By Kate Morioka, Research Project Manager
As a social researcher carrying out research in Melanesia, I question the so called ‘research ethics’ defined and applied by academics from the Western world.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe that the safety of participants is paramount to any human research.
What I don’t believe in are researchers in Western countries making decisions about what is ethical and what is not for people in developing countries.
At a recent ACFID workshop on research ethics, a large majority of organisations in the room supported the need for an ethics review committee for the Australian development sector. There have been two previous attempts to establish such a committee for Australian NGOs conducting social research in developing countries.
As a product of Western university system, I am fairly familiar with the process of obtaining ethical clearance for studies involving ‘human subjects’. The process is cumbersome and lengthy but it forces us to think conceptually and pragmatically about our research methodology and how to protect participants from potential harm.
For NGOs conducting human research with Australian Government funding, they must obtain approval from a relevant ethics review committee – either from a research institution in Australia or if there is one, from a national research institute in the country where the study is being conducted.
For research that is not funded by the Australian Government, it’s up to the NGO conducting the research as to whether they seek ethics approval or not.
Now you may be thinking “NGO research, like academic research, should also go through an ethics review process – otherwise how do we know that they are conducted ethically?” This is a valid question but I don’t think it is the right question to be asking.
I strongly believe that before we hastily establish an ethics review committee, we need to critically reflect on our view of research ethics, which is essentially grounded in Western science. We have a tendency to engross ourselves in the discourse of ethics but rarely do we question it, nor do we ask the very people we are trying to safeguard about whether they think what we are doing to them are ethical. We rarely stop and ask ourselves the following questions:
From who’s perspective are we defining ethics?
Who decides what is ethical and what is not for the research participants, who are likely to be from vulnerable populations?
To what extent are we exercising power and control over the participants?
How do we know that the risk management strategies we put in place really protect the safety of the participants?
What assumptions do we bring into our understanding of ethics?
It’s time to reflect and rethink our understanding of ethics, and take a long hard look at ourselves and our biases. We may be doing more harm than good by enforcing our view of research ethics onto the very people we are trying to protect.
