After the Ethical Approval Form: Ethical considerations of working in research teams

This guide, written by Hazel Burke for the National Centre for Research Methods at the University of Manchester, looks at the ethical considerations of research beyond the approval form. The guide focuses on some of the issues around ethics within the research team and suggests some helpful approaches to ethical working relationships.

Excerpt

"All team members should be aware of ethics within the research team and should all feel able to raise any concerns with colleagues. Though all team members have a responsibility to reflect on the ethical implications of their actions, there may be occasions where researchers and junior team members feel less confident about raising these issues. Researchers might feel they are in a more precarious position: they are usually less experienced and on temporary contracts which may make them less confident about “rocking the boat”. They are also usually the team members working most closely with research participants, at the complicated interface between what counts as ethical on an approval form or in a team meeting and what feels ethical in practice. Note that there are two types of ethical concerns that a researcher should be aware of: ones that might have negative effects for research participants and ones that might have negative effects for the researcher themselves."