Enhancing ethics review of social and behavioral research : developing a review template in Ethiopia
Date
2019-08-09
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Sage
Abstract
Background: Africa is increasingly becoming an important region for health research, mainly due to its heavy burden of disease, socioeconomic challenges, and inadequate health
facilities. Regulatory capacities, in terms of ethical review processes, are also generally weak.
The ethical assessment of social and behavioral research is relatively neglected compared
to the review of biomedical and clinical studies, which led us to develop an ethics review assessment tool for use in the review of social and behavioral research in Ethiopia, which
could potentially be of value in low- and middle-income settings.
Methods: Initially, we did a comprehensive literature review on principles, guidelines, and
practices of research ethics, on social and behavioral studies, from which we extracted query
terms to explore the opinions of selected key informants and focus groups in Ethiopia.
The discussants and informants were selected using a convenience sampling method to
evaluate an ethics review template, which integrated issues that commonly arise in social
and behavioral studies. Finally, we directly solicited opinions from the discussants about the
desirability, feasibility, acceptability, and relevance of the ethics review assessment tool and
used the resulting data to refine our initial draft.
Results and conclusion: Although the same basic ethics principles govern all research
studies, social and behavioral research have some disciplinary particularities that may require
reviewers to exercise a different orientation of ethical attention in some cases. Using a
qualitative approach, we developed a review assessment tool that could potentially be useful
to raise awareness, focus attention, and strengthen the review of social and behavioral
studies by ethics review committees, particularly in settings without a long-standing tradition
of reviewing such research. This process also exposed some areas where further capacity
building and discussion of ethical issues may be necessary among stakeholders in the review
of social and behavioral research.
Description
CITATION: Wassie, L. et al. 2019. Enhancing ethics review of social and behavioral research : developing a review template in Ethiopia. Research Ethics, 15(3-4):1–23, doi:10.1177/1747016119865731.
The original publication is available at https://journals.sagepub.com/home/rea
The original publication is available at https://journals.sagepub.com/home/rea
Keywords
Psychology -- Research -- Moral and ethical aspects -- Ethiopia, Social sciences -- Research -- Moral and ethical aspects -- Ethiopia, Research -- Moral and ethical aspects -- Ethiopia
Citation
Wassie, L. et al. 2019. Enhancing ethics review of social and behavioral research : developing a review template in Ethiopia. Research Ethics, 15(3-4):1–23, doi:10.1177/1747016119865731.