Let's take a big-picture look at "research ethics"
The March 2021 focus was on Designing an Ethical Study. While some may think that research ethics refers to the paperwork and guidelines associated with a pre-research proposal review, clearly, ethical questions are associated with the very foundations of research practice. This diagram highlights some of the questions we explored in this series.
In a recent video interview with February Mentors-in-Residence Pengfei Zhao, Karen Ross, Peiwei Li and Barbara Dennis, we touched on some important questions. One stuck in my mind: Who gets to be a researcher? Who has access to the research training associated with a doctoral degree? Who gets to define research problems, based on what assumptions and lived experiences? These questions point to the larger ecosystem of academic training and support, and precede the specific steps associated with research design.
Some might think that these questions belong in the realm of social justice, or perhaps in the economic realm because higher education and research funding issues are involved. Certainly many of the questions illustrated here are beyond the scope of an Ethics Review or Institutional Review Board. But I invite you to think of these issues as intrinsically linked to research ethics. In this month's series of MethodSpace posts you will find diverse insights and practical tips about research ethics.
Methodspace posts about research ethics from March 2021
Guest contributor Bibek Dahal, from the Kathmandu University School of Education, Nepal, offers an introduction to his new open-access article Research Ethics: A Perspective of South Asian Context.