ESRC Knowledge Exchange (ES/K005626/1)
“Developing Sustainable Wildflower Harvesting for Global Supply Chains”

Dr Alex Hughes (PI), Prof Cheryl McEwan (Co-I) and Dr David Bek (RA)

This one-year Knowledge Exchange project developed and promoted best practice in sustainable harvesting within the South African wildflower industry—a sector supplying high-value, ethically-sourced bouquets to UK and South African high street retailers and supermarkets.  The project involved collaboration between academics at Newcastle and Durham Universities (Hughes and McEwan), a named Research Associate (Bek) and the Flower Valley Conservation Trust (FVCT)—a Western Cape NGO at the vanguard of sustainable harvesting. The FVCT has piloted an innovative programme of work, which seeks to achieve conservation goals through the development of market opportunities.  The project contributed to this programme of work.  This document accompanies 15 archived transcripts (anonymised) and provides their context by summarising: 1) project work package summaries and brief description of outputs; 2) implications of each work package for the UK Data Archive; 3) data collection methods for work package 3 (the only one of the four work packages generating data); 4) interview themes and questions; 5) explanation of the nature of consent sought from and granted by research participants; 6) method of anonymisation for the 15 archived transcripts and 7) appendices providing an example of the request for consent to archive and explanations from focus group facilitators about consent not granted for archiving the focus group transcripts.

1. Project Work Packages: Summary and Key Data/Outputs
Work Package 1: Developing audit methodologies to enable effective monitoring of sustainable picking practice and landscape management.
Two tools were developed: the Sustainable Harvesting Field Assessment and the Sustainable Harvesting Audit. These have been successfully completed and left as planned with FVCT to refine and pilot.

Work Package 2: Developing training materials and programmes to support social upliftment.
1) A ‘Working for Fynbos Field Guide’ prototype has been produced.  This provides comprehensive information on wildflower species, including geographical distribution, market demand and vulnerability;
2) Working for fynbos video training resources have been developed;
3) Content for a national certificate course for emerging entrepreneurs within the landscape was developed.

Work Package 3: Research to improve understanding of the ethical consumerism context that drives the domestic market in South Africa for sustainably-harvested bouquets.
21 interviews with key institutional actors involved in shaping ethical markets in the Western Cape were conducted. 10 focus groups with Western Cape consumers were also carried out.  The findings were presented at our project dissemination workshop on 27th March (see below) and also form two academic papers completed in draft and to be submitted to a Geoforum Special Issue. Key findings concern the significance of local and national cultural politics to the consumption of sustainably harvested fynbos bouquets and the rising significance of ethical consumption in South Africa more broadly.
Work Package 4: Promoting the sustainable harvesting agenda in the Western Cape and UK.
1) A highly successful project dissemination workshop was held on Thursday 27th March 2014 at the headquarters of the World Wildlife Fund in Cape Town.  Some 30 members of the Western Cape conservation community, corporate retailers, ethical trading associations and NGOs attended to hear work package presentations given by all members of the academic and FVCT project team.
2) FVCT Conservation manager, Roger Bailey, visited London in May 2014 for a successful Knowledge Exchange visit involving attendance at an ethical trading workshop on 21st May, a visit with the RA to a commercial flower distributor and a meeting to present project findings to Marks & Spencer (one of FVCT’s key customers).

2. Work Packages, the UK Data Archive and a Summary of Consent to Archive Material
The project and its four work packages were part of a Knowledge Exchange project – an ESRC scheme now no longer in existence. The project ran from May 2013 to May 2014 with £74,210.35 RCUK funding and in-kind support from FVCT to the value of £112,645. The bulk of the project did not create new data and instead constructed sets of applied tools to be used by the FVCT.  These were the basis of Work Packages 1 and 2. FVCT explain in a formal letter provided in ReShare that these tools are not for the public domain and in any case do not constitute data, so any material pertaining to these should not be placed in the archive.
Work Package 4 was knowledge sharing through a workshop and international visit made by an FVCT manager, as explained above, and did not generate data.
At the time of our ESRC project, the Knowledge Exchange scheme permitted an element of new research.  For our project, this was entirely concentrated into Work Package 3, as explained above.  This was only a scoping study and included 21 interviews with key corporate and other organisational actors involved in ethical markets in and around Cape Town in South Africa and 10 focus groups with a range of Western Cape consumers in order to understand ethical markets for wildflowers and the context of wider ethical markets in the Western Cape of South Africa.  We do not have permission from the focus groups respondents to archive the focus group transcripts.  The nature and mode of consent sought and granted are explained in section 5 on pages 10-11 below and in Appendices 1 and 2 of this document.  In terms of the situation where no consent is given to archive focus group transcripts, this is in keeping with our original Data Management document in which we flag the likely sensitivity of some of the materials – there is accordingly suggestion in that document that not all our data will be appropriate to archive.  However, formal permission has been granted by the majority of our interviewees to archive anonymous versions of their interview transcripts.
In summary, we have consent from interviewees to archive 15 of the 21 interview transcripts.  We then have explanations (detailed in Appendix 2) from the Research Associate, local field assistants (focus group facilitators and translators) and representatives of focus group participants that there is no permission to archive the focus group transcripts.  The reasons explained are that focus group participants agreed to talk freely in the groups about sensitive topics on the condition that the transcripts would be held and used only by the research team.  Participants granted permission to use anonymised and short extracts from the focus groups in academic papers, but requested that the transcripts ‘in toto’ were kept in confidence by the research team and not placed in an archive.  The sensitivity of topics discussed centre on cultural perspectives of wildflower conservation and marketization that are strongly shaped by race and post-apartheid politics in South Africa.  While most of our 21 interviewees (though not all) are comfortable speaking from organisational and strategic perspectives about ethical markets and wildflower conservation and having these anonymised strategic views made available to the public in an archive, as long as transcripts are anonymised, it is a different proposition for many ‘ordinary’ consumers in the focus groups who were asked for personal opinions and perspectives and feel a lot less comfortable having these views articulated in the public domain.
3. Research Methods: Data Collection for Work Package 3
Work Package 3 combined interviews with focus groups conducted between September 2013 and March 2014 to understand emerging ethical markets in the region into which ethical wildflower bouquets fit.  The Western Cape is an appropriate case study for research into South African ethical consumption for two key reasons.  First, Cape Town is home to a large number of NGOs, industry associations and ethical consultancy firms at the leading edge of ethical initiatives, as well as the location of the corporate headquarters of the two South African grocery retail chains most associated with ethical product ranges.  Second, the Western Cape is second only to Gauteng in terms of the size of its middle class population—the socio-economic group most targeted by new ethical marketing initiatives.

Twenty-one interviews were conducted with the key Western Cape institutions playing leading roles in the development of ethical markets and consumption (qualitative, theoretical sampling identified these twenty-one very clearly).  Table 1 presents a comprehensive list of the interviewees, their organisational affiliations and the dates of the interviews.  In summary, these included companies (consultancy firms, corporate retailers carrying ethically-labelled product lines, companies pioneering and marketing sustainably produced goods, upmarket restaurants showcasing their novel use of sustainable ingredients and social auditors), as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) responsible for ethical initiatives, ethical trade multi-stakeholder organizations and industry associations.

In order to capture the ways in which consumers in the Western Cape understand and respond to ethical consumption initiatives in the context of their everyday lives, we adopted a focus group methodology to complement the suite of interviews.  This captures inter-subjective knowledge concerning consumers’ narratives on how they consider ethics in their everyday lives.  Ten focus groups were held in the Western Cape.  Seven of these covered a wide middle class demographic, including three groups in Cape Town (one in the city centre and two in the suburb of Newlands) and one each in Hermanus, Bredasdorp, Croydon and Cloetesville.  Three further groups, one in Cape Town and two in Elim, were conducted with members of working class communities and were included to address other related research questions concerning regional commodity knowledges.  Focus groups were recruited via two local fieldworkers and three of the key informants interviewed for the project.  The Western Cape is diverse demographically in terms of ethnicity, first language, socio-economic status, urbanization and culture.  The focus groups captured insights from across these groups including: lower middle class (urban) ‘coloured’ people from Cloetesville near Stellensbosch; middle class coloured people from Croydon near Somerset West; white middle class people (Afrikaans first language) living in and around the rural town of Hermanus; white middle class rural people (also Afrikaans first language) from around Bredasdorp; professionals in Cape Town from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds; Xhosa people (who are either migrants from the Eastern Cape or are first generation) who work at a Cape Town restaurant; and Coloured rural people from the Mission community of Elim.  Table 2 provides a comprehensive list of the focus groups, their composition, location, numbers of participants and dates on which they took place.

Table 1: The 21 Interviews including Overview of Consent to Archive Transcripts
See Appendix 1 for the sample formal e-mail sent to all interviewees requesting consent to archive the interview transcripts.
Interview Number and Interviewee’s Pseudonym	Role of Interviewee and Organisational Affiliation	Date of Interview	Consent to Archive Transcript (all via formal e-mail, a record of which is kept by the PI)	
1. Jane Brown	Senior Executive (NGO A)	27/09/13	Yes	
2. Benjamin Green	Former Senior Executive (NGO B)	30/09/13	Yes	
3. Ruth Jones	Senior Executive (NGO C)	30/09/13	Yes	
4. Timothy Mitchell	Senior Executive (Retailer A)	30/09/13	Yes	
5. Timothy Mitchell (second, follow-up interview)	Senior Executive (Retailer A)	26/03/14	Yes	
6. Michel du Toit	Senior Executive (Retailer B)	01/10/13	Yes	
7. Nichola Hills	Senior Executive (Consultancy A)	01/10/13	Yes	
8. Sam Smythe	Senior Executive (Trade Association A)	01/10/13	Yes	
9. Ingrid Cooper	Senior Executive (NGO D)	04/10/13	Yes	
10. Steve Moore	Chef (Restaurant A)	07/10/13	Yes	
11. Karen O’Sullivan	Auditor (Auditor A)	08/10/13	Yes	
12. Laura Hynes	Senior Executive (Consultancy B)	09/12/13	Yes	
13. Marie Bingham and Rachel Wood	Senior Executives (Consultancy C)	09/12/13	Yes	
14. Jonathan Pryke, John Nel and Jake Anderson	Senior Executives (Manufacturer A)	13/12/13	Yes	
15. Alice Baker and Bill Coulthard	Senior Executives (NGO B)	26/03/14	Yes	
16. Lesley Richardson (real name disclosed as member of FVCT, partner organisation and connected to formal letter)	Director, FVCT (partner organisation)	27/09/13	No (interview connected mainly with work packages 1&2 on confidential audit tools – see FVCT letter to cover no consent request for this transcript)	
17. David Jameson	Consultant (Consultancy D)	12/12/13	No (no reply to request)	
18. Francesca Lane	Senior Executive (NGO E)	17/09/13	No	
19. Caroline Castle	Senior Executive (Ethical Trade Organisation A)	27/09/13	No	
20. Harry van Wyk	Chef (Restaurant B)	11/12/13	No (no reply to request)	
21. Hannah Woods	Manager (NGO F)	04/10/13	No (no reply to request)	

Table 2: The 10 Focus Groups
See Appendix 2 for focus group facilitators’ e-mails requesting that all focus group transcripts be kept out of the archive. All focus group transcripts should be left out of the data archive, given that participants agreed to talk freely on condition that the transcripts ‘in toto’ are held in confidence only by members of the research team.  All focus groups were conducted in locations within the Western Cape region.
Focus Group Location and Facilitator	Date	Number of Focus Group Participants	Description of Group Demographic	
Hermanus	20/09/13	5 (4 female and 1 male)	White middle class people (Afrikaans first language)	
Cloetesville (near Stellenbosch)	05/10/13	6 (all female)	Lower middle class (urban) ‘coloured’ people (Afrikaans first language)	
Cape Town	10/12/13	8 (7 female and 1 male)	Middle class professionals from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds	
Newlands, Cape Town	10/12/13	7 (4 female and 3 male)	Middle class professionals from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds	
Newlands, Cape Town	11/12/13	6 (all female)	Middle class professionals from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds	
Bredasdorp	12/12/13	4 (3 female and 1 male)	White middle class rural people (Afrikaans first language)	
Cape Town	26/02/14	10 (2 female)	Working class Xhosa people (who are either migrants from the Eastern Cape or are first generation) (isi-Xhosa first language)	
Croydon (near Somerset West)	21/12/13	5 (4 female and 1 male)	Middle class coloured people (Afrikaans first language)	
Elim	17/02/14	7 (all female)	Coloured lower middle class rural people (Afrikaans first language)	
Elim		3 (all male)	Coloured lower middle class rural people (Afrikaans first language)	

4. Interview and Focus Group Questions
Questions/Themes for Interview Schedules Targeting Institutional and Corporate Actors (Work Package 3)
1. What ranges of ethically-labelled products are sold in South Africa?
2. How long have these various product ranges been sold in South Africa, what have been the drivers for their introduction and how are these lines currently developing?
3. Have there been significant ethical campaigns in South Africa to influence consumers to buy ‘more ethically’?  If so, give examples.
4. What have been the significant media ‘exposés’, if any, influencing ethical purchasing on the part of South African consumers?
5. What are retailers’/manufacturers’ brands’ (if relevant) policies, philosophies and strategies for sustainability, ethical trade, ethical consumption?
6. What kinds of ‘standards’/codes of conduct are South African retailers using in their local and international supply chains?
7. What are the transnational influences on ethical campaigning, media attention and ethical market construction?
8. How is ethical consumption articulated specifically in South Africa?
9. What, if any, are the regional, urban and local patterns of ethical consumption within South Africa?
Ask about further, relevant contacts they have.

Questions/Themes for Consumer Focus Groups (Work Package 3)
PART I: FYNBOS AND SUSTAINABLY-HARVESTED BOUQUETS
1. What do you know about fynbos?
2. What does fynbos mean to you, and why?
3. Do/would you buy fynbos bouquets, and why?
4. What do you know about fynbos conservation (even FVCT specifically) and sustainably-harvested fynbos?
5. Present image(s) of a sustainably-harvested bouquet. Ask whether participants have/would purchase this and, if so, why?

PART II: SHOPPING ETHICS
1. Where do participants do their shopping, why, and how does this fit in with daily routines?
2. Do participants care/know about where their groceries are grown/made, and about working and environmental conditions in their production?  If so, why?  If not, why not?  What influences their knowledge and their care (specific campaigns, promotions, media, politics, sense of responsibility?) Ask for examples. Has this knowledge/care changed over time (if so, how?)
3. What kinds of ethically-labelled products do the participants buy, from which outlets, and why? 
4. What factors influence participants’ decisions to buy ethically-labelled products?

5. The Nature of Consent Granted by Interviewees and Focus Group Participants
All interviewees and focus group respondents participated freely in the research and their consent to participate was granted verbally (justified below).  All aspects of the project were fully explained and all participants agreed that anonymised extracts from their transcripts could be used in academic papers.  The reasons for gaining consent verbally rather than in written form were strategic and connected to the notion that written, ‘tick box’ formal forms would be perceived as overly-bureaucratic and would likely be regarded with suspicion by the South African business and NGO community with whom we were engaging, which would affect our relations of trust with the interviewees.  For the focus group participants, some of whom do not read and write in English, formalised forms would also have been perceived as bureaucratic and would have led to confusion.  Although the research landscape is rapidly changing with regard to formalised research ethics and open data policies, and this shift will likely lead members of the team in the future to proceed with written consent forms (and addressing some of the challenging cultural consequences of this), at the time our grant was awarded and in line with the existing institutional ethical frameworks, it was considered both acceptable and appropriate to gain verbal consent given the reasons above.  The UK Data Service, for example, states the following:

“Some argue that written forms with check boxes for every possible scenario help make all terms and conditions explicit. Others counter argue that such formalisation represents over-bureaucratisation and confusion for the participant, and that it may violate a trust relationship with participants … Some guidelines and certain Research Ethics Committees, Research Governance boards or other bodies make statements indicating (or strongly implying) that written consent is required or mandatory. This is not the case in the UK. While we advocate the use of written forms, there are cases where it is not appropriate and flexibility in evaluating projects on their individual merits is essential” (UK Data Service, http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/manage-data/legal-ethical/consent-data-sharing/written-oral.aspx, accessed 19/11/14).

It was also clear from the focus groups, and communicated by each focus group facilitator following verbal consent, that participants agreed to talk freely about their views on sustainable wildflower harvesting for ethical markets on the understanding that the resulting transcripts ‘in toto’ would not be made publicly available in a data archive, but would be held only by members of the research team (see Appendix 2).  In summary, there is no consent to archive the focus group transcripts.
For the 21 interviewees, formal written consent to archive anonymised versions of their transcripts was sought by e-mail after the interviews.  Although verbal consent was considered to be the most appropriate means for gaining consent for research participation, e-mailed replies from the interviewees act as a very clear and formal record of consent to archive transcripts.  Original e-mail copies of this consent are held in confidence by the PI, but can be made available to the UK Data Archive on request if necessary.  In summary, we have formal consent granted to archive 15 of the 21 interview transcripts, on condition that these transcripts are anonymised (see section below).

6. Method of Anonymisation for the 15 Interview Transcripts in the Archive
UK Data Service guidelines on the anonymisation of qualitative interview transcripts have been followed in order to appropriately anonymise the 15 transcripts offered for the archive. Pseudonyms have been used for interviewees and organisations have been referred to, for example, as Retailer, A, B etc. And NGO A, B, C etc.  Specific job descriptions of interviewees have been replaced with generic terms, e.g. Senior Executive, Manager or Consultant.  These descriptors along with the interview numbers is laid out in Table 1 of this document and corresponds to information/labels on the 15 transcripts themselves.  Reference to Cape Town and the Western Cape of South Africa has been left in the transcripts as this is central to understanding the context and is neither contentious nor revealing of personal and organisational identities.  Within the transcripts, if retailers and NGOs are mentioned they are also referred to as Retailer A, Retailer B etc. in order to correspond with the descriptors given to the interviewees (in other words, the names and descriptors are consistent across all transcripts).

Appendix 1: Record of E-mailed Requests to Archive Interview Transcripts
Sample e-mail sent out to all interviewees from the 21 interviews:
Dear xxx,
 
You very kindly helped with a research project funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council on ethical trade and consumption in South Africa, which ran from 2013 to 2014.  My Research Associate, Dr David Bek, interviewed you as part of that project and we are very grateful for your participation.
 
The Research Council now has a system where it asks us to send the transcripts of interviews, with the names of individuals and organisations/companies either taken out or changed, for placing in an archive.  The anonymised transcripts would be publicly available for other researchers to see and use.  However, each transcript can only be placed in the archive with the participant's permission and we should point out that you are of course under no obligation to agree to this.
 
Please could you let me know as soon as possible, but by 14th November at the latest, whether or not you would be happy for an anonymised transcript of your interview to be placed in this UK Data Archive.  Thank you once again for your help.
 
With kind regards,
 
Alex
 
Dr Alex Hughes
Director of Research
School of Geography, Politics and Sociology
Newcastle University
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/gps/staff/profile/alex.hughes

I received 15 responses agreeing to archive the transcripts, three responses preferring not to grant consent and a further three ‘no replies’, which are all recorded in Table 1.  The original e-mails are held by me in Newcastle, but can be made available to the UK Data Archive on request if necessary.

Appendix 2: Record of E-mailed Confirmation of Request not to Archive Focus Group Transcripts
The following copies of e-mails from the Research Associate and local focus group facilitators and representatives of focus group respondents confirm and explain the position that there is no consent to archive focus group transcripts.  The first e-mail from Dr David Bek (Research Associate) explains the overall context.
David Bek 
Sent: 	11 November 2014 21:39 	
To: 	Alex Hughes 	
To Whom It May Concern,
As Research Associate on the ESRC Knowledge Exchange project on 'Sustainable Wildflower Harvesting for Global Supply Chains' I conducted the interviews and set up several of the focus groups for the project in the Western Cape of South Africa.  For reasons sensitive to the local cultures of business and to the cultural backgrounds of focus group respondents (some of whom do not speak English and come from a wide range of cultural backgrounds), consent to interview and to participate in the project was gained verbally.  The project and academic publishing plans (including the use of anonymised transcript extracts for academic papers) were explained very clearly to all participants and they were asked whether they agreed to being recorded and transcribed.  I can confirm that all interviewees and focus group respondents agreed to participation in the project and to their interview/focus group being recorded and transcribed for academic use by the research project team.
In the case of the interviews with company and organisational representatives, consent for anonymised transcripts to be placed in the data archive has been sought in writing over e-mail by the Principal Investigator, as it was felt to be the most appropriate way of keeping a clear written record of that form of consent. A document containing that consent, where it has been granted and in some cases where it has not, has been presented by the Principal Investigator.
In the case of the focus groups, sensitive perspectives regarding the politics and ethics of Western Cape wildflower conservation were discussed.  In South Africa, the politics of this conservation have been connected to issues of race, which are extremely sensitive in this national context.  Focus group participants felt that they could only talk freely if they could be assured that information would be treated in the strictest confidence and in the trust that the transcripts 'in toto' be kept only by the research team.  In that case, permission to archive focus group transcripts was not granted by the groups.  The Principal Investigator has written confirmation of this request not to archive the focus group transcripts from the following:
(i) Representatives who took part in the groups and also helped to recruit respondents for them (from Rushil Ranchod on behalf of the group held at the Humanities and Social Research Centre in Cape Town and from Jane Brown (pseudonym, as this person was also one of our interviewees) on behalf of the two groups conducted at the offices of NGO A);
(ii) Local focus group facilitators/translators of the groups conducted in Afrikaans in Croydon (1 group), Cloetesville (1 group) and Elim (2 groups) (all four groups facilitated, translated and transcribed by Zaitun Rosenberg) and in isi-Xhosa with a group of migrant workers in Cape Town (faciliated, translated and transcribed by Mkhululi Silandela).
Of the two remaining groups, the Principal Investigator conducted the focus group in Bredasdorp and confirms that participants in that group did not agree to data archiving, and I conducted the focus group in Hermanus and confirm the same position of no consent to data archiving. The sensitive political issues are the reason for this and participants' wishes to talk freely in the groups on condition that the transcripts 'in toto' remain solely with members of the research team.
Yours faithfully,
Dr David Bek
Dr. David Bek
Twitter on all things ethical: DaveDBRS @DaveDBRS
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/david-bek/1a/45b/135 David Bek 
Visiting Researcher
Department of Geography, Politics and Sociology
University of Newcastle
UK

Focus Group Transcripts 
zaitun rosenberg [zaitun.rosenberg@gmail.com] 
Sent: 	11 November 2014 19:21 	
To: 	Alex Hughes 	

		
  	  	
Dear Sir/madam,

As the Facilitator of the four focus groups, I am writing to inform you that all participants in Elim (2 focus groups), Cloetesville and Croydon agreed to take part in the research project. All participants agreed to talk openly about their views of ethical consumption and wildflower conservation only if the recordings and transcripts of the group discussions were kept in confidence and kept for use only by Dr Hughes, Professor McEwan and Dr Bek.  Please make sure that these participants' wishes are respected as they did not give permission for the transcripts being placed in an archive.

With thanks, 

Kind Regards

Zaitun Rosenberg

Data preservation permission 
Rushil Ranchod [rushil.ranchod@gmail.com] 
Sent: 	11 November 2014 08:26 	
To: 	Alex Hughes 	

		
  	  	
Dear Alex,  

Thank you for your email requesting that the participants of the interview you conducted last year in Cape Town provide permission store and curate the interview transcripts. 

The participants I invited to interview only agreed to participate in the study due to the fact that the  information would be kept confidential. The matter of archiving this data was not agreed to. 

As such, and on their behalf,  I cannot agree to the preservation and curation of this data.

I trust this is in order. 

Regards,

Rushil

Focus Group Transcript 
Silandela, Mkhululi [msilandela@wwf.org.za] 
Sent: 	05 November 2014 17:04 	
To: 	Alex Hughes 	

		
  	  	
Dear Alex

This email serves to confirm that the IsiXhosa speaking focuss group interview participants agreed to participate on condition that the interview transcripts are kept for use only by the research team and not for public archiving. This is amongst other reasons is to protect themselves against possible job loss.

I hope you understand and this is sufficient. 
Do not hesitate to contact us should you have further questions. 

Regards
Mkhululi

Sent from Samsung Mobile
RE: Permission to archive anonymised research interview 
Brown, Jane (pseudonym)
Sent: 	31 October 2014 14:42 	
To: 	Alex Hughes 	
Dear Alex
 
While I am happy to give my consent for an anonymised transcript of my interview to be placed in the UK Data Archive, the other participants in the focus groups agreed to participate only if the transcript is kept in strictest confidence and not made available to anyone other than the research team. I would like to ensure that this agreement is adhered to. 
 
I trust you will understand.
 
Kind regards,
Jane (pseudonym)