Incentives for Research Participation: Policy and Practice From Canadian Corrections

Matheson, Flora I.; Forrester, Pamela; Brazil, Amanda; Doherty, Sherri; Affleck, Lindy

doi:10.2105/ajph.2012.300685

Cited by 11 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Former prisoners made up the majority of participants, representing a marginalized group that suffers widespread social stigmatization 4 (Goffman, 1963; Wacquant, 2009). Furthermore, prisoners have historically been subjected to violent, inhumane and dangerous participation in research studies (Atkinson, 2014; Hornblum, 1997; Matheson et al, 2012). Canadian researchers are bound by national research councils to tread carefully in their interactions with vulnerable populations such as prisoners, in order to avoid replicating or contributing to the marginalization of these groups 5 (see Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans, 2010).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sport in the underlife of a total institution: Social control and resistance in Canadian prisons

Norman

2015

International Review for the Sociology of Sport

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While it is clear from a small body of scholarly literature that sport and physical activity play important roles in the daily lives of many inmates in diverse prison contexts around the world, there remains relatively little research that sociologically explores the significance of these physical practices in correctional environments. This paper helps to address this gap by examining one of the key tensions in prison sport: its deployment by corrections policymakers and administrators as a form of social control and its simultaneous use by prisoners as a vehicle for resistance and subversion. Situating the research in Goffman’s concept of the total institution, the paper explores how prisoners, though stripped of many resources for self presentation and collective subversion, refashion sport activities, materials, and spaces to their own purposes – and, in doing so, how they resist, in a limited fashion, the prison’s social control aims. More broadly, these findings point to the potential social significance of sport and physical activity as vehicles for the limited expression of agency in situations of extreme deprivation or imposing disciplinary regimes.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sport in the underlife of a total institution: Social control and resistance in Canadian prisons

Norman

2015

International Review for the Sociology of Sport

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“…It is likely different jurisdictions have different rules. Recent arguments have been made that people in prison have the same right to receive recompense for their time and lost wages as other community members and that participant incentives for prisoners is a socially just practice (Matheson, Forrester, Brazil, Doherty, & Affleck, 2012).…”

Section: Consent and Coercionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Scoping Review of Qualitative Research Methods Used With People in Prison

Abbott

DiGiacomo

Magin

et al. 2018

International Journal of Qualitative Methods

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Researchers undertaking qualitative interview and focus group research with people in prison must consider the research methods they use, given the ethical and practical complexities of prison-based research. In particular, there are explicit and implicit coercion risks and barriers to access, privacy, and confidentiality. To examine how the challenges of conducting rigorous qualitative research with prisoners were handled, we undertook a scoping review of recruitment and data collection processes reported in qualitative research with prisoners. We searched for peer-reviewed articles of qualitative interview and focus group research with adult prisoners, published in the English language from 2005 to 2017, using MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, and CINAHL databases. There were 142 articles reporting on 126 studies which met the review inclusion criteria. Challenges related to coercion risk, participant recruitment, sampling, confidentiality, privacy, and working with prison-based intermediaries should be explicitly addressed and reported. Our findings highlight key considerations and contextualized strategies for recruitment and data collection for researchers who seek to conduct rigorous and ethical qualitative research with prisoners.

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“…This varies by jurisdiction with some allowing incentives on a case by case basis and others allowing incentives for people under community supervision, but not for those in custody. Matheson and colleagues argue that not offering incentives may discriminate between prisoners and other non-prisoner research participants who do receive incentives for the same or similar studies [ 15 ].…”

Section: Main Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Ontario, the MCSCS research guidelines state that researchers must submit a proposal to the Correctional Services Research Committee that will be evaluated on the basis of such things as the “… potential value of the project to Correctional Services and the Ministry” and “imposition on the host site(s) in terms of disruption to Correctional Services”, but provide very little tangible guidance for researchers [ 14 ]. For example, while conducting a study designed to understand the health-related challenges of imprisoned women returning to their communities in Canada, one of us (Matheson) identified barriers to participant recruitment related to restrictions on the use of incentives for research participants in prisons and under community supervision [ 15 ]. Matheson and colleagues found no national standards for how researchers should design and use incentives for prisoners to participate in research, and found that policies and practices vary across Canada.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethics of health research with prisoners in Canada

Silva¹,

Matheson²,

Lavery³

2017

BMC Med Ethics

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BackgroundDespite the growing recognition for the need to improve the health of prisoners in Canada and the need for health research, there has been little discussion of the ethical issues with regards to health research with prisoners in Canada. The purpose of this paper is to encourage a national conversation about what it means to conduct ethically sound health research with prisoners given the current realities of the Canadian system. Lessons from the Canadian system could presumably apply in other jurisdictions.Main textAny discussion regarding research ethics with Canadian prisoners must begin by first taking into account the disproportionate number of Indigenous prisoners (e.g., 22–25% of prisoners are Indigenous, while representing approximately 3% of the general Canadian population) and the high proportion of prisoners suffering from mental illnesses (e.g., 45% of males and 69% of female inmates required mental health interventions while in custody). The main ethical challenges that researchers must navigate are (a) the power imbalances between them, the correctional services staff, and the prisoners, and the effects this has on obtaining voluntary consent to research; and (b), the various challenges associated to protecting the privacy and confidentiality of study participants who are prisoners. In order to solve these challenges, a first step would be to develop clear and transparent processes for ethical health research, which ought to be informed by multiple stakeholders, including prisoners, the correctional services staff, and researchers themselves.ConclusionStakeholder and community engagement ought to occur in Canada with regards to ethical health research with prisoners that should also include consultation with various parties, including prisoners, correctional services staff, and researchers. It is important that national and provincial research ethics organizations examine the sufficiency of existing research ethics guidance and, where there are gaps, to develop guidelines and help craft policy.

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Incentives for Research Participation: Policy and Practice From Canadian Corrections

Cited by 11 publications

References 12 publications

Sport in the underlife of a total institution: Social control and resistance in Canadian prisons

Sport in the underlife of a total institution: Social control and resistance in Canadian prisons

A Scoping Review of Qualitative Research Methods Used With People in Prison

Ethics of health research with prisoners in Canada

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