3 Ethics in Field Research

Ms. Singtitla Vashum

Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Background of Ethics
3. Importance of Ethics in Field Research
4. Principles, Codes and Guidelines
5. Ethical Issues and Dilemma
6. Summary

Learning Objectives:

1. To understand the concept of Ethics.
2. To understand the history of Ethics in Anthropological research.
3. To understand various ethical principles, codes and guidelines.
4. To understand the Ethical issues in field research.
5. To determine strategies for ethical dilemma

1. Introduction

Ethics is defined as norms of conduct that distinguished between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour as an individual and as society. Most people think ethics (or morality) as rule of right and wrong such as Golden Rules (do to others as you would have them do it to you), or the law of the Good Samaritan. Ethical norms are so ambiguous that one is tempted to regard it as simple common sense. All people recognize some common ethical norms but interpret, apply, and balance in different ways in the light of their own values and life experiences. For instance, two people would agree that murder is wrong but disagree about the morality of abortion because they have different understanding of what it means to be a human being.

Research that involves human and animal as subject raises complex ethical issues and Anthropologist are not exception. Many of the field studies report findings but many of them failed to deal with ethical problems encountered during execution. To promote aims in research various professions, different disciplines, and institutions formulate a standards for behaviour that suit their particular goals. Some of the ethical principles, codes, and guidelines that concerned with human as subject are The Nuremberg Code, The Declaration of Helsinki, The Belmont Report and the US Code of Federal Regulations: The Common Rule, The Council of International Organizations of Medical Science (CIOMS), International conference for Harmonization Guidelines for Good Clinical Practice (GCP), Standards and Operational Guidance for Health Related Research, and American Anthropological Association Code of Ethics.

2. Background of Ethics

There are more than 850 ethical codes, new and revision of older codes in response to the advances of science and technology and to intensified public awareness and scrutiny of professional life. The doctors and medical researchers were confronted by the atrocities of World War II. The first modern code governing ethics of research was developed during the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi War crime. It was a response to the abuses during medical examination on human. Subsequently, there was concern with protection of human subjects of research in US in 1950s and 1960s. The report of abuses by the media stimulated legislation that led to the development of ethical principles and regulations. The International Society of ethicists was founded in 1985 for consultation in application of ethics (Davis, 1999). In 1970s lawyers were required to confront Watergate; business people and engineers were confronted by a series of bribery scandals (Davis, 1999). Practitioners of medicine, law, business, and engineering are most often thought of as facial ethical dilemma. However, every discipline has its own history and its own ethical challenges. Anthropologists face various kinds of issues as they engaged in research with human and animal subjects.

3. Importance of Ethics in Field Research

There may be a conflict between expeditious conduct of study and doing what is respectful to animals and humans. Researchers focus on expanding knowledge and methodology of their research such as subject selection, sample size, statistical analysis, equipments, and personnel. At the same time as a responsible person, they try to respect the environment, which requires attention to the appropriate use not only of physical resources including funds but also human subjects.

Besides direct treatment of human subjects, how research is conducted is an important aspect of whether it is ethical. For example, adherence to research design, protocol, and analytical plan is critical to data integrity. Avoidance or disclosure of finance and/or personal conflicts of interest may affect subject selection as well as real or perceived objective or bias in selection, analysis and reporting result. These aspects of research behaviour along with adherence to accepted scientific practice, such as honesty in data collection, analysis, reporting, avoiding misconduct and reporting it if present contributes to whether research is ethical.

Ethical norms help to ensure that researchers can be held accountable to the public. It helps to build public support. Many norms of research promote a variety of other important moral and social values, such as social responsibility, human rights, and animal welfare, compliance with the law, and public health and safety.

How we conduct our scientific endeavours not only affects those directly involved, but also public perception of science and scientists. Results from research provides basis for further studies, and in addition may influence public policy and legislation. Challenges to scientific integrity can erode public confidence and belief in findings. Therefore, it is important to be transparent, competent, honest, and follow ethical guidelines in regard to research subjects.

4. Principles, Codes, and Guidelines

4.1 The Nuremberg Code (1947)

The code stipulates that the use of human participants is permissible (justified) so long as human subjects are necessary, the result holds promise of benefit to the society, scientific basis and design are sound, harms to human are minimized or avoided, voluntary withdrawal of subjects is allowed. It states that explicit requirement for voluntary consent of research subjects and spells out the elements of that consent.

Voluntary consent of the human subjects is necessary.

Research result should yield benefit for the good of society. Scientific basis and design are sound.

Avoid or minimize harm to physical and mental.

No experiment should be conducted where there is a prior reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.

The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.

Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability or death.

The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons.

Allow voluntary withdrawal of subjects and will be terminated if the subjects are likely to be injured.

Terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probable cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him, that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the subject.

4.2 The Declaration of Helsinki

The Declaration of Helsinki ethical principles for Medical research involving Human Subjects was developed by the World Medical Association in 1964 and has been revised repeatedly. It includes principles for research:

Protection of human dignity Ethics review and oversight Risk benefit assessment when potential benefits outweigh risk of harm and risk can be managed.

The research is important and beneficial to the subject population. Informed voluntary consent subjects participation.

4.3 Belmont Report

The Belmont Report includes three ethical principles:

(i) Respect for Persons

The principle of Respect for persons states that researchers are to provide enough information so that an informed, voluntary decision can be made. Whatever the decision of the potential research participant is, that choice should be respected. Moreover, if a person decides to withdraw from research participation, that decision is to be respected. If people with diminished or limited autonomy, such as children, some cognitively impaired people, those in a coercive environment, those with compromised consciousness or other vulnerabilities are to be involved in research, additional protections are required. How much protection is needed is a function of the risk of harm and the likelihood of benefit.

(ii) Beneficence

Beneficence means to do no harm, minimize risk of harm and maximize the benefits of research to protect human welfare. They may be direct or indirect, immediate or for future persons in similar circumstances. The effect may be physical, psychological, social or economic and may be perceived differently by persons with differing interests. An assessment of risks and benefits is also done by the ethics review committee members who consider scientific merit and importance, competency and experience of the research team, and appropriateness of the subject population for risks (including threats to privacy and confidentiality) and benefits.

(ii) Justice

Justice relates to fair and equitable distribution of benefits and burdens of research. Practically, it means that research participants are selected fairly, with all segments of the population having an opportunity to be included in a study, provided that inclusion is scientifically and ethically justifiable.

4.4 The Council for international Organization of Medical Sciences

In 1970s the Council of International Organization of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) and World Health organization worked on guidelines to indicate how the ethical principles articulated in the declaration of Helsinki could be applied to research with human especially in developing countries. As new research methods and practices emerged particularly the expansion of clinical trials in the developing countries, conferences were held to address the issues that were not covered in the original guidelines. In 2002, CIOMS published ethical principles (they adopted the principles in the Belmont Report) and 21 guidelines that are broadly applicable. It covers:

• Ethical justification of the research Scientific validity
• Ethics committee review
  • Informed consent and situations when consent is not attainable Inducement to participate in research
• Risk and benefits
  • Research with low resource populations Choice of control group in clinical trials Research with vulnerable groups
• Confidentiality
• Compensation for injury in research
• Strengthening infrastructure in developing countries, and
• Ethical obligation to provide health services.

4.5 American Anthropological Association (AAA) Code of Ethics

The purpose of this Code is to provide AAA members and other interested persons with guidelines for making ethical choices in the conduct of their anthropological work. Because anthropologists can find themselves in complex situations and subject to more than one code of ethics, the AAA Code of Ethics provides a framework, for making decisions.

Anthropologists have to get trained on current research activities and ethical issues. In addition, departments offering anthropology degrees should include and require ethical training in their curriculums. In both proposing and carrying out research, anthropological researchers must disclose the purpose(s), potential impacts, and source(s) of support for research projects with funders, colleagues, persons studied or providing information, and with relevant parties affected by the research. Researchers must expect to utilize the results of their work in an appropriate fashion and disseminate the results through appropriate and timely activities. Research fulfilling these expectations is ethical, regardless of the source of funding (public or private) or purpose (i.e., “applied,” “basic,” “pure,” or “proprietary”).

Anthropological researchers should be alert to the danger of compromising anthropological ethics as a condition to engage in research, yet also be alert to proper demands of good citizenship or host-guest relations. Active contribution and leadership in seeking to shape public or private sector actions and policies may be as ethically justifiable as inaction, detachment, or noncooperation, depending on circumstances. Similar principles hold for anthropological researchers employed or otherwise affiliated with non-anthropological institutions, public institutions, or private enterprises.

• (i) Responsibility to people and animals with whom anthropological researchers work and whose lives and cultures they study

Anthropological researchers have primary ethical obligations to the people, species, and materials they study and to the people with whom they work. These obligations can supersede the goal of seeking new knowledge, and can lead to decisions not to undertake or to discontinue a research project when the primary obligation conflicts with other responsibilities, such as those owed to sponsors or clients. These ethical obligations include:

• To avoid harm or wrong, understanding that the development of knowledge can lead to change which may be positive or negative for the people or animals worked with or studied
• To respect the well-being of humans and nonhuman primates
• To work for the long-term conservation of the archaeological, fossil, and historical records
• To consult actively with the affected individuals or group(s), with the goal of establishing a working relationship that can be beneficial to all parties involved.

Anthropological researchers must do everything in their power to ensure that their research does not harm the safety, dignity, or privacy of the people with whom they work, conduct research, or perform other professional activities. Anthropological researchers working with animals must do everything in their power to ensure that the research does not harm the safety, psychological well-being or survival of the animals or species with which they work.

Anthropological researchers must determine in advance whether their hosts/providers of information wish to remain anonymous or receive recognition, and make every effort to comply with those wishes.

Anthropological researchers should obtain in advance the informed consent of persons being studied, providing information, owning or controlling access to material being studied, or otherwise identified as having interests which might be impacted by the research. Researchers are responsible for identifying and complying with the various informed consent codes, laws and regulations affecting their projects.

Anthropological researchers who have developed close and enduring relationships (i.e., covenantal relationships) with either individual persons providing information or with hosts must adhere to the obligations of openness and informed consent, while carefully and respectfully negotiating the limits of the relationship.

While anthropologists may gain personally from their work, they must not exploit individuals, groups, animals, or cultural or biological materials. They should recognize their debt to the societies in which they work and their obligation to reciprocate with people studied in appropriate ways.

(ii) Responsibility to scholarship and science

Anthropological researchers must expect to encounter ethical dilemmas at every stage of their work, and must make good-faith efforts to identify potential ethical claims and conflicts in advance when preparing proposals and as projects proceed. A section raising and responding to potential ethical issues should be part of every research proposal.

Anthropological researchers bear responsibility for the integrity and reputation of their discipline, of scholarship, and of science. Thus, anthropological researchers are subject to the general moral rules of scientific and scholarly conduct: they should not deceive or knowingly misrepresent (i.e., fabricate evidence, falsify, and plagiarize), or attempt to prevent reporting of misconduct, or obstruct the scientific/scholarly research of others.

Anthropological researchers should do all they can to preserve opportunities for future fieldworkers to follow them to the field.

Anthropological researchers should utilize the results of their work in an appropriate fashion, and whenever possible disseminate their findings to the scientific and scholarly community.

Anthropological researchers should seriously consider all reasonable requests for access to their data and other research materials for purposes of research. They should also make every effort to insure preservation of their fieldwork data for use by posterity.

(iii) Responsibility to the public

Anthropological researchers should make the results of their research appropriately available to sponsors, students, decision makers, and other non-anthropologists. In so doing, they must be truthful; they are not only responsible for the factual content of their statements but also must consider carefully the social and political implications of the information they disseminate. They must do everything in their power to insure that such information is well understood, properly contextualized, and responsibly utilized. They should make clear the empirical bases upon which their reports stand, be candid about their qualifications and philosophical or political biases, and recognize and make clear the limits of anthropological expertise. At the same time, they must be alert to possible harm their information may cause people with whom they work or colleagues.

Anthropologists may choose to move beyond disseminating research results to a position of advocacy. This is an individual decision, but not an ethical responsibility.

5. Ethical Issues and Dilemma

Researchers of all branches encounter various ethical issues and dilemma in different situations. Some of those faced in the field research are discussed as under:

(i) Ethical Principles Conflict

Application of each principle by the researcher and by ethics review committee needs judgment, interpretation and ethical analysis in the context of a given situations, e.g. a specific research proposal and cultural context. Ethical dilemmas arise in which ethical principles conflict with social values of that society.

(ii) Consent

The principle of voluntary participation requires that people cannot be coerced to participate in research. Essentially this means the prospective participants must be fully informed about the procedures and risks involved in research and must give their consent to participate. But how much information should be disclosed? How much does a reasonable person want to know? Researchers faced ethical dilemma of providing information to allow potential participant to make an informed choice but not providing so much information that the potential subject is scared away, or that the result are compromised.

(iii) Beneficence

Ethical standards also require that researchers cannot put participants in a situation where they might be at risk of harm to both physical and psychological as a result of their participation. Almost all researchers assured of confidentiality and privacy but sometimes it’s difficult to accomplish especially in a situation where participants have to be measured at multiple times (e.g. longitudinal study).

(iv) Ethnographic Issues

Unlike experiment and trials in clinical settings which have clear beginnings and endings, ethnographic research generally is dynamic, natural setting often where participants are able to decline to participate at any point in the process. There may be a high probability of risk but the magnitude of harm like uncertainty, mild embarrassment or boredom is usually low. There are instances where possible magnitude is high often in conflicting environment.

Ethnographic research may involve significant risks of harm for example discrimination, disruption of personal and family relationships, lost of rights or claims, civil or criminal prosecution-usually as a result of disclosure of private identifiable information such as data gathered in interviews, film or video, or recorded on tape or field notes. Ethnographers should inform IRB and participants how they plan to use and protect data from disclosure and if personal identifiers then other data will be preserved or destroyed.

No code or set of guidelines can anticipate unique circumstances or direct actions in specific situations. The individual anthropologist must be willing to make carefully considered ethical choices and be prepared to make clear the assumptions, facts and issues on which those choices are based. To address such needs most institutions and organizations have formed an Institutional Review Board (IRB), a panel of persons who review grant proposal with respect to ethical implications and decides whether additional action need to be taken to assure the safety and rights of participants. By reviewing proposal for research, IRBs also help to protect both the organization and the researchers against potential legal implications of neglecting to address important ethical issues of participants.

Summary

Ethics is defined as the norms of conduct that distinguished between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour as an individual and as a society. Research that involves humans and animals as subject raises complex ethical issues and Anthropologists are not exception. Many of the field studies report findings but failed to deal with ethical problems encountered during execution. The report of abuses during medical examination in the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi War crime stimulates legislation to develop ethical principles and regulations. Ethical norms help to ensure researchers can be held accountable to the public and promote social values such as responsibility, human rights, and animal welfare, compliance with the law, and public health and safety. Some of the important ethical principles, Codes, and guidelines includes – The Nuremberg Code, The Declaration of Helsinki, The Belmont report, The Council of International organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS), and American Anthropological Association Code of Ethics. No code or set of guidelines can anticipate unique circumstances or direct actions in specific situations. The individual Anthropologist must be willing to make carefully considered ethical choices and be prepared to make clear the assumptions, facts, and issues on which those choices are based. To address such needs most institutions and organization have formed an Institutional Review Board. The IRBs help to protect both the institution or organization and the researchers against potential legal implications of neglecting to address important ethical issues of participants.