Ethics

Community and participatory researchers do not have an official code of ethics to guide their research. However, sincet they operate generally within the field of public health, they are bound to standard ethical principles applicable to all research. Beauchamp and Childress (1994: 67) set out several major principles: Beneficence is one of the oldest foundational values of medical ethics reaching back to the Hippocratic Oath. It is the moral obligation to act for the benefit of others. The principle of beneficence includes four major components (Faden and Beauchamp, 1986:10). These are usually listed in this order:

(1) not to inflict harm
(2) prevent evil or harm
(3) remove evil or harm
(4) promote good

Associate Research sites are voluntary research participants with CCIR, and as such CCIR does not provide direct supervision of their research activity, nor does CCIR control the conduct of associate researchers. Each associate researcher completes a review and offers agreement to a standard ethical statement that is designed to guide their activity based on the principles listed above. Communities that believe that these principles are not being followed should discuss this with the researcher and organizational leadership and send an email to ethics@communityimpactresearch.org detailing the concern. The application of appropriate ethics is rooted in a combination of clear thinking and positive intent. CCIR advocates that associate researchers understand and follow appropriate ethical guidelines and will remove local project sites from its listing if ethical challenges are identified and not remediated in a timely manner.

Beauchamp, T. and Childress, J. 1994, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K

Faden, R. and Beauchamp, T.1986, A History and Theory of Informed Consent , Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K.