Thomas F. O'Dea, the Harvard Values Project, and the Mormons: Early Lessons on Ethnography among the Literate

Human Organization, Winter 2006 by Bahr, Howard M

There were also real concerns about protecting the confidentiality of respondents. The high profile nature of the Harvard Project, the small size of the ethnic communities, and the highly visible invasions of Ramah each summer, meant that anyone familiar with the situation might put two and two together and identify the community. The project went to great lengths to protect both the locations of the communities and the identities of informants.

In May 1950, a University of New Mexico graduate student who had conducted research in association with Values Project personnel in El Morro, a hamlet near Ramah, sent a copy of his thesis to a Mormon family who had figured in his research. Vogt, in the field, reported this "breach of security" to Kluckhohn and Roberts at Harvard. He found it especially troubling, not only because the thesis contained information on the personal lives of the Mormon family, but because of likely "serious long-range damage":

[T]he thesis calls the informants' attention to the fact that field workers take notes on the day-to-day behavior of people-a matter that should, it seems to me, be a closely guarded secret. It is one thing to record formal interviews when the informant knows that his words are being recorded, but quite another matter to put down all the off-record statements that informants make to the observer (Vogt 1950b).

Kluckhohn, in turn, conveyed his displeasure to W. W. Hill, chair of the anthropology department at the University of New Mexico:

In work with so-called "modern" communities it is just rudimentary that no field worker sends any document back to the area without express clearance from the head of the project or his deputy...The most awful thing about the whole business is that the Ramah Mormons and other local people now have for the first time in all these years direct evidence that what they have previously taken to be casual friendly conversations are recorded in notebooks (Kluckhohn 1950).

Hill reported back to Kluckhohn that he had "worked over" the student, and Hill was convinced that "no damage has been done" to Values Project image or expectations (Hill 1950). Roberts wrote to Hill that "we have so much at stake in our project that we understandably become excited when something appears which threatens to jeopardize current or future work" (Roberts 1950b).

The concern about "security" dated back to the earliest days of the project. In March 1949, a brief description of the new project, its purposes and methods, was included in the "Lab Bulletin" of Harvard's Laboratory of Social Relations. Attached to the article was a note urging secrecy:

It is requested that the contents of this memorandum be considered as confidential and that the information be kept within academic circles (under no circumstances released to the press). This is felt to be especially important for reasons of field work rapport in the local area of the study. In discussions in academic circles, it would also be appreciated if the exact locality of the study be kept as anonymous as possible. (Anonymous 1949)