Dear Fathi,

Michael rightly brings your attention BERA's ethical guidelines as a good starting point, there are others too, and rightly highlights 'harm' as a key point. The issue of 'harm' can not be overstated, it is both highly important and requiring skillful attention. Concentrating 'harm' on physical and mental possibilities can manifest themselves in strange ways, especially if you combine it with Health and Safety (which I did when implementing an Ethics review policy and process at my last institution), and you must look beyond just the collection of data period. 'Harm' can have time lags; for example, we had degree students that were conducting research in their place of work (they were volunteering to get experience, etc), which raised a raft of potential hazards for students, participants and children (often these were nursery settings that the research was carried out in). Not only did the sensitivities of children under 5 yr old have to be considered and the issue of 'informed consent'/'permissions', but also these were small settings which meant there were sensitivities over the writing up of the research, as anonymity did not infer confidentiality! Due to the small numbers of staff in these settings, centre managers, who were handed a copy of dissertations by the students out of politeness and to showcase their skills, were able to chase statements back to the person who provided them ... and if they didn't follow the business line or were perceived as 'negative' by management then there could be repercussions down the line for either student or staff. Students are often very keen to distribute copies of their research, this only compounds the issue as then parents may have a window in to what staff/children say about their experiences/the organisation, which can act as a catalyst for a problem that could not have been foreseen. Hence, make sure the research dissemination boundaries are clear from the start to all (should all be in the project information sheet that you give to participants too!). So just to say that the issue of harm needs careful consideration and experience is essential when reviewing proposals at the institution's ethical review stage of the project!

Good luck,

angus

I think that ethical considerations are essential to educational research. The difficulty is in defining what we mean by 'ethics'. For example, utilitarian ethics might suggest that research is ethical if it improves the overall situations. In this instance we might ethically kill someone but learn how to save the lives of millions. Whereas Platonic ethics would say that we research in line with the laws and codes of practice and our individual perspectives should not override these principals. From this perspective, I would say that before we consider research ethics we need to consider who we are as researchers and carefully establish our ontological and epistemological positions. Then once you know who you are and where you are coming from you might be in better position to consider your ethical standpoint. For me, the key word is 'harm' - and when considering any research project I find myself problematising this word. Not sure if this answers the question but I hope it starts the debate.

Thanks but what about e.g., quality of educational research and academic freedom?

@ Fathi, I would suggest that we should all be aiming for high quality work but that freedom is not an absolute. We are free to research WITHIN ethical boundaries. How we conceptualise these boundaries is the difficult part. I find the BERA guidelines that Michael links to are a good set of guidelines: they are not too restrictive; they are logical and coherent, and they still offer us a great deal of 'freedom'.

Dear Fathi,

Michael rightly brings your attention BERA's ethical guidelines as a good starting point, there are others too, and rightly highlights 'harm' as a key point. The issue of 'harm' can not be overstated, it is both highly important and requiring skillful attention. Concentrating 'harm' on physical and mental possibilities can manifest themselves in strange ways, especially if you combine it with Health and Safety (which I did when implementing an Ethics review policy and process at my last institution), and you must look beyond just the collection of data period. 'Harm' can have time lags; for example, we had degree students that were conducting research in their place of work (they were volunteering to get experience, etc), which raised a raft of potential hazards for students, participants and children (often these were nursery settings that the research was carried out in). Not only did the sensitivities of children under 5 yr old have to be considered and the issue of 'informed consent'/'permissions', but also these were small settings which meant there were sensitivities over the writing up of the research, as anonymity did not infer confidentiality! Due to the small numbers of staff in these settings, centre managers, who were handed a copy of dissertations by the students out of politeness and to showcase their skills, were able to chase statements back to the person who provided them ... and if they didn't follow the business line or were perceived as 'negative' by management then there could be repercussions down the line for either student or staff. Students are often very keen to distribute copies of their research, this only compounds the issue as then parents may have a window in to what staff/children say about their experiences/the organisation, which can act as a catalyst for a problem that could not have been foreseen. Hence, make sure the research dissemination boundaries are clear from the start to all (should all be in the project information sheet that you give to participants too!). So just to say that the issue of harm needs careful consideration and experience is essential when reviewing proposals at the institution's ethical review stage of the project!

Good luck,

angus

Thanks Angus, I totally agree with you especially that the issue of harm needs special and careful considerations, but this will based upon institution's ethical committe e.g., experinece, professional and so on......

The purpose of ethical considerations is to attempt to ensure that research is not harmful. If there is any sense that educational research is harmful then clearly the research should not be conducted. The bigger question is not in cases where the research is harmful but the cases where the research is not harmful per se but where the research is of no benefit to those being researched. In the current climate where careers are built on research performance, it is incumbent on all researchers to ensure that the research they conduct is for the benefit of those researched and not solely for the benefit of the researcher.

Hi Michael, It has been my experience that some research projects appear to be conducted "on" target populations rather than "for" target populations. A research team is formed, research is conducted, papers are published etc. without any direct benefit for the population involved. So no harm has been done to the population but it would be hard to argue that they have benefited from the research. Perhaps this is a factor of the type of research design where benefit is defined as publications for the research team rather than any actual change of practice or conditions for the population who were researched. I hope this clarifies my point.

Hi Kevin,

I understand what you're saying, but not sure there is alignment in the discussion between ethical concerns over 'harm' ,at both micro and macro scales, and benefit: "The bigger question is not in cases where the research is harmful but the cases where the research is not harmful per se but where the research is of no benefit to those being researched.". Do you think ethics should not only consider potential 'harm' during its review process but also the 'worth', in terms of benefits, of the study ... my guess is that the institution (pre-submission) and funder (on submission and whether funding successful) would normally be looking at this side of any proposed study?

angus

Hi Angus - I think that both institutions and funding organisations consider the worth of projects in terms of both research outputs (core business) and also benefits to target populations. Many institutions include feedback to target populations as one of the criteria for ethical clearance. I believe that this feedback is very important and can result in worth for the target population. I guess we can discuss this at length as it then gets down to degrees of worth - how much does the researcher / organisation / funding organisation benefit vs how much does the target population benefit. It is an ongoing discussion that is certainly well worth having. Kevin

Research ethics are required in all research. If the research has to contribute and to be transalated to social and human actions then research ethics may be input for such research.