Price offers the fictional example of if you described a participant as a blind woman who teaches political science at a small liberal arts college in the South, because of the lack of blind professors, that level of detail would be enough to identify the participant.

Example of Identifying Information in DAS

Price notes that the pseudonyms used for participants were either picked by the participants or assigned by Price and Kerschbaum. For the assigned pseudonyms, Price notes that there was an effort to make sure the assigned pseudonyms were congruent with the participants' name in terms of gendered nature, ethnicity, race, and cultural affiliations, unless the participant asked for this not to be done. 

Use of Pseudonyms in DAS

Price notes that while she originally felt awkward about the descriptions of participants in some ways reducing the description of their life down to their race, gender, disability status, other identity terms, region, and type of university employment. But, Price decided through conversations with participants to include the descriptions because of how the lived social locations and intersections of participant identities matter to the content of their interviews.

Price's Views on Participant Descriptions

Price notes that because of the small number of openly disabled academics, information that may not normally be considered identifying was treated with increased care, and when information was thought to be identifying, it was removed from the participant descriptions.

Price decided in Crip Spacetime to use pseudonyms to refer to participants while also including an appendix that offered descriptions of each participant, which the participants were able to revise, that contextualize the participant's social location while omitting identifying information.

Handling of Identifying Information

Price, M. (2024). Crip Spacetime. Duke University Press.

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