Demystifying Research Ethics in CPR

Abstract

As a member of her university’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) and a CPResearcher, the author writes with particular insight into the ethics of Critical Praxis Research. Though she allows that some practitioner researchers see the IRB process as a foreboding troll hindering our work, she argues instead for an engagement with—and a furthering of—IRB ethics. For the author, the CPResearcher must meet and exceed basic ethical standards, even as these standards may necessarily be troubled by the ways in which CPResearchers imagine and construct their research. The chapter provides practical counsel that will guide the CPResearcher on his journey toward becoming a necessarily moral and responsible researcher.

An IRB standing before a practitioner researcher may resemble a troll. Trolls block the way—exacting tolls, asking questions, slowing things down, demanding to be appeased. IRB trolls exact their toll in the currency of time and effort needed to assemble IRB submissions, respond to IRB requests, and work through whatever modifications on which the IRB insists (Pritchard, 2002, p. 7).