pseudonyms in thefirst place. Their arguments seem to be contradictory: firstly, to dislike anonymity
while denying its existence; secondly, to suggest on the one hand that anonymity is auseless veneer trivially broken, and on the other that anonymity provides a cover so
opaque as to deny participants and others the opportunity to challenge findings.
The false supposition that events which occur at the same time must be causally connected
Critics make the same mistake of spurious generalisation that they claim anonymity
itself encourages: taking instances of failure and implying something generic about theoccurrence, as if the failed case was just one of many that could have been cited. It is notthat opponents of default anonymity always or necessarily fall prey to the assumptionthat one can ignore a criticism because of the person of the critic, but neither should
they casually impute good quality research because it is anonymised. The conflation (of‘anonymous’ with ‘bad’) is most easily hidden under the supposition that because thetwo things occasionally occur together they must be causally linked, and that won’t do.

In defence of anonymity 9
Anonymity is generally portrayed by critics as a sacrosanct binary provision; iteither obtains or it does not obtain. However, anonymity is not a sacrosanct
provision. It is conditional on various imperatives of morality, professionalism andcommon law. It is not the case that an initial guarantee of anonymity is preserved
throughout a research project, irrespective of findings and duties of care. The BERA
guideline takes account of this, though that is seldom acknowledged by its critics:

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At all times the decision to override agreements on confidentiality and anonymity must
be taken after careful and thorough deliberation. In such circumstances it is in the
researchers’ interests to make contemporaneous notes on decisions and the reasoning
behind them, in case a misconduct complaint or other serious consequence arises.
(BERA, 2004, Section 28, p. 9)

The fallacy of proving what is anyway assumed
When critics of anonymity present exemplars of bad experience, no one can doubt theconclusion that the outcome was undesirable, so readers are lulled into accepting thepremise, which presupposed the conclusion, that the fault was anonymity. It is a subtle
material fallacy wherein what the critics wish to prove is implicitly assumed: theconclusion that the research is poor follows from the premise that the research isflawed. Following from this is the tendency for critics of anonymity to visit the sins of
one researcher on the entire research community, though experience in other fields
suggests that it is frequently impossible to uncover unholy truths without offering
anonymity (Szklut & Reed, 1991). Instead, it seems more intuitive to claim that notoffering anonymity is more likely to guarantee that truth is concealed. So thefundamental question for the research community is whether it should abandon what
prior experience suggests is the most likely pathway to truth, on foot of uncoveringsome badly executed examples. Overall, the circumstance of anonymity is a benefit in
the search for truth—not the only one, but an important one—and it would be a
mistake not to use it if it increases the likelihood of adding to our understanding.
The dispute between opponents and advocates of anonymity as a default position in
research seems to arise in part from a confusion between blanket and unnecessary
anonymity on the one hand, and a more selective sort of anonymity on the other.
Default anonymity can only be a starting premise. A researcher behaving ethically will
explain to participants that there are circumstances where imperatives of law andmorality will demand (or lead others to demand) that anonymity be broken, or will
incentivise those who keep a public watch on such things to investigate thecircumstances in such a way as to make it impossible for the researcher to continue
to guarantee it. Participants that do not understand this, or to whom this fact of life isleft unexplained, are probably incapable of giving informed consent in any true sense.
Anonymity encourages access and quality
The argument is made against anonymity that it discourages from participation
those who might wish to be acknowledged, which seems to ignore the more obvious

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10 A. Kelly
fact that anonymity can just as easily encourage participants who might not wish tobe identified. Geoffrey Walford (2005, p. 88) posits that anonymity is usually offered
by researchers as ‘part of an access strategy’ and that offering it can ‘take somepressure off’ teachers and heads, but like other critics, makes a claim too far when heextends this to suggest that if research findings present a school or its ‘characters’ ina good light, they will themselves break cover. Again, it is unclear why such amaterial transgression, in what should be a negotiated situation (Hilton, 2006,
p. 301), should be assumed of participants or why it is a consequence of the BERA
(2004) guidelines on anonymity. The right to anonymity for participants does notconfer a right for researchers to impose it. Should participants agree among
themselves to withdraw or identify themselves, that is their prerogative, subject to asensible concordat. The more delicate problem is to find a balance between
encouraging those who wish to be acknowledged by not offering anonymity, andencouraging those who wish to remain unidentified by offering it. Unfortunately, it isa zero-sum situation—what one side gets by way of accommodation, the other must
lose—because part-anonymity cannot guarantee any anonymity for those who need
it. This is why the situation cannot be resolved by compromise and why the BERA
default is justified. If a school and half its characters are identified, it is impossible for a
researcher to guarantee any anonymity to the remainder, so the default position is
the one of best outcome and least harm: the most valuable participants areencouraged and the most vulnerable are protected. And bearing in mind thatparticipants with sensitive information are usually the ones with the greatest need foranonymity, it is a default position that usually imputes quality.
Some issues to take forward
Context
There is an issue of context in the debate about default anonymity. To tell an
ethnographic story anonymously or pseudonymously about a school is necessarily todecontextualise or ‘falsify’ it (Coffey et al., 1996), except insofar as the researcherwriter can provide those contextualising factors which are necessary for a fullunderstanding of what it is that makes the school worth studying in the first place. As
has been said already, it does not follow from this that the reader is consequently
entitled to infer a spurious generalisability upon the narrative. There is no inherent
freedom to assume that a school is representative of any and every school justbecause it has been given a pseudonym, though critics suggest that in actuality this iswhat readers are inclined to do. Certainly, anonymised research imposes a burden ofcare on the researcher-writer to maintain a balance between anonymity andillumination; to give only enough circumstantial specifics as are required to decipher
the meaning (but not the identity) of the site and its characters. But there are caveantlectores too: not to infer from the anonymity anything beyond the researcher’s duty toobtain the most privileged information and post facto to do no harm. Many of thecriticisms of anonymity have more to do with the writer providing too much or too
little context, and in the case of pseudonymity the reader falsely imputing external

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In defence of anonymity 11
validity to the work. If there is a flaw in the practice of anonymity in educational
research it is that too seldom is it made explicit that context and changing
circumstance can alter the initial undertaking of anonymity. It is accepted practice inother fields, like medical research for example, though fairly rare. For example, inMarch 2006, six paid volunteers were admitted to hospital in London suffering frommultiple organ failure after participating in ‘phase one’ trials of a new drug. The trial
involved eight people in total. The six who received the drug and whose identity was
subsequently revealed in the press fell ill while the two who received a placebo didnot (New Scientist, 2006). These six participants had engaged voluntarily toundertake the drug trial and were promised anonymity, but as the drug trial became
subject to intervention and a matter of legitimate public interest, it became
impossible (and probably unethical) to preserve anonymity. In many fields, thelimitations to anonymity are widely accepted, easily explained and well understood(World Medical Association, 1964; ASA, 1997; Botkin, 2001). There is no reason
why it cannot be thus in education.
Public domain-ness
Related to the issue of context is that of ‘public domain-ness’. It might be possible touncover the true identity of a research site and its characters, but that is not always
the point of contention and is in any case always affected by ‘public purpose’ andcircumstance. Consider the following example. An ambassador is stopped by police
while driving under the influence of alcohol. He invokes diplomatic immunity so as
to avoid prosecution. Nothing is proven against the diplomat and he is only everanonymously referred to in press reports. This is accepted as proper reportage aslong as its purpose is to question the traditional practice of granting diplomatic
immunity in such cases. The particular incident serves only to illustrate what iswrong with the status quo; it is not necessary to know who the diplomat was in order
to appreciate the point of the narrative. However, if the purpose is to argue that
hostile countries use diplomatic immunity while friendly ones do not, then theembassy must be named—and in naming the embassy, the likelihood is increased
that the diplomat’s identity will be uncovered—because it is not possible properly tomake the case otherwise. The issue is one of purpose, appropriateness and context,
and of putting ‘proper’ information in the public domain in order to have an
informed debate on a matter of importance (Demerath, 2006).
Expected standards of privacy and access
Expected standards of privacy and access in society and among professionals do not
remain constant over time. In a society increasingly sustained by communications
and media technology, established notions of anonymity are being challenged byadvances in Internet and multimedia approaches to gathering and storing data
(Vulliamy, 2004, p. 277; Coffey et al., 2006, p. 26), amid general agreement thataccess is greater and expectations of privacy lower now than was the case when theguidelines on anonymity were developed.

12 A. Kelly[It] is worth remembering that many schools have now allowed television cameras into
their classrooms and corridors where they usually have little control over the finishedproduct which can be seen by millions. … If schools are prepared to allow such detailed
and open disclosure by television reporters, documentary filmmakers and journalists,
why not by researchers? (Walford, 2005, p. 88)

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However, neither increased access nor the lowering of expectations is a goodargument for abandoning default anonymity. The quotation above describes aschool controlling its own anonymity (or lack of it), which is the point and the purposeof BERA (2004) and ESRC (2005) guidelines anyway. Research anonymity is not aquestion of just being or not being anonymous, but of accepting or rejecting the offer
of it as of right.
A modified code of behaviour for anonymity in educational research
There are precedents for having default positions, like that of anonymity, in practicalsituations. The law, for example, maintains a number of them (like the presumptionof innocence) and accepts different standards of proof and expectations of attention
for different situations, and juggles them all to great effect. The practical situation
regarding anonymity in the field of education is perhaps more subtle, but not beyond
the wit of academics to codify. It may mean qualifying existing ethical frameworks tomake explicit certain ‘technical’ concerns and reflect the fact that the imperative‘protection from harm’ has different meanings for different characters:

N Anonymity should be negotiated, not imposed. It should be the default position

N

N
N
N

N

initially for all participants and sites, but the aim should be to identify andacknowledge participation whenever possible, subject to an overriding concern forprotecting the vulnerable.
There are limits to any guarantee of anonymity, which itself should be kept underreview. Under normal circumstances, these should be explained to participants aspart of the researcher’s obligation to obtain informed consent. It should bepointed out that the discovery of criminality, professional misconduct or moral
hypocrisy jeopardises anonymity, and subsequent media intrusion can lessen the
researcher’s control over what was initially an undertaking made in good faith.
The default of anonymity is predicated on an absence of malice and a regard for thetruth. Anonymity should therefore be deemed to have been broken by a researcher ifwhen reporting, even truthfully, there is the intention to cause harm or to mislead.
Researchers should be particularly careful not to expose unnecessarily any
participants to embarrassment in a fixed medium, like a research paper, taking
care also to avoid damage by implication.
It should be an ethical failure on the part of a researcher to report in such a waythat although technically true, the reportage is still damaging because other truths
were concealed that caused a misrepresentation and which would have led areasonable reader to a different conclusion.
Promising anonymity where foreseeably it cannot be maintained is in all cases
unethical.

In defence of anonymity 13

N A proper selection of research site should obviate the need to provide contextual
descriptions of such detail that anonymity is jeopardised.

N The burden of proof for ethical failure is with the participant if the discovery is not
N

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N

caused by the researcher’s negligence or incompetence, and with the researcher
otherwise.
A distinction should be made between the casual discovery of identity anddiscovery as a result of the researcher’s negligence or incompetence. There is alsoa distinction between harm caused by the discovery of a truth and that caused by amisrepresentation.
A researcher’s degree of care varies with the nature of the participant and the site,
and the size of the research population. The care should be greater for researchthat extends beyond professional participants or extends outside a single
community of practice.

Certain defences to the accusation of ethical failure (as a result of failed anonymity)
should be codified for researchers: the discovery of identity was not the researcher’s
fault; participants were made aware of the limitations to anonymity but consented
nevertheless to a dissemination which then caused their identity to be revealed; there
was justification for disclosure as a result of (certain stipulated) misdeeds; fairacademic comment and discussion led to an unforeseeable breach; the researcher
was obliged by law or professional duty to break cover; the researcher was
deliberately misled by participants and as a result identity was uncovered; the site
and its characters were so badly in need of remediation that the researcher
encouraged participants to waive their right to anonymity in order to access support.
Conclusion
The critics present a reasonable case that the current guidelines on anonymity are toa degree inadequate. Until they are amended, it is important that researchers makeclear that anonymity, though granted, is never guaranteed in cases of criminality or
professional misconduct; that anonymity is primarily designed to protect theinnocent and the vulnerable; that anonymity is always guaranteed against gratuitousand casual identification; that findings will be presented in such a way as to avoid
giving superfluous information that could be used to identify participants but which
would not add to public understanding; that informed consent to participate
includes a demonstrable or reasonably assumed understanding of the limits to whichanonymity can be guaranteed.
At a minimum, for anonymity, there are different levels of care and changing
contexts in any research situation, so there are several different constituencies thathave legitimate but differing claims to protection; for example, the safety of thesingle researcher going into the field to investigate sensitive issues is often overlookedin the rush to protect the ‘researched’. The default of anonymity exists to protect theinnocent and the vulnerable against harm, but it is more than that. It is an aspirationthat must be realised to different degrees depending on circumstance and whichmust remain under constant review. It is unfortunate that it is presented in the14 A. Kelly
literature as a monolithic obligation; it might serve its purpose better were it viewed
as the first step in a negotiated settlement.
‘We are slaves to the law so that we can be free’, said Cicero. The default ofanonymity in educational research, if properly codified, sets researchers free in more
ways than it restricts them. This is the scales to be used for judging whether or not
the balance is right: that research is tilted in favour of seeking understanding rather
than obfuscating it. The morphology for anonymity simply needs to reflect better thecomplex actuality of research in the field.

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Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Geoffrey Walford for his generosity in engaging in a
debate on some of the issues covered in this paper.
Notes
1. Using straightforward measures of attainment like the percentage of pupils obtaining five or
more General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) grades A*–C (say) would be
misleading here because real-life measures of value-addedness include measures of GCSE
attainment, and Figures 3 and 4 would be most unlikely to occur.
2. The FFT SE model uses factors like prior attainment, month of birth, gender and free school
meal entitlement. FFT took a conscious decision not to include ethnicity in their ‘estimates’models, but have included ethnicity in the ‘retrospective’ SX model.

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