1. ETHICS IN QUALITATIVE
RESEARCH
BY: FAROUQ AYIWOROH
UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH
EDRD6000 QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS
MARCH 15 TH 2013

2. LEARNING OUTCOME
• Brief Overview of Qualitative Research
• Know key Unethical Qualitative Researches
Conducted
• Understand key Ethical Issues & Principles in
Qualitative Research

3. HANCOCK (1998) ARGUES THAT
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH INVOLVES
THE FOLLOWING
• Understanding opinions, experiences, feelings of individuals or
communities to produce subjective data to make generalizations
• Exploring social phenomenon or issues by examining people or
communities in their natural settings
• Describing cultures, social stratifications and social groups in their
natural settings
• Exploring relationships between individuals or communities, cultural
norms, and economic and political ideas

4. MAJOR TYPES OF QUALITATIVE
RESEARCH DESIGNS
• Phenomenology - literally, the study of phenomena; describing
situations or something that exists as part of our world
• Ethnography - the scientific study of human social phenomena and
communities, involves the descriptive study of culture and people,
traditions and norms as they are in specific geographical locations
• Grounded theory - using empirical data without preconceived
theories, involves the development of new theories by collecting and
analysis of data about a phenomenon
• Case study - in-depth study of a particular situation or an intensive
analysis of an individual unit
(Hancock, 1998)

5. CORE RESEARCH ETHICAL PRINCIPLES
& ISSUES
Core ethical principles and issues of qualitative research include
respect to persons, concern for welfare, informed consent
process, confidentiality and anonymity, and privacy (Orb,
Eisenhauer & Wynaden, 2001; Tri-Council Policy Statement:
Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans, 2010)

6. QUALITATIVE RESEARCH ETHICAL
PRINCIPLES & ISSUES
• Informed • Confidentiality
Consent
Process
Respect
Beneficence
for Persons
Concern for
Justice
Welfare
• Privacy • Anonymity

7. ACCORDING TO ORB, EISENHAUER &
WYNADEN (2001)
Ethics in qualitative research involves avoiding harm
in research. Qualitative researchers are responsible
for ensuring that they adhere to the guidelines of
ethical principles and issues of their research

8. SOME KEY UNETHICAL ISSUES IN
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH HISTORY
• Tuskegee Syphilis Study of 1932 to 1972 (Orb, Eisenhauer &
Wynaden, 2001)
• Nuremberg Code of 1946 to 1949 (Fouka & Mantzorou, 2011)
• Milgram’s Obedience Experiment; 1963

9. RESPECT FOR PEOPLE OR
PARTICIPANTS
• Recognition and ensuring participants right to informed consent,
consent may be given in written format, verbally and audio-taped, or
videotaped
• Informed Consent is a procedure by which participants choose
whether or not to participate in a research, consent is ongoing, can
be revoked at any time during the research or study
• Consent is direct when the agreement is obtained directly from the
participants. It is indirect or third party when it is given by someone
other than the person to be involved in the research study
(Orb, Eisenhauer & Wynaden, 2001)

10. ELEMENTS OF CONSENT; CAPACITY,
INFORMATION, AND VOLUNTARINESS
(FOUKA & MANTZOROU, 2011)
• Capacity: participants ability to acquire, retain, and evaluate
information; participants are deemed competent or
incompetent based on their capacity
• Information: effectively communicated to participants, both
substance and manner. Consent must be written in the
language that participants can understand
• Voluntariness: participants ability to exercise the free power
of choice without the intervention of force, fraud, deceit,
duress, or other forms of constraint or coercion; any undue
influence would violate the principle of voluntariness

11. BENEFICENCE & CONCERN FOR
WELFARE OF PARTICIPANTS
• Beneficence as an ethical principle in qualitative research
means preventing harm and doing good for others in
research (Orb, Eisenhauer & Wynaden (2001)
• Beneficence and Welfare of participants include issues
such as the impact of the research on participants
physically, psychological, spiritually, economic, and socially
(Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for
Research Involving Humans, 2010)

12. PRIVACY, CONFIDENTIALITY, &
ANONYMITY
• Privacy, confidentiality, and anonymity issues
are closely connected with concern for welfare
of participants
• Privacy, confidentiality, and anonymity have
become an increasingly valued right in
qualitative research (Richards & Schwartz,
2002)

13. DEALING WITH PRIVACY,
CONFIDENTIALITY, & ANONYMITY
• Maintaining the principle of beneficence and concern for
welfare of participants means that researchers must be
aware of the potential consequences of revealing
participants’ identities
• The use of pseudonyms is recommended when dealing
with confidentiality and anonymity
• Total privacy is virtually nonexistent so participants are
required on occasion to yield a certain amount of privacy
for one reason or another

14. FAIRNESS & EQUITY IN QUALITATIVE
RESEARCH
• Researchers shall not exclude participants in a qualitative
research on the basis of their ethnicity, gender, race,
culture, age, or sexual orientation
• Qualitative researchers are required to address the fair
inclusion or exclusion of individuals and equitable
treatment of participants
(Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research
Involving Humans, 2010)

15. COMMENTS ON QUALITATIVE
RESEARCH ETHICS
• Qualitative researchers need to handle capacity, a key component of
informed consent carefully because the age of majority depends on where
the research is being done. For example the age of majority in Canada is
different from other countries. In Ontario the legal age of driving a motor
vehicle is lower in rural communities
• You are doing a study on teenage pregnancies in Congo, Africa. You find that
many of the young women you interview bring up stories of sexual trauma
they have experienced, including rape. There are instances that the interview
became upsetting to both you and the participant. Your research ethics board
has already approved your informed consent form to talks about the risk of
feeling uncomfortable with some of the questions. But the responses are
overwhelming than you expected. What do you do? Should you stop the
interviews and revise your consent form or should you report this to the
research ethics board?

16. CONCLUSION
• Power and relationship issues between researchers and
participants are primary to consider in qualitative research
• Qualitative researchers are responsible for ethical principles
and issues of their research
• Qualitative researchers need to know their participants, know
what risk are involved and how to minimize them
• Key qualitative research principles and issues are intertwined; if
you are in doubt contact your research ethics board (REB)
• Key qualitative ethical principles and issue include Respect for
Persons, Concern for Welfare, Beneficence, Justice, Informed
consent, Privacy and Anonymity, and Confidentiality

17. REFERENCES
Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for
Research Involving Humans. (December 2010)
Hancock, B. (1998). Trent Focus for Research and Development in Primary Health Care: An Introduction to
Qualitative Research. Trent Focus
Georgia Fouka, G., Mantzorou, M. (2011).What are the Major Ethical Issues in Conducting Research? Is there a
Conflict between the Research Ethics and the Nature of Nursing? Health Science Journal Volume 5, Issue 1.
pp:3-14 E-ISSN:1791-809X
Orb, A., Eisenhauer, L., Wynaden, D. (2001). Ethics in Qualitative Research: Journal of Nursing Scholarship.
33:1, 93-96
Richards, H.M,. Schwartz, L.J. (2002). Ethics in qualitative research: are there special issues for health care
services research? Family practice; Volume 19. No. 2. pp. 135 – 139
How important are ethics in our society image retrieved from:
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Joy of tech image, code of ethics logo, ethical research logo from: https://www.google.ca: Google images