Contextual Challenges in South Africa: The Role of a Research Ethics Committee

Providing ethical guidance for collaborative research in developing countries

Experience has shown that the application of ethical guidelines developed for research in developed countries to research in developing countries can be, and often is, impractical and raises a number of contentious issues. Various attempts have been made to provide guidelines more appropriate to the developing world context; however, to date these efforts have been dominated by the fields of bioscience, medical research and nutrition. There is very little advice available for those seeking to undertake collaborative social science or natural science research in developing countries and what is there tends to be held within disparate sources. Charting the development of a set of ethics documentation for future use by the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) programme research community, this paper outlines past and present attitudes towards ethics procedures amongst this community and suggests ways in which ethics procedures might be made more relevant and user-friendly to researchers working in this area.

National Human Research Ethics: A Preliminary Comparative Case Study of Germany, Great Britain, Romania, and Sweden

Although international research is increasing in volume and importance, there remains a dearth of knowledge on similarities and differences in “national human research ethics” (NHREs), that is, national ethical guidelines (NEGs), Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), and research stakeholder’ ethical attitudes and behaviors (EABs). We begin to address this situation by reporting upon our experiences in conducting a multinational study into the mental health of children who had a parent/carer in prison. The study was conducted in 4 countries: Germany, Great Britain, Romania, and Sweden. Data on NHREs were gathered via a questionnaire survey, two ethics-related seminars, and ongoing contact between members of the research consortium. There was correspondence but even more so divergence between countries in the availability of NEGs and IRBs and in researcher’ EABs. Differences in NHREs have implications particularly in terms of harmonization but also for ethical philosophy and practice and for research integrity.

Assessing Institutional Ethics Committees in India Using the IRB-RAT

Institutional ethics committees (IECs) are currently still in their infancy in low- to middle-income countries (LMICs), which may have important implications with regard to the oversight of the protection of human participants. Understanding how these IECs currently function is a critical first step in helping LMICs build infrastructures that support the protection of research participants and improve the scientific quality of health research worldwide. We assessed the functioning of the IECs at two medical colleges in Gujarat, India, by administering the Institutional Review Board Researcher's Assessment Tool (IRB-RAT) to 42 IEC and faculty members. The IRB-RAT includes eight scales assessing various domains related to how investigators and members perceive their ethics committees. Results from t tests revealed significant differences between ideal ratings and descriptive ratings on each of the IRB-RAT scales with ideal ratings being higher than current descriptive ratings on all of the scales (<.001). These findings suggest areas that can be targeted for improvement and also provide important information about the values of Indian IECs.