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The days when researchers presented their work only to each other, or to research funders or evaluation commissioners, are long gone. Contemporary researchers present to, and increasingly with, a wide range of diverse audiences (Pickering and Kara, 2017: 300). This shift has brought with it a range of ethical considerations that are often overlooked. There is little information about ethical approaches to presenting research in either the Euro-Western or the Indigenous literature. Yet presentations may conceal as well as reveal (Tamas, 2009: 617). To take an ethical approach to your presentation, you need to consider what you are hiding as well as what you intend to show.
In the Euro-Western paradigm, the time available for presentations is often very short, which may lead to more concealment than revelation.
“Time is always limited so you’re not opening all your skeletons within your presentations, you just bring out the good stuff.”
The presentation is usually made by a researcher to an audience, with a few minutes for questions at the end, at an event created to facilitate such presentations, such as a conference or seminar. In the Indigenous paradigm, research may be presented within existing community methods for information sharing, such as the sharing circle. These can last for many hours, and are dialogic, with everyone present being given a chance to contribute if they wish (Lambert, 2014: 32).
As you present research, you are communicating directly with other people, which brings ethical responsibilities (Warren, 2014: 1). To make presentations ethical, it is essential to know your audience(s) as far as possible, and to make your work accessible for them.
In the Euro-Western paradigm, reporting research usually involves some kind of document including words and numbers, perhaps with some illustrative images or diagrams. However, there are many other types of written communication that could be relevant for research, such as computer code, tattoos, chalk on pavements and the sand drawings of Vanuatu. Writing in Vanuatu is done with a finger in sand (or dust or ash) and always accompanies, or is accompanied by, talk. This is not as Euro-Western people might understand illustration; the drawings are geometric patterns and can be used, for example, in explanation, discussion, storytelling, teaching or for sacred purposes. They are not intended to be permanent, any more than spoken words are permanent, and are ‘left to be blown away in the breeze’ (Zagala, 2004: 32).
Research in Vanuatu may involve sand drawings. This tells us that writing does not have to be permanent to count as relevant in research. We can also begin to see that the boundary between writing and drawing is not firm or impermeable. For example, tattoos are usually thought of by Euro-Western people as decorative (even when script is used) and a matter of individual choice. They are also something that can be commissioned and created on a whim, even (if the tattoo artist is unscrupulous) when the recipient is intoxicated. By contrast, for some Indigenous peoples such as Māori, tattoos are functional, offering specific links to culture, community and ancestors, providing information about the wearer to others and having a strong spiritual dimension, among other things (Pawlik, 2011: 5).
Euro-Western societies value some different principles and ideas from Indigenous societies (although of course there are also areas of overlap). For example, the principle of autonomy is highly valued in most Euro-Western societies, while the principle of collectivity is highly valued in many African societies (de Vries and Henley, 2014: 80). Also, there are a range of Euro-Western epistemologies and ontologies. Nevertheless, most Euro-Western ontologies are based on the idea that it is possible to separate wholes into parts: to differentiate, for example, spiritual from physical, and emotional from cerebral. And most Euro-Western epistemologies are based on the idea that knowledge is held by individuals.
This book highlights some of the ways in which Euro-Western research may not always be as ethical as its adherents would like to think. In this context, it is necessary to note that the oppression of Indigenous peoples through Euro-Western research is not confined to history (Moodie, 2010: 818; Rix et al, 2018: 5, 7). For example, American museums, universities and other institutions still hold the remains and burial offerings of around two million Indigenous people, even though legislation was passed to change this as long ago as 1990. Because Euro-Western researchers have labelled these materials as ‘data’, they have been able to avoid repatriating the human remains and burial offerings which are so important to Indigenous peoples (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014: 231).
We know that Euro-Western research has been used in support of atrocities around the world, including within Euro-Western society, such as Nazi medical research on concentration camp prisoners during the Second World War.
Evaluation is a particular form of research that is designed to assess the value of something: perhaps a service, an intervention or a policy. Evaluation research is often discussed and written about as though it is a single unified approach. In fact there are a number of different theoretical bases for evaluation research, such as realist evaluation, utilisation-focused evaluation, feminist evaluation, empowerment evaluation and Indigenous evaluation. Yet, whatever the theoretical underpinnings, the key questions asked by evaluation research are likely to be similar, such as:
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What is working well?
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Where and how could improvements be made?
Evaluation itself is, arguably, an everyday human activity, and indeed ethical judgements are a kind of evaluation (Hammersley and Traianou, 2012: 19). Evaluation research is more specific and systematic than everyday evaluation. It is often commissioned research, purchased by one or more institutions, usually from one other institution or, sometimes, an individual. Perhaps because it is often purchased by and/or conducted within institutions, institutional ethics have a particularly strong influence on evaluation research (Leone, Stame and Tagle, 2016: 163). Professional associations of evaluators around the world have produced ethical codes and guidelines for evaluation research (Desautels and Jacob, 2012: 437). Evaluation research very often has a political agenda (Palfrey, Thomas and Phillips, 2012: 29), such as to support future funding bids or a planned change in policy, and may be explicitly linked with work for social justice (Johnson, 2013: 197; Mertens, 2013: 233). As a result, it offers another useful case study, because evaluation research acts as a node where individual, professional, institutional, social and political ethics come together and interact with research ethics.
Many Euro-Western researchers have not heard of Indigenous research. In my view, this needs to change, for two main reasons.
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Indigenous research and researchers have been oppressed and marginalised from the birth of colonial history to the present day. Continuing to ignore the work of Indigenous researchers effectively colludes with this oppression and marginalisation.
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Indigenous research is a long-standing system of thought and action which includes ideas that are unusual to most Euro-Western researchers. Reflecting on this system and its ideas can be educational for Euro-Western researchers.
This book is informed by Indigenous research literature, interviews with some Euro-Western researchers who work with Indigenous researchers and direct contact with a small number of Indigenous researchers. However, I am not an expert on Indigenous research; only Indigenous researchers can be experts in their field. I am a student of Indigenous research methods and ethics, and I find that Indigenous researchers have much to teach me through their written and spoken words.
When I assert that reflecting on Indigenous research can be educational for Euro-Western researchers, I do not mean that Euro-Western researchers can learn to do Indigenous research. I would never attempt to conduct, or claim to have conducted, Indigenous research. Euro-Western researchers can think about such things as:
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a holistic style of thought and life which is very different from our ways of segmenting and compartmentalising;
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a different ontological and epistemological mindset which may shed useful light on our own;
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egalitarian methods which might be transferable to some types of research such as participatory or activist research;
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an approach to research ethics based on the Indigenous way of life and mindset which provides nourishing food for thought.
In the real world, ethical research requires an ongoing and active engagement with people and the environment around us. This book argues that research cannot be rendered ethical by completing a one-off administrative task, and explains why and how researchers and evaluators need to work in an ethical way throughout the research process. It advocates for a move away from the ‘do no harm’ ethical baseline inherited from biomedical research, and towards a social justice approach to research ethics. In doing this, it draws on both the Indigenous and Euro-Western research ethics literatures. The book also draws on interviews with researchers who have an interest in ethics, and a small number of meetings with Indigenous researchers. A further source is my own experience of learning about research ethics during my postgraduate studies for an MSc in Social Research Methods and later a PhD, and my efforts to act ethically in research practice in a wide variety of contexts since 1999.
Generally speaking, social researchers and evaluators are working to make the world a better place. Indigenous researchers acknowledge this (Smith, 2013: 91), and some Euro-Western researchers do too. However, there are economically driven pressures on Euro-Western researchers to stick with ‘do no harm’. This approach focuses on protecting the vulnerable, and so is easier and cheaper than the more proactive social justice approach that requires us to address the inequalities that create vulnerability (Williams, 2016: 545).
For researchers in Euro-Western societies, ‘truth’ is something that can be empirically verified (Alldred and Gillies, 2012: 142), while for researchers in Indigenous societies, ‘truth’ may exist in stories, experiences and relationships with ancestors (Chilisa, 2012: 116; Blackfoot Gallery Committee, 2013: 18).
Ethical work begins as soon as you think of a possible research question (Ball and Janyst, 2008: 33). Will that question lead to good-quality research with beneficial results? Could those results be misused by people with different agendas? There is an argument that, when planning research, it is ethically important to consider the potential impact of that research on more than just the participants (Alldred and Gillies, 2012: 141). What could the impact of research be on a community? A culture? On the ‘non-consenting others’ who are named and discussed in research encounters without their knowledge or consent (Mannay, 2016: 123)?
“One of the things about planning research is planning all the other stages and seeing what might lie ahead.”
Of course it is impossible to foresee every eventuality. The chapters that come later are intended to help researchers develop the necessary skills to manage the unforeseen ethical difficulties that can arise in even the best-planned research projects. It is worth reading the whole of Part II of this book, to sensitise yourself to potential pitfalls and help you to plan effectively. This chapter will give an overview by introducing you to the planning process and the key ethical considerations.
Good planning for research is itself an ethical imperative because it will help to prevent many ethical problems in the course of the project. This involves thinking through, as far as possible, every stage of the research.
“The planning phase is crucial because if you fail there the next steps are quite loose. I would say it is the most important; if the first plans are bad ones the next ones won’t be good either.”
Research ethics and integrity are growing in importance as academics face increasing pressure to win grants and publish, and universities promote themselves in the competitive HE market. Research Ethics in the Real World is the first book to highlight the links between research ethics and individual, social, professional, institutional, and political ethics. Drawing on Indigenous and Euro-Western research traditions, Helen Kara considers all stages of the research process, from the formulation of a research question to aftercare for participants, data and findings. She argues that knowledge of both ethical approaches is helpful for researchers working in either paradigm.
Students, academics, and research ethics experts from around the world contribute real-world perspectives on navigating and managing ethics in practice. Research Ethics in the Real World provides guidance for quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods researchers from all disciplines about how to act ethically throughout your research work. This book is invaluable in supporting teachers of research ethics to design and deliver effective courses.
Examination of the Euro-Western research literature shows that Euro-Western scholars seem happy to treat research ethics as though it exists in isolation, separate from other forms of ethics such as individual, social, professional, institutional or political ethics. A similar examination of the Indigenous research literature suggests that many Indigenous scholars do not make such a separation. I argue that this is one of the areas where Euro-Western researchers can learn from those Indigenous researchers. It seems to me that there are a number of nodes where individual, social, professional, institutional, political and research ethics coincide. Examples include research ethics regulation and evaluation research. In this chapter, I aim to explain and demonstrate these links with respect to research ethics regulation; in the next chapter I will perform a similar exercise with respect to evaluation research.
In the Euro-Western paradigm, research governance is the system of overseeing the ethical conduct of academic and professional researchers. This is a regulatory system that exists at institutional level within universities, health authorities and other organisations with staff who do research with human (or animal) participants. The principles on which the system is based are largely drawn from biomedical research. This can make it difficult to apply those principles effectively to research in the social sciences, arts and humanities (Israel, 2015: 45; Dingwall, 2016: 25). The research governance system is implemented by specific groups of people known as research ethics committees (RECs) in the UK, as institutional review boards (IRBs) in the US, and by other names elsewhere.
