Perspectives From Qualitative Researchers: Negotiating Research Ethics in Qualitative Research

Abstract

The literature on qualitative research ethics is vast and longstanding. Many scholars have written autoethnographic accounts and methodological overviews of the ways that they navigate ethics in practice. Despite various definitions and categorizations of research ethics, to date, in relatively few empirical investigations it has been outlined how research ethics is applied in practice. Thus, we explored qualitative researchers' experiences with ethics and ethical decision-making using 30 semi-structured interviews, ultimately spanning geographic and disciplinary areas. In the data, we identified three themes: First, personal moral beliefs were described by participants as being central to navigating research ethics; second, social and cultural contexts were pointed to as shaping ethical practices; and third, institutional or regulatory ethical review boards were understood as impacting what comes to be understood as ethical practices. These findings contribute to the larger body of qualitative research ethics literature by offering an empirically driven understanding of the nuanced ways that researchers make sense of ethics procedurally and in practice.