171 The Methodology of Theological Action Research 4 community, thereby allowing an ongoing, well-integrated line of learning for (world) citizenship formation to emerge. 4.4 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS All of the members of the joint conversational community of school 1, school 2, school 3 and DCU signed a written declaration of informed consent (Appendix 2). This declaration indicated that their participation was voluntary and that they could withdraw whenever they wanted and without a statement of reason. Furthermore, it stated that the results would be presented anonymously, that personal data would be left out or replaced with impersonal codes, that recordings would only be accessible to people participating in the research team and that their pronouncements would be quoted anonymously in publications, reports, books and other forms of research output. Students and others who incidentally met with the conversational community also signed the declaration. They knew that they were meeting with a research group and that their pronouncements would only be quoted anonymously in publications. Underage children were only approached via short personal interviews by participants in the conversational community and in the DCU pilot for teenager education, and this way of interviewing guaranteed their anonymity. In all cases, it was explicitly asked if they agreed to have their anonymous answers used for analysis and further investigating, to which four out of 54 children responded negatively. These four were omitted from the process of interpretation and further investigation. In terms of the quantitative survey among junior and senior DCU students and their teachers, all of the participants were at least 18 years old, responded anonymously and voluntarily, and knew that they were providing responses for academic research. The students who participated in the exploratory research (or guided student investigation) also did so voluntarily and were at least 18 years old. They signed a formal declaration of informed consent in which they indicated that what they said in the (focus group) interviews could be quoted and used anonymously. By signing the declaration, they stated that they had already graduated or were grade-independent of the interviewer/researcher. They also agreed that the findings of their research, openly accessible via DCU, can be used for further investigation. In all cases, the participating students agreed to provide their material, indicating if they wanted their names to be used in relation to their personal (written) findings. The gathered data were stored in a protected environment in Microsoft Teams, owned by the Theological University of Apeldoorn, only accessible to
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