Anonymisation in biographical research – methodological and ethical concerns

Abstract

The subject of this article is the anonymisation of data, which, alongside informed consent, is considered a fundamental requirement in terms of ethical standards in contemporary sociological research and, because of this, is often treated as a technical activity in the process of preparing research material for analysis. The aim of this article is to highlight selected dilemmas related to anonymisation and to invite discussion of issues that are sometimes unreflectively accepted as procedures formulated by ethics committees.

Following the literature of the subject, I show that framing anonymisation solely in terms of an element of research practice ignores its impact on the research process and its consequences in ontological, methodological and analytical terms. In the second part of the article, I engage in a discussion of the issue of the real possibility of protecting the identity of participants through the practice of anonymisation, especially nowadays, when the Internet has become an aggregate of information left online intentionally or accidentally by its users. I relate the considerations presented in the article primarily to qualitative sociological research, and biographical research in particular.