Ethical commitments and dilemmas in research with children and families

Situated ethics in practice research

Abstract

Research organized in close collaboration with participants and conducted in the contexts of everyday life poses several ethical dilemmas for the researcher throughout the research process. Considerations related to, for example, informed consent, data storage and processing, and anonymization issues are important as-pects of research ethics, but address only some of the ethical questions that may arise in research. Moreover, these are more procedural aspects of ethics, which often dominate in the early stages of a research project and, in many cases, are not sufficient as guidelines when researchers need to make concrete assessments and decisions about ethical challenges at various points in the research process. Ethical dilemmas arise precisely from situations where the researcher is in doubt, becomes uncertain about what the right decision is, and/or experiences conflicting emotions or inclinations to act. Ethical questions also arise throughout the research process; from formulating the research question, initiating empirical work, leaving the field, and conducting analyses to publishing them. In the article, we discuss formulating ethical commitments that can guide such reflection and decision-making processes throughout the research process. Ethical commitments are overarching ethical ob-ligations that one undertakes to work with in one's research, and at the same time anchored in the specific research project's methodology, theoretical framework, as well as the field and issues one is working on. In the article, we discuss how ethical commitments can contribute to reflecting on how ethical dilemmas can be handled throughout the research process. We draw on examples from two research projects on the everyday lives of children and parents, which in various ways have involved ethical dilemmas in research collaboration.

Keywords:

Situated Ethics, Collaborative research, Ethical dilemmas, Ethical commitments, Young children and families, Co-researcher