Crossing Data Disclosure Thresholds: Navigating Access, Trust, and Invitation

• In Event: Everything Ain’t for Everybody: Refusal as a Methodological Practice of Purposeful Data Disclosure

Abstract

This paper explores the ethical tensions and methodological decisions researchers face when granted access to participants’ lived realities—particularly within Black communities. Centering trust as both a gateway and a responsibility, we examine how researchers negotiate their roles when invited into sacred spaces of vulnerability. Through two vignettes, we reflect on fieldwork with young Black boys in elementary education and Black women in academia. These accounts underscore the relational complexities of conducting research that both honors and protects the stories shared. Grounded in Black feminist theory and critical childhood studies, we challenge conventional paradigms of objectivity and neutrality in educational research. We draw on reflexive narrative inquiry, using fieldnotes, analytic memos, and interview transcripts to analyze the ethical choices made during the research process.

In both cases, the researchers intentionally withheld powerful narratives—one, a poignant focus group exchange on citizenship among children, and the other, deeply personal testimonies of Black women in higher education. Despite having formal consent, the decision to not disclose was a form of refusal: a methodological act rooted in love, care, and accountability. These moments illuminate how “permission” does not equate to “publicity,” and affirm the importance of discerning when knowledge should remain protected. Rather than viewing nondisclosure as an absence of data, we position these refusals as generative and ethically necessary. This work contributes to ongoing conversations about ethical qualitative inquiry by foregrounding relational accountability and by modeling purposeful data disclosure. It invites researchers to consider how access is not a given—but a negotiated, dynamic, and often fragile relational process that demands care, humility, and integrity.

Authors

• Marcus Wayne Johnson, Texas A&M University

• LaShawn Faith Washington, University of Texas at Austin