Methods, Ethics & Evidence

This page states the standard I want research-facing work on okbayat.com to meet. It is not an ethics-board approval and does not convert past teaching, coaching, organizational work, or field activity into formal research.

Evidence Types

Pages should identify the strongest available layer:

  1. Published evidence — a claim reported by an identifiable source.
  2. Direct observation — behavior or events recorded by the author.
  3. Participant self-report — an experience described by a participant.
  4. Current interpretation — my present explanation or synthesis.
  5. Hypothesis or open question — an idea not yet established.

A compelling observation is not automatically a causal result. Repeated self-report remains self-report. Short-term performance is not automatically durable learning.

Methods of Interest

My current interests include qualitative and longitudinal inquiry, reflective practice, arts-informed methods, field observation, case comparison, and product-based measurement. The method must follow the question; none of these labels is useful without a defined unit of observation, outcome, time horizon, comparison, and limitation.

Material created in a course, coaching relationship, workplace, or facilitated group is not automatically available for public research use.

  • Consent for publication must be specific, informed, freely given, and withdrawable where withdrawal remains practicable.
  • Refusal must have no educational, professional, financial, or relational consequence.
  • A teacher, coach, manager, or facilitator should not assume that ordinary participation equals research consent.
  • When the same person designs, facilitates, observes, and evaluates an activity, the role conflict must be disclosed and reduced where possible through independent consent or assessment.
  • Retrospective consent may permit a specific public use, but it does not retroactively turn the original activity into an independently reviewed academic study.

Privacy and Public Evidence

Anonymization reduces risk but does not eliminate it. A distinctive timeline, role, event, quotation, handwriting sample, image, or combination of details may still identify a person to peers.

Without appropriate consent, public pages should prefer:

  • the author’s own reflection;
  • generalized descriptions of a practice;
  • published sources;
  • open hypotheses and future study designs;
  • aggregate information that cannot reasonably be traced to a person.

Identifiable participant narratives, private messages, images, longitudinal follow-ups, attendance tables, and behavior records require a clear necessity, appropriate consent, and a defensible publication plan.

Children and Other Higher-Risk Settings

Work involving children requires stronger safeguards: guardian permission where appropriate, age-appropriate assent, minimal data collection, protection from pressure, no identifiable public artifacts by default, and a clear separation between participation in the activity and participation in research or publication.

Publication Rule

Every research-facing page should make clear:

  • the question and status;
  • the setting and the author’s role;
  • what material was used and under what permission;
  • which claims are observation, self-report, interpretation, or published evidence;
  • alternative explanations and missing cases;
  • privacy and role-conflict limits;
  • what cannot be concluded;
  • the next responsible step.

When those conditions cannot be met, the page should remain a personal reflection or an open research proposal rather than a public account of participant-derived evidence.