Realist ethics roundtable

There has been little or no discussion of the relationships between realist research and evaluation approaches and research or evaluation ethics. This roundtable will consider realist approaches and ethics from two... [ view full abstract ]

There has been little or no discussion of the relationships between realist research and evaluation approaches and research or evaluation ethics. This roundtable will consider realist approaches and ethics from two perspectives. Firstly, it will consider whether realist approaches have specific ethical implications. Secondly, it will consider how realist approaches could be used to determine how decisions are made on research or evaluation ethics.
The session will begin with a brief presentation describing a current research initiative at Charles Darwin University, seeking to identify the contexts, mechanisms and outcomes at play in ethics decision-making. The presentation will set the scene and present some initial ‘thought starters’ for the round table discussions.
Two scenarios will be presented for participants to discuss in small groups. The first scenario will describe a cross-cultural evaluation involving services to disadvantaged communities. Participants will be invited to consider whether any different ethics issues might arise from undertaking a realist evaluation as compared to other evaluation designs. They will also be asked to consider how realists – who explicitly acknowledge that evaluands are not all alike – might approach developing, judging, and implementing ethical research/evaluation designs.  
The second scenario will take the form of a proposal that instead of trying to determine whether a research or evaluation design is sufficiently ethical, realists involved in ethics processes should explicitly ask ‘ethical for whom, in what contexts, in what ways and how?’ Participants will be asked to consider how such an approach might advance our principles and strengthen our practice – in the field but also in the ways in which we work with (and on) Research Ethics Committees, Human Research Ethics Committees, Institutional Review Boards, etc.