Question.777 - You are a battalion chief in a fire department conducting a study that explores differences in morale between the three shifts of your organization. You decide to use a focus group to probe the issue. During the focus group, you learn some very personal information from your participants. One firefighter relates that he has had suicidal thoughts because he does not get along with the captain and feels like the captain is out to get him. The captain is not present in the focus group, and the other participants acknowledge that the captain is harsh on the firefighter. What ethical issues exist in this scenario? How would you minimize harm to the participants? What, if any, of the information you have learned can be used in your role as a battalion chief and not as a researcher?
Answer Below:
Journal Considering the scenario represented since the focus group approach was employed to obtain the dataset need to uphold the ethical consideration of not letting the information leak out to other stakeholders. One of the disadvantages in this scenario is how the datasets could contain traces of biases, such as the focus group does not include insight from the captain on why they are harsh on the firefighters, while the information obtained tends to be one-sided, from the perception or viewpoint of the focus groups only. While considering harm to the participants from the focus group, it is important to have a conversation with the captain and also involve uninformed observation of both the participants in terms of performance and the captain in terms of behavioral cues. Since the situation of some of the stakeholders is on the serious side, it is necessary to establish a structured operational model that reduces the working burden on those that are stressed, to subcategories the teams, and delegate the workload. While on the other hand, as a battalion Chief, I would like to develop an inclusive working environment, such as including the firefighters working along with the captain to exchange the workflow. Instill open forum discussions where stakeholders are given a chance to communicate their concerns, and the captain can start working in an inclusive environment upfront with their team firefighters and ask the captain to train for servant leadership skillset so that they can have a balance between team members in terms of employee wellbeing and the objectives of the organization they work for.More Articles From Risk Management
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