Research
Reflections |
Monday 8 May
Ethical Reflection – Carnegie leads on thinking through ethics in research with children
Anyone who was worried that research ethics had become just a matter of filling forms would have been reassured by Carnegie’s invigorating conference on ethics in researching with children, on 6th April. With representation from each Faculty we learned from the ethical dilemmas colleagues had faced in pursuing their research. We even persuaded ourselves that members of those awful ethics committees might share similar interests and concerns. Clearly legal liability is an important concern in an increasingly litigious culture, but the more pressing imperative should be our own desire to be ethically responsible researchers. We considered the vexed issue of informed consent, and tried to weigh costs and benefits - in terms of policy and practice/treatment, and in terms of harm, but to whom?
So are children any different from others we might involve in our research? The potential for harm is related to the vulnerability of the people concerned. We tend to presume that children need protection, but they may shrug off our concerns and remain untouched by encounters with research and researchers. Set against the potential for harm is the right to be heard in a policy arena that may otherwise be deaf to the voices of children.
Jonathan Long
Director, Carnegie Research Institute
