Chapter 6: School-Based Research With Youth: When Protection Leads to Disconnection

We explore the relationship between ideal research design and ethical review policies, focusing on how the disconnect between these two integral parts of conducting research impact research in practice. Throughout the process of developing a youth-informed substance resource to be used in public schools in Ontario, Canada, several key themes around ethical considerations emerged. Drawing on research with youth aged 14–18 in Ontario, Canada, as an example, we argue that existing ethics review processes creates barriers to conducting school-based participatory research with youth and adds to the inherent challenge of striking a reasonable balance between protection and participation of children and youth in research. Our experience highlights three key themes surrounding how the ethical approval process distances student contributors from engaging in research: (1) the dual ethics approval processes at researcher institutions and school boards creates substantial delays, (2) existing ethics review processes limit the ability to build and maintain relationships with student contributors and (3) disconnected ethics reviews between researcher institutions and school boards can lead to reshaping of research projects in an effort to continue on with the research for student benefit. Finally, we explore potential avenues for facilitating timely, effective and relevant ethics decisions in this context.