Field Experiments in the Global South: Assessing Risks, Localizing Benefits, and Addressing Positionality

Navigating “Insider” and “Outsider” Status as Researchers Conducting Field Experiments

“…14. See also Herman et al (2009) for an in-depth treatment on how to promote the well-being of vulnerable populations participating in field research. …”

What, Where, Who, and Why? An Empirical Investigation of Positionality in Political Science Field Experiments

“…Three main sets of issues are explicitly associated with the location of field experiments: (1) the often-unacknowledged power relationships between experimenters and subjects of research; (2) relatedly, the North-South hierarchies embedded in the knowledge-production process that are exacerbated by the high costs associated with field experiments; and (3) siteselection bias and geographical clustering of field experimentation. The first issue usually emphasizes the fact that the randomization "in the tropics" conducted by Western researchers from wealthy institutions on poor subjects may not always meet full ethical standards (Cronin-Furman and Lake 2018; Herman et al 2022;McDermott and Hatemi 2020). A Nobel Prize-winning social scientist noted "…nearly all RCTs on the welfare system are done by better-heeled, better-educated, and paler people on lower-income, less-educated, and darker people" (Deaton 2020, 21).…”

Safeguarding research staff “in the field”: a blind spot in ethics guidelines

“…Unequal power dynamics between research partners from HICs and LMICs are an inherent ethical challenge in the majority of research collaborations (Herman et al, 2022; Schroeder et al, 2018). Institutions and individuals from HICs dominate most parts of the research process by setting the agenda, defining methods and tools, owning the data and often having the sole right to the data collected (Odjidja, 2021; Trisos et al, 2021).…”