Research ethics in practice: An analysis of ethical issues encountered in qualitative health research with mental health service users and relatives

Abstract

The ethics review of qualitative health research poses various challenges that are due to a mismatch between the current practice of ethics review and the nature of qualitative methodology. The process of obtaining ethics approval for a study by a research ethics committee before the start of a research study has been described as “procedural ethics” and the identification and handling of ethical issues by researchers during the research process as “ethics in practice.” While some authors dispute and other authors defend the use of procedural ethics in relation to qualitative health research, there is general agreement that it needs to be supplemented with ethics in practice. This article aims to provide an illustration of research ethics in practice by reflecting on the ways in which we identified and addressed ethical and methodological issues that arose in the context of an interview study with mental health service users and relatives. We describe the challenges we faced and the solutions we found in relation to the potential vulnerability of research participants, the voluntariness of consent, the increase of participant access and the heterogeneity of the sample, the protection of privacy and internal confidentiality, and the consideration of personal and contextual factors.

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“…We selected the research instruments validity and reliability (Lehmann et al, 2023), appropriateness for the study population (Taherdoost, 2022), feasibility and practicality (McLeod, 2021). At the same time, conducting the research, we ensured that the use of research instruments meets the ethical standards and safeguards the rights of participants (Arellano et al, 2023;Potthoff et al, 2023). It is necessary to state that all the research instruments were selected to directly address these questions and designed with the items that reliably capture the participants' attitudes and beliefs on the problem.…”

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“…Still, other authors envisage a more positive role for RECs in the ethics review of qualitative health research. They have contended that the differences between quantitative and qualitative methods and the challenges inherent in the ethics review of qualitative health research have been overstated and that qualitative health research must be subject to ethics review by an independent research committee (Jennings, 2012; Potthoff et al, 2023; Wassenaar and Mamotte, 2012). These authors also proposed models that aim to address the identified challenges and increase the competence of RECs in the review of proposals that include qualitative methodologies.…”