Feminist and Community Psychology Ethics in Research with Homeless Women

Abstract

This paper presents a feminist and community psychology analysis of ethical concerns that can arise throughout the process of doing research with women who are homeless. The unique contexts of the lives of women who are homeless demand that researchers redefine traditional ethical constructs such as consent, privacy, harm, and bias. Research that fails to do this may perpetuate the stereotyping, marginalization, stigmatization, and victimization homeless women face. Feminist and community research ethics must go beyond the avoidance of harm to an active investment in the well-being of marginalized individuals and communities. Using feminist and community psychology ethics, this paper addresses some common problems in research with women who are homeless, and argues for the transformation of research from a tool for the advancement of science into a strategy for the empowerment of homeless women and their communities.

Feminist Research Ethics

“…For example, Seibold's (2000) study of the experience of menopause of single midlife women was assured some value for women because she herself had experienced menopause as a single middle-aged woman and because participant concerns guided her selection, collection, and analysis of information. Paradis (2000), on the other hand, had not experienced the homelessness she wanted to study in an urban setting, and she details the variety of issues that feminist professionals face when trying to…”

Beyond Doing No Harm: A Call for Participatory Action Research with Marginalized Populations in Criminological Research

“…At the same time, such research has the potential of being far more rewarding and consequential for all participants than traditional research. PAR has been used by community psychologists, social workers, and critical sociologists with psychiatric consumers/survivors to evaluate self-help organizations (Nelson et al 1998); Alaska Natives to explore resiliency and sobriety from a culturally anchored perspective (Mohatt et al 2004); inner city homeless women for the purpose of empowering them through writing (Paradis 2000); female prisoners to evaluate the impact of college (Fine and Torre 2006); and focus groups of battered women in Japan culminating in the development of a support group (Yoshihama 2002).…”

“…6 Up until now, the focus of the discussion on our responsibility to research participants has largely been on the avoidance of unethical treatment of research subjects (characterized most famously by the Zimbardo Prison Experiment 7 ). Paradis (2000), a community psychologist 8 argues that researchers must go beyond the paradigm of the ''avoidance of harm'' to an active investment in the well-being of marginalized individuals and communities and replace it with an ''ethic of empowerment''.…”

All talk and no movement? Homeless coping and resistance to urban planning

“…While I tried to avoid positioning myself as an expert or being positioned as such, I offered advice and support on issues relating to homeless charity organizations, activism, the social services and local government, and I have recently involved one respondent in my teaching as a paid guest lecturer. Although my interest in homeless life has been primarily related to urban planning issues, I was careful not to let this shape the entire research process (see Paradis, 2000). I asked open-ended questions about homeless life in general as well as specific questions about the reconstructions, and I encouraged respondents to raise any issue they found important.…”