• Question: How will you ensure that your research is ethical?

    Asked by anon-184172 to Tom, sarahhodge, Owen, Nathan, Lorna, Abbie on 7 Nov 2018. This question was also asked by anon-184179.
    • Photo: Abbie Jordan

      Abbie Jordan answered on 7 Nov 2018:

      This is an important question. There are lots of things we have to do to ensure that our research is ethical. For example, in our university, we have to submit an ethical application to our departmental ethical committee. To do this we have to explain what we want to do, why, who we are studying, what our participants will have to do, how we will manage consent (agreement to take part) and any risks to the participants. We have to think carefully about what those risks might be and how to manage them. So I ask young people about their experiences of ongoing pain and its impact on their lives. A risk might be that taking part in an interview with me might make them feel sad. I would have to think about how I would manage that. So I would suggest things in my application form to the committee like offering to stop the interview to take a break or stop completely (at the choice of the participant) and making sure that we give all participants links to good sources of support that they can contact after the study if they wish to.

      Consent is a big issue and an even bigger one in research with children as we need to think about making sure children know what they are agreeing (consenting to) in terms of taking part of the study but also making sure their parents give consent for their child to take part in the study. That makes for a lot of consent forms and complicated procedures if studies are online (e.g. having to get online consent from the parent before asking the child to give consent and take part in the study). It’s important though.

      If you are doing research in NHS settings as I do, we also have to get ethical permission from an NHS ethical committee. This is a big form that takes a long time to complete! Once we have written it, we submit online and then answer some queries. It then goes to a committee to be considered and they we sometimes have to go to a meeting to answer questions about the application. It is very strict and rightly so of course.

    • Photo: Nathan Hook

      Nathan Hook answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      I follow the British psychological society code of ethics. In addition I discuss and present my work with others at my university for their feedback, which includes ethics.

      Because my research is done online remotely, participants actively consent by taking part and can simply leave at any point. They can also do the experiment and they not submit their data, if they want to.

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