Community Members Employed on Research Projects Face Crucial, Often Under-Recognized, Ethical Dilemmas | Sassy Molyneux, Dorcas Kamuya, Vicki Marsh (2010)
“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.
Read the full article here
Evolving friendships and shifting ethical dilemmas: fieldworkers’ experiences in a short term community based study in Kenya. | Dorcas M. Kamuya, Sally J. Theobald, Patrick K. Munywoki, Dorothy Koech, Wenzel P. Geissler and Sassy C. Molyneux
“Field workers (FW) are community members employed by research teams to support access to participants, address language barriers, and advise on culturally appropriate research conduct. The critical role that FWs play in studies, and the range of practical and ethical dilemmas associated with their involvement, is increasingly recognized…..
While the precise issues that FWs face are likely to depend on the type of research and the context in which that research is being conducted, we argue that appropriate support for fieldworkers is a key requirement to strengthen ethical research practice and for the long term sustainability of research programmes.”
In this paper, the authors draw on qualitative observation and interview data collected alongside a six month basic science study which involved a team of Field Workers regularly visiting 47 participating households in their homes. The qualitative study documented how relationships between field workers and research participants were initiated, developed and evolved over the course of the study, the shifting dilemmas Field Workers faced and how they handled them.
Read the full article here
Experiencing everyday ethics in context: frontline data collectors perspectives and practices of bioethics | Patricia Kingori
‘ …although the principle of autonomy has dominated discussions of bioethics and gaining informed consent seen as a central facet of ethical research by many research institutions, for data collectors this principle was seldom the most important marker of their ethical practice. Instead, data collectors were concerned with remedying the dilemmas they encountered through enacting their own interpretations of justice and beneficence and imposing their own agency on the circumstances they experienced. Their practice of bioethics demonstrates their contribution to the conduct of research and the shortcomings of an over-emphasis on autonomy.’
Data collectors play a vital role in producing scientific knowledge. They are also an important component in understanding the practice of bioethics. Yet, very little attention has been given to their everyday experiences or the context in which they are expected to undertake these tasks. This paper argues that while there has been extensive philosophical attention given to ’the what’ and ‘the why’ in bioethics – what action is taken place and why – these should be considered along ‘the who’ – who are the individuals tasked with bioethics and what can their insights bring to macro-level and abstract discussions of bioethics.
Read the full article here