Research ethics for academics & students
Posted on: 14 August 2023 by Louise Hardwick in 2023 Posts
In this blog, meet HSS ethics lead Louise Hardwick as she discusses the core elements of research ethics, for academics and students alike, and how good ethical practice leads to good research practice.
I wish to briefly discuss the following ethics related areas:
- Good ethical research practice is good research practice
- Academic research ethics
- Student research ethics
- HSS Ethical Review
Good ethical research practice is good research practice
This month I step down as the research ethics lead for HSS. This is a role that has grown with my tenure and reflects changes to the ethical review processes over recent years. When university Research Ethics Committees (REC) were first established in the early-2000s, it was, in part, as a response to a series of serious ethical breaches in medical and scientific research.
Concern to address these breaches was inevitably reflected in the formal review process, often at the expense of its appropriateness for social research. But, over the years, this imbalance has been challenged, together with an exponential increase in social research applications that has forced change. Unlike with health, this change has not been driven by ethical breaches, but a growing commitment from social researchers, universities, and research councils to ensure ethical considerations are explicit in the research design, and thereby contribute to research excellence i.e., research that is beneficent, ethically robust and subject to critical scrutiny by peers.
As critical academics we inevitably have an opinion on the merits of the formal ethical review process, but regardless of what we might think or hope for, for the reasons given above, ethical review in HSS is here to stay.
Yes: at their worst formal ethical review processes can be bureaucratic, risk adverse, and, at the extreme, breaches in ethical practice can lead to misconduct investigations. These frustrations and problems, however, are often rooted in the separating of ‘research’ and ‘ethics’, rather than recognising them as inextricably entwined: good ethical research practice is good research practice.
It is this growing culture of thinking ethically as part of our research mindedness that is the most significant change across HSS, and, of course, alongside this, the recognition that thinking ethically applies to research training and pedagogy (further discussed below).
Research ethics is so much more than just protecting participants’ privacy; informed consent, and doing no harm. It is the foundation of the humanities and social sciences: at its core is seeking justice. Research ethics concerns not only how we research, but also what and why we research. No social research design for collecting personal data should be unsuitable for ethical approval as long as the benefits outweigh possible harms, and the design can be robustly defended.
Academic research ethics
All research involving the collecting of personal data requires formal ethical review before data collecting can begin, and it’s important to realise that the University doesn’t recognise retrospective ethical review. For contacts, policies, guidance, review processes, and other relevant information, please click on the research ethics webpage research.ethics@liverpool.ac.uk
Applications deemed low-risk are reviewed online through HSS School Ethics Committees (again, discussed further below). Those deemed higher risk go to a central ethics committee. This is usually because of the sensitivity of one or more of the following: the topic, participant group, methods.
The applicant is therefore invited to attend one of the committee meetings to discuss these sensitivities. To frame thinking in preparation for this discussion it can be helpful to consider the application through the lens of the UKCDR guidance on safeguarding.
This asks the researcher to anticipate all potential harms, where possible mitigate these harms, and, finally, ensure they are addressed satisfactorily. Although this guidance is written for research in the Global South, it is equally applicable to home research.
Student research ethics
Student research involves learning while doing, and, inevitably, the benefit/harm and risk balance can be difficult to gauge and justify. Students therefore rely on ethical thinking being integrated into research training and pedagogy, and to assist with this there is some helpful material available to support both students and their supervisors:
The collective module application is another means to ensure that students are well trained in research ethics. With this approach the module leader applies for approval to cover a collection of projects taught within a specific module. The module itself sets the boundaries for ensuring the project is low-risk, and provides the framing methodology appropriate to the module outcomes and level of experience of the student cohort.
For example, as part of the module pedagogy, the students are trained to collect data through specified methods, and students receive guidance on expected sample size and population. Designs outside the prescribed module framework are therefore prohibited. The advantages of this approach are pedagogical, by ensuring research ethics training is built into the module design, and also have the advantage of being more student-friendly.
HSS Ethical Review
Finally, the bedrock of research ethics is the ethical review process. HSS reviews take place online through the four School Committees. Each committee has its own set of reviewers, although they don’t necessarily have to be experts on the application’s subject or methods.
The reviewers’ key concerns are for the autonomy, rights, and dignity of potential participants. They take responsibility for scrutinising:
- whether an application has demonstrated awareness of the sensitivities associated with the proposed research (in relation to subject, methods, participants, communities etc);
- whether an applicant has thought through the implications of what they’re proposing (the "what ifs");
- and whether an applicant has provided all the information necessary to convince the reviewer that they know what they are doing in practice.
It’s not enough for the applicant to be confident of this because the process is one of negotiation between reviewer and applicant, with the applicant responding to the reviewer’s requests for information and revisions. By the time the application is approved it should provide a robust framework for good ethical research practice. To assist with this, the central ethics team is in the process of developing a canvas module to support reviewers.
Learn more about research ethics at the University and get in touch with team here.
Keywords: Researcher projects.