Ethical Issues

Ethical challenges often arise within research, particularly when conducting research in a field or community context where multiple factors may be present. Increasingly these ethical considerations are being identified and recognized by research institutes, but ensuring adequate training and safeguarding for staff within their research contexts may vary, and each individual research staff member will have their own experiences.

Ethical challenges may include role conflicts (particularly within resource poor contexts and with perceived obligations beyond the lifespan of the research), feelings of guilt (related to structural inequalities between researchers and research participants), emotional distress (particularly related to participants within disaster or trauma contexts), physical safety risks (when in unfamiliar contexts), political repression and persecution, sexual harassment (particularly for female researchers within paternalistic contexts), inadequate working conditions, discriminatory power imbalances within multinational research teams, and applicability of ethical policies and guidelines within different contexts. (Steinart, et al,2021)

In this section we aim to highlight these ethical contexts, provide commentary and resources, and referrals to trainings, webinars and other resources relevant to this context for fieldwork researchers.