Drawing on a discourse analysis of emotions in national human research ethics guidelines from Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom and United States, I argue that such guidelines treat emotions as superfluous, harmful, risky and threats to rational decision-making. Such uncritical appreciation of emotions sees instructions to show ‘respect’ position non-Western participants as ‘the other’, sees directives to consider ‘emotional welfare’ undermine the autonomy of people from ostensibly vulnerable groups, and risks undermining qualitative research’s cathartic potential. These findings underpin a call to revise guidelines to position emotions as part of everyday life; and to encourage researchers to adopt embodied, caring and emotionally reflexive approaches to human research, where researchers draw on guidelines and emotions in deciding how to produce ethical research.
Researchers worldwide are increasingly looking to recruit research participants via social media (particularly @Facebook and @Twitter) because they appear to offer access to a wider range of research participants and afford inherently convenient tools for recruitment. In Australia, the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research, together with the federal Privacy law and a number of state-based privacy statutes, provide support and guidance for this novel approach. This article offers a preliminary analysis and discussion of this trend from an Australian perspective, illustrated by an enquiry into the ethical challenges posed by social media-based recruitment, conducted in an Australian university in 2015. Leximancer™ was used as an analytical tool and the content from social media sites used for a small number of research studies conducted up to 2015, taken in conjunction with the various national human research ethics guidelines, offered a means of understanding how ethical challenges of privacy and anonymity can be addressed for responsible social media-based research.
Researchers worldwide are increasingly looking to recruit research participants via social media (particularly @Facebook and @Twitter) because they appear to offer access to a wider range of research participants and afford inherently convenient tools for recruitment. In Australia, the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research, together with the federal Privacy law and a number of state-based privacy statutes, provide support and guidance for this novel approach. This article offers a preliminary analysis and discussion of this trend from an Australian perspective, illustrated by an enquiry into the ethical challenges posed by social media-based recruitment, conducted in an Australian university in 2015. Leximancer™ was used as an analytical tool and the content from social media sites used for a small number of research studies conducted up to 2015, taken in conjunction with the various national human research ethics guidelines, offered a means of understanding how ethical challenges of privacy and anonymity can be addressed for responsible social media-based research.
Heterogeneity of Human Research Ethics Committees and Research Governance Offices across Australia: An observational study