Prelims

REFRAMING QUALITATIVE RESEARCH ETHICS

ADVANCES IN RESEARCH ETHICS AND INTEGRITY

Series Editor: Dr Ron Iphofen, FAcSS, Independent Consultant, UK

Recent volumes:

• Helen Busby

  Independent Research Ethics Consultant, UK

• Robert Dingwall

  Dingwall Enterprises Ltd and Nottingham Trent University, UK

• Nathan Emmerich

  Dublin City University, UK and Queens University Belfast, UK

• Julian Kinderlerer

  University of Cape Town, South Africa

• Mark Israel

  Australasian Human Research Ethics Consultancy Services, Australia

• John Oates

  Open University, UK

• Emily Postan

  University of Edinburgh Law School, UK

• Martin Tolich

  University of Otago, New Zealand

ADVANCES IN RESEARCH ETHICS AND INTEGRITY - VOLUME 12

REFRAMING QUALITATIVE RESEARCH ETHICS

EDITED BY

HELEN BUSBY

Independent Research Ethics Consultant, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Emerald Publishing Limited

Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL.

First edition 2025

Editorial matter and selection © 2025 Helen Busby.

Individual chapters except Chapters 3, 5, and 13 © 2025 The authors.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

Chapter 3, Peer Researchers in Qualitative Research on Homelessness and Mental Health: A Reflexive Journey from Data Validity to Relations of Ethical Labour, copyright © 2025 Nienke Boesveldt; Chapter 5, Ethical Considerations During Photo-eliciting Trajectories with Migrantised Women Focused on ‘Gender Empowerment’ in Civil Society Organisations, copyright © 2025 Lore Van Praag, Amal Miri, Kaya Klaver, and Neda Deneva; and Chapter 13, Improving the Ethics Review of Qualitative Health Research Through Increased Collaboration Between Research Ethics Committees, Researchers and Research Participants, copyright © 2025 Sarah Potthoff and Anke Erdmann, are Open Access with copyright assigned to respective chapter authors. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. These works are published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of these works (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-83608-313-9 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-83608-312-2 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-83608-314-6 (Epub)

ISSN: 2398-6018 (Series)

Helen Busby is an independent research ethics consultant, advising on the management of complex ethical issues in research involving fieldwork in multiple countries.

After studying Medical Anthropology and Sociology at the Universities of Brunel and Nottingham (UK) and holding Postdoc Fellowships at the latter, she led multidisciplinary research at the Universities of Nottingham and Leicester. Having particular interests in qualitative approaches, and building on her earlier involvement in research on public health and primary care, she was a Principal Investigator for research projects about blood donation, stem cell banking, and social frameworks of altruism. She was a member of two local National Health Service research ethics committees during this time.

These interests led to an involvement in research ethics at an international level: since 2010, she has acted as an ethics reviewer for European Union research agencies and as an ethics advisor for several research consortia. Between 2017 and 2023, she was a Consultant to the global health ethics unit of the World Health Organization (WHO), working with the Secretariat to the Research Ethics Review Committee at WHO headquarters in Geneva.

Her research is published in Sociology of Health and Illness, Clinical Ethics, Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health Illness and Medicine, European Law Review, and other journals in these fields. She has also contributed chapters to edited books – engaging with fellow researchers, writers, and practitioners along the way. Her most recent book chapter is: ‘Modes of Influence: What Can We Learn from International Codes of Ethics for Health-Related Research?’ In R. Iphofen and D. O’Mathúna (Eds.), 2022, Ethical Evidence and Policymaking: Interdisciplinary and International Research (Policy Press).

Bree Akesson is the Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Global Adversity and Wellbeing, Associate Director of the Centre for Research on Security Practices, and Associate Professor of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. She has worked for nearly 25 years with children and families impacted by war and displacement in settings such as Chechnya, Northern Uganda, Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. Her programme of research ranges from micro-level understandings of the experiences of war-affected populations to macro-level initiatives to strengthen global social support systems. Her ongoing research projects include the perinatal experiences of Rohingya refugee families in Bangladesh, the impact of climate change on refugee families displaced by war, and integrated service access for temporary and precarious status migrants in Canada.

Nienke Boesveldt is a principal researcher of (partly peer-led) longitudinal research on homelessness and mental health from both service user and professional perspective at the Sociology Department of the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She has published numerous academic reports and receives broad recognition for organising regularly, and for different target groups, workshops, lectures, and seminars, and for building a bridge between scientific knowledge and policy practice. With the partly peer-led data, she has published articles, including ‘Mixed Methods on Adverse Childhood Experiences predicting Transitional and Recurrent Homelessness’ (Journal of Community Psychology, 2024) with Willemijn van Dungen and Bram Orobio de Castro, ‘Governing the Homeless in the Netherlands: Incremental Change Towards Providing Housing First’ (The Routledge Handbook of Global Perspectives on Homelessness, Law & Policy, Bevan, C. (Ed.), 2023), and ‘Housing the Homeless: Shifting Sites of Managing the Poor in the Netherlands’ (Urban Studies, 2023) with Dolly Loomans.

Nicole Brown is a social researcher and author, whose expertise lies with social research practice. She works at University College London and Social Research & Practice and Education Ltd. She conceptualises her work as sitting on the cusp of practice/teaching/research, thereby emphasising that through thinking-doing-being each area of expertise intersects with and impacts on another. In that sense, her practices as a fiction writer, poet, and educator as well as her activist work in response to, on the back of and as research, represent an extension of her conceptualisation of research practice. Her publications include Making the Most of Your Research Journal, Embodied Inquiry: Research Methods, Photovoice Reimagined, and Creativity in Education: International Perspectives. She shares her work at https://www.nicole-brown.co.uk, and her social media handles are @ncjbrown and @AbleismAcademia.

Neda Deneva (SYNYO) holds a PhD in Sociology and Social Anthropology from the Central European University. She has worked on the topic of transnational migration to and from Bulgaria and Romania with a focus on labour and citizenship regimes within the European Union, care work, and processes of the transnationalisation of the family. During her postdoctoral work, she has explored the mutually dependent modalities of labour and citizenship and the way they transform and are simultaneously conditioned by care and social reproduction, especially in the context of recent post-socialist reindustrialisation and migration.

Anke Erdmann is professor for Chronic Illness and Long-Term Care at Kiel University of Applied Sciences. She is also affiliated to the Medical Ethics Working Group, Kiel University, Germany. She studied sociology, philosophy, nursing science, and social work and received her doctorate in 2015 with a qualitative evaluation study on integrative validation therapy, a particularly appreciative form of communication and care for people with dementia. During her postdoc, she focussed on ethical issues related to chronic illness: end-of-life-decision-making in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), collecting lifestyle data with mobile health technologies from people with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), body image, disclosure of illness, stigma and self-perception in chronic inflammatory diseases, and deception in dementia care. She works predominantly with qualitative methods, and research ethics issues are a further focus of her work.

Karen Frensch has worked in research project management for over 20 years as the Project manager for the Partnerships for Children and Families Project and the Global Adversity and Wellbeing Research Group in the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. Specialising in qualitative research methods, her collaborations with scholars and professionals in children’s mental health, child welfare, and family studies have focussed on social service system improvements to better meet the needs of children and families. She has co-authored two books Creating Positive Systems of Child and Family Welfare: Congruence With the Everyday Lives of Children and Parents by Cameron, Fine, Maiter, Frensch, and Freymond (University of Toronto Press) and Necessary But Not Sufficient: Improving Community Living for Youth After Residential Mental Health Programs by Cameron, Frensch, Smit-Quosai, Pancer, and Preyde (University of Toronto Press).

Joyla Furlano (PhD) is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Family Medicine at Queen’s University (Canada), as well as an instructor in the School of Nursing and a Research Associate in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Western University. Her research is rooted in community-based approaches – promoting health equity in hospital settings and developing culturally relevant health resources for Indigenous communities in Canada. With a strong passion for brain health, she is an active member of the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging, where she collaborates with researchers nationwide to address dementia care challenges faced by Indigenous peoples. In 2023, she completed a postgraduate certificate in Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute (Trinity College, Dublin), where she worked with a global team of researchers, healthcare professionals, and artists to address brain health inequities worldwide.

Michael Herzfeld is Ernest E. Monrad Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, where he taught from 1991 through the end of 2018. He is also IIAS Professor of Critical Heritage Studies Emeritus, Leiden University; a member of the Collegio del Dottorato di Ricerca in Beni Culturali, Formazione e Territorio, Università di Roma ‘Tor Vergata’; and Senior Advisor, Critical Heritage Studies Initiative, International Institute of Asian Studies, Leiden. He is the author of 13 books, 2 films, and numerous articles and reviews. His research has included extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Greece, Italy, and Thailand. In addition to a DPhil from Oxford University (1976) and a DLitt from the University of Birmingham (1989), he holds honorary doctorates from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (2005), the University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki (2011), the University of Crete (2013), and the University of St Andrews (2023). In 2021, he was made an honorary citizen of Greece.

Mark Israel is a Director of Australasian Human Research Ethics Consultancy Services (AHRECS) and Adjunct Professor at Curtin University and University of Western Australia. He provides advice on research ethics and integrity to higher education institutions, research agencies, and government and non-government organisations in Australia as well as in various parts of Asia and Europe. He has a degree in law and postgraduate qualifications in sociology, criminology, and education from Oxford, Cambridge, and Flinders Universities and over 100 publications in the areas of higher education policy and practice, research ethics and integrity, and criminology and socio-legal studies. He is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He has received the Prime Minister’s Award for Australian University Teacher of the Year and grants and consultancies from the European Commission, the Australian Research Council, the Criminology Research Council, and the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching.

Alana Kehoe (MA) is a dedicated professional in emergency preparedness and disaster management with a strong focus on working with Indigenous communities. Holding a Master’s degree in Anthropology from the University of Western Ontario, she has conducted significant research on the impact of colonialism on Indigenous peoples’ experiences with wildfire. Her expertise extends to developing tailored emergency preparedness programmes and delivering training that addresses the unique needs of Indigenous audiences. Her previous research role on Dr Lloy Wylie’s Health Equity Action Research team involved researching health equity for Indigenous populations in Canada. Her work is characterised by her commitment to enhancing community resilience and advancing cultural safety in emergency response.

Kaya Klaver (MA Social Work, University of Antwerp) is a social worker and researcher at the University of Antwerp. As a youth worker, she has experience in youth care. In a previous project funded by the Flemish government, she conducted in-depth interviews with people on religious (de)conversion in the Flemish context. Currently, she is working as a Junior Researcher on the European-funded project ReIncluGen. During this project, she did extensive ethnographic fieldwork, conducted photo-eliciting interviews with migrantised women and staff members of civil society organisations. Her research interests include topics such as migration, religion and gender, as well as their intersections.

Fride Haram Klykken is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Center for the Science of Learning and Technology (SLATE), University of Bergen, Norway, where she currently works with digital inclusion and critical data literacy on the EduTrust AI project. Her research interests include the practices of teaching and learning, education and technology, ethics and trust, and research ethics. She has a PhD in Education, and her doctoral research engaged video-ethnography to investigate the material relationality of everyday classroom practice.

Amal Miri (University of Antwerp, Belgium) holds a PhD in Gender and Diversity from Ghent University. In her ethnographic doctoral research at the intersection of marriage migration, motherhood, and integration, she conducted participatory research with Moroccan women in Flanders. In the past, she worked as a project researcher at ELLA, a non-profit organisation promoting the empowerment of minoritised women in Brussels and Flanders. Starting from 2023, she co-supervised and coordinated the Horizon Europe ReIncluGen project on gender empowerment and inclusion at the University of Antwerp. Additionally, she is chair of EMPACT, a Flemish socio-cultural umbrella organisation supporting and strengthening minoritised civil society organisations.

Hildah L. Mokgolodi (PhD), Department of Educational Foundation, Faculty of Education, University of Botswana. She is a Professional Counsellor and Counsellor Educator for graduate and undergraduate levels at the University of Botswana. Other than several additional counselling courses, she offers a course in Ethics and Legal Issues in Counselling and Research Projects in Counselling. Additionally, she offers both clinical and research supervision to students during their practicums and internships. Participating as a member of the institutional ethics review board enhanced her experience in ethical qualitative research. She has conducted qualitative research studies in counselling with interest in retired professionals, Indigenous issues, evaluation, and career development as her research interests.

Nina Peršak is Scientific Director and Senior Research Fellow of the Institute for Criminal-Law Ethics and Criminology in Ljubljana and Full Professor of Law (habilitation) of the University of Maribor, Slovenia. She holds a PhD in Law from University of Ljubljana, and a Master’s in Law (LLM) and a Master’s in Social and Developmental Psychology (MPhil), both, from the University of Cambridge. She is also Academic Consultant of Ghent University, Belgium, Co-Director of the Working Group ‘Equity and Criminal Justice’ of the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law, UC Berkeley, and an Independent Ethics Expert, providing ethics advice, opinion, and trainings on research ethics to various bodies.

Sarah Potthoff is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Medical Ethics, History, and Theories of Medicine, University of Münster, Germany. She studied sociology and literature at Bielefeld University and completed her PhD in sociology in 2016 with an ethnographic study on negotiation processes of gender justice and diversity before women’s courts (Nari Adalats) in South India. During her postdoc, she worked as a Lecturer in Qualitative Methods and as a Research Assistant at the Ruhr University Bochum and at Kiel University. She coordinated and led several qualitative empirical research projects focussing on advanced psychiatric directives, psychological pressure and coercion in psychiatry, research ethics, and ethical review practices in qualitative health research. Methodologically, she specialises in grounded theory methodology, ethnography, and qualitative content analysis. Since September 2024, she has been working at the University of Münster conducting qualitative research on social dimensions of chronic pain.

Rhonda M. Shaw is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. Since 2002, Rhonda’s research has involved empirical study on donating and receiving human biological materials and services, with specific reference to organ donation and transplantation, assisted human reproduction and family building, and human milk sharing. Rhonda’s teaching expertise includes gender and sexuality studies and social science research ethics. Her research has been published in journals including Sociology of Health & Illness, Body & Society, Medical Humanities, Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health Illness and Medicine, Culture, Health & Sexuality, Social Science & Medicine, Qualitative Health Research, Journal of Gender Studies, Sociological Research Online and Sociology. Rhonda is editor of Bioethics Beyond Altruism: Donating and Transforming Human Biological Materials (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and Reproductive Citizenship: Technologies, Rights and Relationships (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).

Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner is Professor of Social and Medical Anthropology at the University of Sussex, UK, with a regional focus of China and Japan. For nearly two decades, her research has engaged with developments in the life sciences and biotechnologies in Asian societies, as well as their role in the global dynamics of research collaborations and regulation. The concerns discussed in her chapter – clashes of formalised research ethics and with ethics as experience in daily lives – emerged in her long-term field research, some of which is published in Global Morality and Life Science Practices in Asia: Assemblages of Life (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014) and Regulatory Violence: The Global Dynamics of Regulatory Experimentation in Biomedicine and Health (CUP, 2025). The formative impact of formalised ethics on communication and conversations in field research has been a main theme in her engagement with ethics review in anthropology. An example of this is the EthNav.

Lore van Praag (Master, PhD Ghent University) is Assistant Professor at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, where she works on climate change, gender, social inequalities, and diversity. Over the years, she has gained a lot of research expertise in participating in interdisciplinary research projects (Belspo Migradapt, H2020 MICADO, H2020 PERCEPTIONS, H2020 COVINFORM, Erasmus+ ACCORD) and coordinating research projects, such as the Validiv project on multilingualism in primary schools in Flanders (SBO project), the RESL.Eu on Early School Leavers in Europe (FP7), the ReIncluGen project (Horizon Europe), and ROCLIMI (Resilient Delta Initiative). Currently, her research interests are mainly focussed on environmental migration, migrant perspectives on climate adaptation, education, gender empowerment, and diversity. She has published international and national articles in peer-reviewed journals and books (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2861-7523).

Helena Webb is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham. She is an experienced socio-technical researcher, working on projects that explore the connections between computing and society. She specialises in the use of qualitative methods and has a particular interest in understanding how people interact with and through technology, as well as in research to foster innovation for social good. She publishes her work in social science, computer science, and interdisciplinary venues and has written several articles on ethics and good practice in research on the Internet and social media.

Lloy Wylie (PhD) is an interdisciplinary specialist in implementing equity, diversity, and inclusion in health professional education, policy, and practice. She is an advisor on accreditation standards in medical education for Indigenous health in Canada and internationally. She provides expert advice on ethics for health and medical research with underserved populations. Her main areas of research are in health systems and health services, with a focus on equity and improvement of health services and access through community-based participatory research. As the lead of the Health Equity Action Research Team, her research focusses on Indigenous, immigrant, and refugee health, drawing on cultural safety as a framework for health system improvements to advance equity in health care. She is an Associate Professor in the Schulich Interfaculty Programme in Public Health at Western University in Canada. As an award-winning educator, she develops innovative programmes in community-engaged learning in public health.

Ron Iphofen, FAcSS, is Executive Editor of the Emerald book series Advances in Research Ethics and Integrity and edited Volume 1 in the series, Finding Common Ground: Consensus in Research Ethics Across the Social Sciences (2017). He is an Independent Research Consultant, a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, the Higher Education Academy, and the Royal Society of Medicine. Since retiring as Director of Postgraduate Studies in the School of Healthcare Sciences, Bangor University, his major activity has been as an Adviser to the European Commission (EC) and its agencies, the European Research Council (ERC), and the Research Executive Agency (REA) from the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) to the current Horizon Europe. His consultancy work has covered a range of research agencies (in government and independent) globally. He was Vice Chair of the UK Social Research Association, updated their Ethics Guidelines and now convenes the SRA’s Research Ethics Forum. He was scientific consultant on the EC RESPECT project – establishing pan-European standards in the social sciences and chaired the Ethics and Societal Impact Advisory Group for another EC-funded European Demonstration Project on mass transit security (SECUR-ED). He has advised the UK Research Integrity Office; the National Disability Authority (NDA) of the Irish Ministry of Justice; the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology; the Scottish Executive; UK Government Social Research; National Centre for Social Research; the Audit Commission; the Food Standards Agency; the Ministry of Justice; the BIG Lottery; a UK Local Authorities’ Consortium; Skills Development Scotland; Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR the French Research Funding agency); the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) in Canada; and in Ireland the National Disability Authority (NDA) of the Ministry of Justice and the Institute of Public Health, among many others. He was Founding Executive Editor of the Emerald gerontology journal Quality in Ageing and Older Adults. He published Ethical Decision Making in Social Research: A Practical Guide (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 and 2011), coedited with Martin Tolich The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research Ethics (Sage, 2018) and edited the SPRINGER Nature Handbook of Scientific Research and Integrity (2020). Between 2018 and 2021, he was Principal Investigator (PI) on a €2.8M European Commission-funded project (PRO-RES) aimed at promoting ethics and integrity in all non-medical research. He co-edited three open access publications for the PRO-RES Project: Ethical Issues in Covert, Security and Surveillance Research, Emerald Publishing (2022); Ethical Evidence and Policymaking: Interdisciplinary and International Research, Bristol University Press (2022); and Ethics, Integrity and Policymaking: The Value of the Case Study, Springer (2022) (https://roniphofen.com/).

Advances in Research Ethics and Integrity grew out of the foundational work of a group of Fellows of the UK Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS) who were all concerned to ensure that lessons learned from previous work in the research ethics field were built upon and improved. Unnecessary duplications of or ignorance of earlier work were seen as hindrances to progress. Individual researchers, research professions and society all suffer in having to pay the costs in time, energy and money of delayed progress and superfluous repetitions. There is little excuse for failure to build on existing knowledge and practice given modern search technologies. Our concern was to aid well-motivated researchers to quickly discover existing progress made in ethical research in terms of topic, method and/or discipline and to move on with their own work more productively.

Given the plethora of ethics codes and guidelines, it can be difficult for researchers to judge those most relevant to their proposed activity. Long-standing issues in the field are confronted afresh by novice researchers so that it is no wonder they can despair in their search for guidance. Even experienced researchers may be tempted by the ‘checklist mentality’ that can characterise the meeting of formalised ethics review requirements.

If risks of harm to the public and to researchers are to be kept to a minimum and if professional standards in the conduct of scientific research are to be maintained, the more that fundamental understandings of ethical behaviour in research are shared the better. If progress is made in one sphere, everyone gains from it being generally acknowledged and understood. If foundational work is conducted, everyone gains from being able to build on and develop further that work.

It should not be assumed that formal ethics review committees are able to resolve the dilemmas or meet the challenges involved. Enough has been written about such review bodies to make their limitations clear. They cannot follow researchers into the field to monitor what goes on, nor can they anticipate all emergent ethical dilemmas or dissemination risks. There is no adequate penalty for neglect through incompetence, or worse, for conscious omissions of evidence. We have to rely upon the virtues of the individual researcher alongside the skills of journal reviewers and funding agency evaluators. Scientific integrity must be constantly monitored at the corporate and at the individual levels.

New problems, issues and concerns and new ways of collecting data continue to emerge regularly. This should not be surprising as social, economic and technological change necessitate constant re-evaluation of research conduct. Standard approaches to research ethics such as valid informed consent, inclusion/exclusion criteria, vulnerable subjects and covert studies need to be reconsidered as developing social contexts and methodological innovation, interdisciplinary research and economic pressures pose new challenges to convention. Developments in social media blur the distinction between ‘the public’ and the ‘private’.

This series proposed to address such new and continuing challenges for funders, research managers, research ethics committees and researchers in the field. The concerns and interests are well recognised globally but with varying commitments at both the procedural and the practical levels. This series is designed to suggest realistic solutions to these challenges, and this practical angle is the unique selling proposition for the series. Each volume will raise and address the key issues in the debates but also strive to suggest ways forward that maintain the key ethical concerns of respect for human rights and dignity, while sustaining pragmatic guidance for future research developments.

We seek to help researchers think through the potential harms and benefits of their work in the proposal stage and assist their reflection of the big ethical moments that they face in the field often when there may be no one to advise them in terms of their societal impact and acceptance. The series aims to adopt an approach that promotes good practice and sets principles, values and standards that serve as models to aid successful research outcomes. There is clear international appeal as commissioners and researchers alike share a vested interest in the global promotion of professional virtues that lead to the public acceptability of good research. In an increasingly global research world, there is little point in applying too localised a morality, nor one that implies a solely Western hegemony of values. If standards ‘matter’, it seems evident that they should ‘matter’ to and for all. Only then can the growth of interdisciplinary and multinational projects be accomplished effectively and with a shared concern for potential harms and benefits.

While the diversity of experience and unique local interests is acknowledged, there are existing, proven models of good practice which can help research practitioners in emergent nations build their policies and processes to suit their own circumstances. We need to see that consensus positions effectively guide the work of scientists across the globe and secure minimal participant harm and maximum societal benefit – and, additionally, that instances of fraudulence, corruption and dishonesty in science decrease as a consequence.

Truly independent formal ethics scrutiny can help maintain the integrity of research professions in an era of enhanced concerns over data security, privacy and human rights legislation. But it is essential to guard against rigid conformity to what can become administrative procedures and corporate protectionism. Consistency in ‘proper behaviour’ does not imply uniformity. Having principles does not lead inexorably to an adherence to principlism. Sincerely held principles can be in conflict in differing contexts. No one practice is necessarily the best approach in all circumstances. But if researchers are aware of the range of possible ways in which their work can be accomplished ethically and with integrity, they can be free to apply the approach that works or is necessary in their setting. Guides to ‘good’ ways of doing things should not be taken as the ‘only’ way of proceeding. A rigidity in outlook does no favours to methodological innovation, nor to the research subjects or participants that they are supposed to protect. If there were to be any principles that should be rigidly adhered to they should include flexibility, open-mindedness, the recognition of the range of challenging situations to be met in the field – principles that in essence amount to a sense of proportionality.

Such principles should apply equally to researchers and ethics reviewers alike. Reviewers need to think afresh about each new research proposal, to detach from pre-formed opinions and prejudices, while still learning from and applying the lessons of the past. Principles such as these must also apply to funding and commissioning agencies, to research institutions and to professional associations and their learned societies. Our integrity as researchers demands that we recognise that the rights of our funders and research participants and/or subjects are to be valued alongside our cherished research goals and seek to embody such principles in the research process from the outset. This series strives to seek just how that might be accomplished in the best interests of all.

Ron Iphofen, Series Editor

I would like to thank the AREI editorial advisory board for sharing their expertise with me. Particular mention must be made of Ron Iphofen, Series Editor, and Robert Dingwall, who offered important intellectual input and leads and helped in other important ways. I am grateful to all the peer reviewers who gave us their thoughts on the first drafts of the chapters. Mike Sandys was an enthusiastic supporter of this project. Finally, I was fortunate to have enthusiastic and timely support from the team at Emerald Publishing, including from Senior Commissioning Editor Katy Mathers, Lydia Cutmore (Content Development Editor) and Abinaya Chinnasamy (Book Project Editor).

Helen Busby, Editor