When things don't go according to plan

Sometimes life requires flexibility. Sometimes life requires holding your ground. Today it required both of those things.

We visited our 7th and final school to administer the questionnaire today. We had been there about a week and a half ago to explain the study and drop off the consent forms. When we arrived, it took a long time to assemble the students. When we collected the consent forms we started to see an issue arising. About half of the students in the room didn't have their forms and we couldn't let them participate in the study without the signatures of their guardians explicitly giving their permission to do so. After much discussion with the deputy head teacher, we decided that we would break for lunch, the students who had forgotten their forms would fetch them from home, and we would reconvene in a few hours.

Lindsay and I returned a few hours later as planned, but Terry wasn't feeling well and couldn't join us. We have done the questionnaire on our own a few other times and it went fine, but today was different.

We had been advised by several people that English is the official language of instruction and that our materials should be in english, so that is what we brought with us. When the english has been too tricky for particular questions, Terry steps in and translates. At the rural school today almost nobody could understand our english (thick with our american accents).

The Deputy Head Teacher (who shouldn't have been there to begin with but kept popping back in) was quick to offer to translate. This was very kind, however, the IRB protocol clearly states that Lindsay, Terry, and I are the ONLY ones allowed to conduct the research. Lindsay tried to kindly explain this to the Deputy, but he was quite zealous about his participation and just grabbed the questionnaire and started to run through the questions. He was also hovering over students' papers and enthusiastically prompting them to answer in specific ways.

Lindsay tried to stop him and reason with him a few more times but he wouldn't hear it. She then tried to find me to back her up (I had taken a very bored Senya out for a walk) and she couldn't find me. At this point she was faced with a difficult task. She could not in good conscience let him continue on to the questions that go into detail of the students' sexual history. The ethics of having a school administrator forcefully extract that kind of personal info... no way. She had to put her foot down and, as she explained it, channel the persona of the wonderful Liz Lemon and "SHUT IT DOWN."

She was polite but insistent.

Senya and I returned from our walk just in time to see Lindsay resolutely gathering up the papers and seeing the students out the door.