Ethical Conduct of Research
Ethical Conduct of Research
power point from this document, 15 slides
Introduction
Depending on the context of the study, researchers often encounter ethical dilemmas that are associated with respect for privacy, establishment of honest and open interactions, and avoidance of misrepresentation. From an ethical standpoint, such challenging circumstances may surface if researchers are grappling with conflicting issues and have to choose between different methodological approaches in complex circumstances. In such circumstances, disagreements among different components including participants, researchers, researchers’ disciplines, the financing organization, and the society might be inevitable. Therefore, there are numerous ethical concerns that should be taken into account when undertaking studies that deal with human subjects. Understanding ethical principles can guide researchers to conduct studies that safeguard the wellbeing of human subjects.
Overview of the Research
In a research work titled Resilience of People Living with HIV/AIDS in Indonesia: a Phenomenological Study, Kumboyono et al. (2018) observe that HIV/ AIDS is among the most prevalent and expanding communicable diseases on the planet. The number of individuals who are diagnosed with HIV/AIDS continues to skyrocket every year in Indonesia and other parts of the world. According to Kumboyono et al. (2018), individuals who suffer from HIV/AIDS often plunge themselves into a series of crises, which indicate the challenges of living with the chronic pathological condition. As such, resilience is one distinct phenomenon that is common among persons living with the diseases Indonesia, a pattern that indicates the results of current health management and expectations of HIV/AIDS patients for better and improved health outcomes. In light of this concern, Kumboyono et al. (2018) undertook a study that sought to examine the mechanism of resilience in Indonesian people living with HIV/AIDS and the factors that influence their specific mechanisms.
Using qualitative phenomenological design, the researchers sampled a total of 27 people living with HIV/AIDS from a primary health care institution in Malang City, East Java, Indonesia. The participants were selected from different socioeconomic, gender, and sexual orientations. The researchers informed participants about the conduct and processes involved in the study, resulting in their consent to participate in the interview process. The findings of the study indicated that the diagnosis of HIV/AIDS reflects the onset of psychological and social distress. Moreover, Kumbomoyo et al. (2018) found that the spiritual response that follows diagnosis is a state that is characterized by crises. As a consequence, the coping strategies and understanding of life by HIV patients is a definite sign on resilience. Based on these findings, Kumbomoyo et al. (2018) infer that HIV/AIDS is a chronic infection that has the potential to induce the unique mechanism of resilience within the Indonesian social system. Therefore, future health and management of persons living with HIV/ AIDS will be needed to enhance and encourage this strategy to guide persons living with HIV into a more comfortable and healthy way of life.
Ethical Issues in Research
The relationships and interactions established between the researcher and participants in a study can potentially generate a wide range of varying ethical issues. While ethical codes, policies and principles are highly significant and beneficial, like any set of norms, they do not cater for all situations. Thus, they often have a high potentiality of conflicting. Nonetheless, the vast majority of decisions often entail the straightforward application of ethical codes and practices. Ethics is one of the most important issues that are commonly mentioned by educators in the scientific community. Ethical misconducts most commonly stem from environmental and individual causes. For instance, when people who are morally weak or unaware of the rules participate in research, ethical violations are bound to occur. Thus, many significant forms of the ethical deviations that are observed in many scientific studies are attributed to the fact that some researchers are oblivious of the ethical norms of scientific research.
Protection of Human Rights
The most important ethical principles in research focus on protecting human rights when dealing with human subjects. Principles of protection of human rights during research emerged out of a dark history that was littered with accounts of abuses undertaken in the name of medical research. One of the most dreadful of these atrocities were undertaken by the Nazi physicians who utilized convicts for human experimentation (Avasthi et al. 2013). The unearthing of these experiments sent ripples of shock across the world, a situation that resulted in the development of the Nuremberg Code to deter recurrence of similar episodes. The Nuremberg Code was the first international code of ethics in clinical research that laid down the guidelines for research dealing with human subjects. This policy made laid down principles, guidelines and standards to be followed by researchers and make voluntary consent essential, allowed subjects withdraw from the experimentation at any time, banned experiments that could lead to major injuries or fatalities of the subjects, and made it mandatory to have preclinical data prior to the experimentation of humans. However, the Nuremberg Code failed to end unethical practices conducted by certain researchers (Avasthi et al. 2013). As a consequence, a collection of guidelines was developed by the 18th World Medical Association General Assembly, also referred to as the Declaration of Helsinki.
The Helsinki Declaration had a collection of principles, which emphasize on informed consent, confidentiality of data, vulnerable populations, and requirements of a protocol, including the scientific justifications for the study. All researches had to be reviewed based on these standards by the ethics committee for a research to be declared as ethically fit (Avasthi et al. 2013). However, it is during the time of the Helsinki Declaration that other major scandals continued such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment in the United States. This malpractice raised concerns in the ethics community, thereby resulting in the establishment of the Belmont Report in 1979. The Belmont Report established the modern regulations and human rights principles associated with research dealing with human subjects in the United States and other parts of the world (Avasthi et al. 2013). Nonetheless, with the growing interest in pharmaceutical, health, and psychological research in the developing and the underdeveloped nations, the Council for International Organization of Medical Sciences, in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other health researchers designed the International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects in 1982 (Avasthi et al. 2013). Thereafter, other professional research organizations such as the American Psychological Organization (APA), have designed similar standards that relate to protection of human rights in studies that deal with human subjects.
The Five Human Rights that Must Be Protected
