Definition

Research ethics is concerned with ethical questions arising from all parts of research projects (planning, conduct, and reporting) involving human participants. Research ethics particularly is concerned with the protection of participants.

Introduction

Research ethics protocols have become a sine qua non of research in education. In Anglo-Saxon countries particularly, no research based in an academic institution may be conducted without having the study approved by an institutional review board – sometimes referred to as institutional (ethics) review board (IRB; US), (human) research ethics committee (H/REC; Australia, Canada, UK), health and disability ethics communities (HDEC, New Zealand), or institutional ethics committee (ICE, New Zealand). Institutional committees often work under the aegis of some national organization. In Canada, for example, the Interagency Advisory Panel on Research Ethics coordinates all questions about ethics in research in the natural, medical, and social sciences coordinate. In many other countries (e.g., Germany), formal procedures and institutions do not exist for vetting the ethical dimensions of a research project. However, because some journals now require all research they publish to have undergone some form of ethics review, researchers see themselves forced to get their research approved by an appropriate panel. Research ethics, while generally and historically modeled on and accepted by quantitative (medical) studies, frequently is discussed as a hindrance to important research in research employing qualitative-interpretive methods.

Historical Precedents of Research Ethics

In more than half of the twentieth century, research was conducted without ethics reviews and generally with informed consent on the part of participants. The atrocities of Nazi doctors aside, there was a lot of research that caused harm to human subjects – including (a) the testing of Agent Orange, Agent Purple, and other herbicides on a Canadian forces base that exposed those working there to increased health risks or (b) the widespread use of radiation experiments and testing of nuclear weapons without the consent of those exposed (Roth and von Unger 2018). In the social sciences most relevant to education, however, the classical and paradigmatic case concerning research ethics still discussed exists in the experiments conducted at Yale University (Yanow and Schwartz-Shea 2018). The research participants, part of a teaching–learning experiment, were to give electric shocks whenever the learner did not reply correctly. The experimenter coaxed the “teachers” into giving electrical shocks of increasing strength to the point that these, had they been real, would have been fatal to the “learner.” Unbeknownst to the “teachers,” they had been the real subjects of an experiment on obedience to authority figures. Although 14 participants eventually broke off the experiment in refusing to continue giving shocks, 26 followed the experimenter’s commands until administering the highest shock levels. Many participants in the teacher role suffered from extreme emotional stress.

In part as a consequence of the Yale study, institutional ethics committees (where they exist) require researchers to guarantee full and informed consent. In cases that this is impossible, researchers have to (a) provide strong reasons for not informing participants prior to data collection and (b) have to guarantee full debriefing and disclosure following the data collection. In cases where stress is possible or likely, ethics committees may require further provisions, such as free psychological counseling.

Classical Topics in Research Ethics

The common approach to ethics in educational research, currently dominating the enactment of Anglo-Saxon institutional ethics review procedures, has normative ethics as its basis. The origins lie in Kantian logic, where ethics is an add-on to a theory of action (Bakhtin 1993); and it has experimental studies in medicine and psychology as its prototype. The topics raised and addressed during institutional ethics processes by and large have their foundation in, and match those of, (medical, psychological) experimental research.

Free and Informed Consent

A fundamental principle of research ethics in education is free and informed consent. Informed consent means that potential participants need to be informed about all aspects of the research, the degree to which they are involved, what is required of them, the nature of the benefits, and potential harms. The decision to participate has to be free. Freedom of decision might be curtailed if researchers were to seek the collaboration of family members, friends and acquaintances, or subordinates asking them in a face-to-face situation. For a variety of situationally dependent reasons, invitees then might find it difficult to decline. In many cases, institutional review committees may expect or suggest procedures that begin with some form of open call (invitation) to participate so that interested individuals may then contact the researcher.

Remuneration often is considered a threat to free participation because, especially when the benefits may be considered large, it would constitute a form of enticement. In classroom research, token gifts for the class as a whole may be deemed appropriate. If participants have to incur costs, such as traveling to the research site, then covering these costs would not be considered enticement; nor would be the availability of some form of refreshment. With older students (e.g., university), a $10, $20, or $50 gift coupon at the bookstore are often considered appropriate by research ethics boards, whereas a $100 cash award would likely be deemed an enticement. However, the boundary between what is and what is not acceptable as compensation depends on the situation (cf. University of Toronto 2011). It is not unheard of that the same amounts given to indigenous persons are deemed legitimate because they are considered experts and thus receive the remuneration for their participation as experts.

Benefits and Harms

Informed consent generally includes statements about the possible benefits, inconveniences, discomfort, and risks or harms that participants will receive or incur. For example, these might exist in the form of academic knowledge or self-knowledge that participants gain through their participation. Risks may include discomfort or psychological stress when participants become frustrated dealing with difficult tasks or become distressed when talking about painful or embarrassing experiences. In postcolonial research, particularly involving indigenous populations, benefits to individuals and communities are even more central than with nonindigenous populations (see below).

Anonymity Versus Confidentiality

Research generally guarantees the protection of participants’ identities – unless participants specifically ask, and provided permission, to be identified. Two important characteristics of research ethics are often confused: anonymity and confidentiality. Anonymity refers to a situation where even researchers do not know who participated in the research. This would be the case when participants submit responses to questionnaires in a manner that it is impossible to reconstruct who provided the response. Confidentiality refers to the situation where researchers know who participated – e.g., because a teacher was interviewed, lessons were video-recorded – but does not divulge their identity. The issue becomes more complicated, for example, in classroom research where participants know other participants. This is particularly the case when there are members of a class who do not participate in the research, in which case special provisions need to be made concerning the recording and recording techniques so that the individuals are not recorded. It is not uncommon for members on ethics review boards to question researchers what they will do should a nonparticipant be recorded.

Power Over

A frequent issue discussed in the context of research ethics is the concept of power over. Indeed, institutional ethics board may require applicants to state explicitly the institutional relations with potential participants. Although many scholars might agree that someone like a teacher inherently has power over students, the question has important ontological dimensions. Most theoretical frameworks are static (structuralist), centering on the relations between the objects that make their ontology. The position as a teacher, principal, or superintendent in the hierarchy of schooling is used to simultaneously assign a certain level of power, a characteristic of the position. In investigations for the purpose of obtaining a university degree or for publishing in academic journals, the researcher would be considered to be in power over the research participant.

The notion of power as a property of persons or institutions is problematic. Indeed, there are many situations in the everyday life of a school board or school classroom where those “in power” are indeed not in control over events. It is not unheard of that students simply walk out of the classroom or make the unfolding of the intended lesson impossible. Similarly, because of the provisions generally required on the consent form, participants may withdraw at any point and even request deletion of data that they have provided. Thus, even though an institution and all participating individuals may have consented to the data collection, sometime after the collection has been completed, individuals or the institution may withdraw consent for the use of the data. A lot of time and effort invested on the part of the researcher will then have been in vain. Participants therefore have considerable control over the research: they may have greater power than the researcher. A poststructuralist approach has a solution to the problem (see below).

Qualitative Research Designs that Raise Red Flags

Certain research designs tend to immediately raise red flags with research ethics committees – and this for various reasons. Consider the following specific examples.

In the case of vulnerable and dependent populations, free and informed (comprehended) consent may be more difficult to establish. If someone intends to do research on the job, then potential research participants, because of their institutional positions, may not feel free to agree to or decline participation. This is so, for example, because students know that the teacher is responsible for their grades and they may be afraid that nonparticipation could lead to less favorable assessments of their work. In many instances, institutional ethics committees will be satisfied when teachers do not know who participated until after the course has ended and grades are submitted. Researchers may train a research assistant or fellow researcher in collecting and anonymizing data in cases where the institutional relationship does not terminate within a reasonable time span.

Autoethnographic (autobiographical) research projects, too, tend to receive special scrutiny on the part of ethics boards. Thus, for example, although it may be very important to find out more about experiences of sexual abuse on the part of teachers, ethics boards may indeed prevent victims from using one of these methods. This is so because the autoethnographic (autobiographical) nature of the study may entail a high likelihood of identifying perpetrators and others, making them participants in the absence of informed consent. When sensitive issues are involved, such as sexual abuse or incest, then it may be virtually impossible to get approval for an autoethnographic (autobiographical) study in a college or university context.

A third type of special case exists when vulnerable (e.g., very young, those with senile dementia) or (mentally) handicapped participants are involved. In such instances, potential participants may not be in the position to fully grasp what they are being asked to participate in. In such instances, one aspect of an appropriate protocol would be seeking the consent of the relevant caregiver (e.g., parent); another aspect, in virtually all cases, would be the consent of the individual. Thus, even when a young child is to be involved, research ethics boards might insist not only on a general introduction and consent but also on a repeated ascertainment of consent in long-term studies.

Educational Research Ethics in a Postmodern Era

Traditional approaches to ethics have increasingly come to be questioned in the context of research based on different ontologies. Research ethics correspondingly has postmodern, post-constructivist, and postcolonial dimensions, including its dialogical characteristics (e.g., Roth 2013).

Transactional Perspective on Ethics

Recent approaches to research ethics advocate for dialogical, that is, transactional relations between researcher and researched (e.g., Lester and Anders 2018). In such relations, all actions are social, involving the cooperation of participants. Words and actions no longer are attributed to individuals, as in structuralism, but are recognized to be a shared aspect of joint behavior. For an illustration, consider the following exchange between two high school students. The transcription shows how each term not only exists in the mouth of the speaker, but, importantly, rings in the ears of the recipient (e.g., solid box = corresponding). Receiving means being affected. To be able to respond, the listener has to open up. What will have been said is available only after the saying has ended. Thus, while the saying unfolds, the recipient is affected without knowing what it is that is affecting her because the said is available only after the saying has ended. In opening up, the recipient has made herself vulnerable.

Not only recipients are affected, but so are speakers. It would be possible to hear “First time for everything!” as teasing or making fun of the other. But here, in the exchange pair {turn 2 | turn 3}, the phrase comes to be treated as an expression of jealousy. That is, in stating, “Wow! I got this right.,” Carmen not only affects Rhonda, but also opens herself up to being teased; and in stating “First time for everything!,” Rhonda not only has affected Carmen, but also has opened herself up to being identified as a jealous individual. The phrase “First time for everything!” now is not a tease, as intended, but a manifestation of jealousy. The transcription also makes apparent how a reply arises from and is shaped in and by the reception (dotted box = responding). That is, the reply is stimulated and begins while the saying unfolds and before the speaker can grasp the said.

The implications for research ethics are apparent. In acting and speaking, any participant, whether researcher or researched, affects others and is in turn affected. However, while acting, nobody can know how others are affected. The effect of an action can be found out only from the actions of the affected. Whereas Carmen might have intended to express her pleasure about being right on a mathematics task, and to share this pleasure with her friend, this expression is turned into a shortcoming, in that this has been treated as the first time she has ever been right. Carmen knew the effect of the speech act only after receiving the reply.

In transactional approaches, notions such as power or knowledge no longer are properties and privileges inherent in people. Instead, power, knowledge, and power-knowledge are treated as effects of relationships in which dispositions, tactics, and maneuvers come into play; social relations produce social facts and make these visible in and for the purpose of the situation at hand. These mutual determinations of researcher (observer) and participant (observed) relations in the preceding transcription therefore have effects on research results and on people. All issues of ethics become practical questions continuously posed and answered in social relations and as part of the constitution of social life. The ethical or nonethical nature of a specific investigation is itself an effect of researcher–participant relations in the same way as is the distribution of power-knowledge over the same relations. In any specific situation, these effects can only be determined after the fact but cannot be predicted with certainty beforehand. This also calls into question the Kantian take on research ethics embedded in the very institution of research ethics boards. In this take, ethics and ethical norms come to be tacked onto actions from the outside so to speak. Educators need to go beyond the ethical imperative and move to a practical ethics, where ethics is integral to a theory of action, where each act is taken to be inherently social (i.e., as transaction). All ethics thereby inherently becomes contingent, as captured in the concept of situational or situated ethics. A situated, practical ethics is plural and public. We might say that practical wisdom concerning research ethics consists in situationally and cooperatively inventing conduct that will best satisfy any exception of the rule required by solicitude, by betraying the acknowledged and shared rules of ethics to the smallest extent possible (Ricœur 1990).

Postcolonial Research Ethics

The discussions concerning research ethics have gained depth in a climate of increasing awareness of the benefits and effects studies have for and on those involved. Thus, for example, AIDS activists have successfully challenged the use of traditional experimental methods because those participants receiving placebo treatments were in effect denied the same potential benefits that those receiving the new treatment had obtained (Epstein 1995). In the same way, participants who receive the control treatment in an experiment testing an innovative teaching method might rightly ask whether they will subsequently receive an equivalent treatment. Today, much educational research is ethnographic and interpretive, often involving the explicit collaboration of researcher and researched, making traditional, risk-minimizing ethical review procedures based on structuralist ontologies inappropriate for capturing the essential aspects of practical ethics. In the same way, indigenous peoples have begun to resist (pharmaceutical) research that appropriated their knowledge – e.g., concerning the medical benefits of certain plants – and then used it to commercialize drugs irrespective of any applicable intellectual and cultural property rights (e.g., Githaiga 1998). Indigenous peoples now insist that the main principles for research have to be (a) control over their own knowledge and over research protocols and (b) the empowerment of and benefits to indigenous peoples when outsiders agree to participate in collaborations.

The postcolonial critique of ethics in educational research is often broad, going together with a postcolonial critique of educational projects and institutions generally. But it does recognize and actively build on the double determination of every act; and it recognizes the double determination of the effects actions have on all participants, as shown in the foregoing example. A fundamental characteristic of a postcolonial approach to education and educational research lies in its emancipatory and critical orientation that is intended to overcome colonial, oppressive, and iniquitous regimes of knowledge-power relations. Consistent with a dialogical approach to ethics, the postcolonial approach is characterized by the primacy it attributes to dialogue and the associated openness of outcomes (dialogical ethics).

In postcolonial approaches to research, subject matter and research process are cooperatively constituted, involving all parties. All aspects of research – including research questions, interests, research methods, roles and responsibilities, research outcomes, and dissemination – initially are open to be determined through dialogue that occurs throughout the research project. Although more traditional researchers and those formed prior to the rise of poststructuralist, post-constructivist, and postcolonial approaches may struggle with such a conception, any investigation may indeed be conceived in terms of a plurality of outcomes produced for different beneficiaries.

Conclusion

The classical approach to research ethics in education, which was inspired by medical research, still dominates institutional review processes in Anglo-Saxon countries, though special provisions exist in the case of research with aboriginal populations to make it consistent with postcolonial regimes. In countries where formal institutional ethics reviews are not yet in place, there exist tremendous opportunities for moving more quickly toward postcolonial (poststructuralist, post-constructivist) forms of research ethics as concrete practice.

Cross-References