HEARD News

Thinking About Research Ethics

Prof. Tim Quinlan
Research Director

HEARD is developing 'real' ethics training on the basis of challenges encountered by field researchers in southern Africa and an ongoing review of its ethics protocols for gender-related, HIV/AIDS research in South Africa. The experiences of HEARD researchers as well as data from a range of projects continue to highlight the very high levels of domestic violence, sexual abuse and crime in rural and urban areas of South Africa. Furthermore, even well-designed research plans that meet the current standards of university ethics committees, leave room for doubt about whether the protocols really are adequate.

The concern arises from fieldworkers’ reports on experiences conveyed by informants in passing or in formal responses in surveys that often include, in some form, questions relating to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and sexual behaviour. Issues raised by fieldworkers include stress from facing frequent reports or visible evidence of abuse and trauma, and doubts expressed by project leaders about the adequacy of fieldworker training and practices despite regular updates to field manuals, to training and to ethical protocols.

Behind these concerns lie doubts about the adequacy of current ethical standards and procedures at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and, probably, most other universities in and beyond SA. Simply stated, the hypothesis is that these standards are inadequate because the bulk of socio-economic/psycho-social studies in the field of HIV/AIDS are 'abnormal' investigations in 'abnormal' situations.

On the one hand, research plans usually have to accommodate high rates (probable and actual) of 'sample attrition' due to HIV illness and AIDS-related deaths, are very intrusive (questions on SRH, sexual behaviour, social stresses) and they are conducted in contexts of extremely high levels of conflict and violence. On the other hand, research designs tacitly presume 'normality' in the use of concepts such as households and community, 'equilibrium' or controllable variables in experimental and quantitative study designs, and 'truth' in self reporting in questionnaires despite evidence of considerable denial, stigma and discrimination on the subject of HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, they tacitly assume validity of protocols founded on bio-physical research conventions which, in the case of action-research designs for example, is questionable.

However, the progressive and constructive principles that frame action-oriented research also deserve attention. There are the gaps between principle and practice to consider; for example, the extent to which rights and roles of participants are understood by participants and more than adequately supported in the course of a project. There are also questions to ask in relation to how researchers define the rights and values used in the rationale for a project, be it a quantitative survey or an applied project. For instance, what they mean in a particular context, whether researchers and participants can create shared interpretations, and how they should be expressed within a project are questions that, perhaps, can lead to research designs which resolve the ethical challenges that researchers are encountering in South Africa.