Ethics
The Ethics committee have raised concerns about aspects of my current project.
Their reaction is both understandable and frustrating.
The project, and its operating environment, are likely outside the scope of what they normally deal with. Understandable.
There are many moving parts that I can see but are hard to explain in an Ethics form. There is also the complication of the trip to Malawi being funded by me working for the first week by an entity who then provided an opportunity to gain some expert opinions and extend the projects network. Understandable.
The frustrating part is that the Ethics committee have pre-empted the second stage of the project which was not covered by the Ethics application that was submitted. This means they are throwing up challenges that had not been put to them and may never have been put to them.
As clearly stated, the design and development of a later, viable and ethical intervention with primary stakeholders was the point of being here this second week Malawi.
As things do in these operating environments, the project has evolved quickly this week with a number of discussions with experts and practitioners at a very useful level.
My conclusion is there is no way to obtain Ethics approval – and stay within it
Given the speed of development and the types of interactions that are happening, and interventions being discussed this is restrictive and negative.
Staying within it is the key point. I could do the forms, do a trite and compliant positionality statement, and get the box ticked knowing that I would not be able to contain the project to what was agreed.
Not worth it in a limited form
The project could have used a symposium in August to do interventions at but would have resulted in shrunken outputs with self-limiting impacts when it could do so much more.
Conclusion – action research project stopped
Start again on Monday
Leave a Reply