“The practical and ethical strengths and challenges that community-based staff or fieldworkers face can differ according to how embedded they are in research communities.”
The authors recognize the benefits of involving community members in research projects but raise recommendations of support structures required to minimize the range of ethical and practical problems, which could be encountered by involved community members.
Such structures include:
- participatory training including a focus on what health research is and how participants’ rights are protected in research.
- quality supervision to include access to counsellors.
- professionalization of field work including consideration of level and form of remuneration, career directions and training needs.
- separating recruitment from interactions with close social networks
- careful attention to open and transparent recruitment process
- attention to the relationship between staff group and research coordinators/principal investigators.
Available from:
The American Journal of Bioethics, 10: 3, 24 — 26, First published on: 12 March 2010 (iFirst) http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15265161003708623