Being Ethical in a Context with Limited Ethics Oversight: A Study on Flooding Risk Management by Local Governments in India

Abstract

2018 N Subramanyam. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Les éditeurs suivront les recommandations et les procédures décrites dans le Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors de COPE. Plus précisément, ils travaillent pour s'assurer des plus hautes normes éthiques de la publication, y compris l'identification et la gestion des conflits d'intérêts (pour les éditeurs et pour les auteurs), la juste évaluation des manuscrits et la publication de manuscrits qui répondent aux normes d'excellence de la revue.

The Case for Local Ethics Oversight in International Development Research

“…In arguing for local ethics oversight, some circumstances make it such that approval for research is impossible to obtain (e.g., lack of local capacity in a given research area, absence of any local REC) or may result in objectively crucial and timely research being denied based on biases or for political reasons [31]. Similarly, ongoing oversight may also prove challenging.…”

Ethical Challenges Faced by Development Researchers in Low and Middle-Income Countries

“…North-South power dynamics between researchers and study participants call for unique strategies that minimize any potential risk that may be imposed on participants in the different local contexts. In the case study "Being ethical in a context with limited ethics oversight: a study on flooding risk management by local governments in India", Nidhi Subramanyam illustrates how foreign researchers and Northern RECs must carefully consider the conditions and sociocultural differences under which individual participants provide consent [15]. This case study reflects on how, a permit to conduct research, obtained from local or regional authorities in India, may inadvertently exert coercion on potential participants of the study, in particular staff of those authorities.…”