Table 4 Criteria related to research ethics & scientific ethos

Competing interests:

• Which personal (e.g. cultural, philosophical, theological) presumptions concerning ethics may bias the EE research process significantly and how can they be adequately managed? (e.g. inclination to a emotivist meta-ethics, a neopositivist philosophy of science, a postmodernist account of society etc.) [42]

Informed consent:

• Do different standards exist in the various disciplines involved, and if so, have they been critically and respectfully discussed among the EE research team to find the most appropriate ethical standard? (e.g. is waiving of consent allowed, is assent sufficient, how to establish informed consent in emotional difficult situations at the end of life etc.) [43–49]

• Is the EE research team aware of a possible confidence bonus, and have strategies been developed to deal with this phenomenon carefully? (e.g. making transparent which goals and which limitations the own study will have and informing research participants and partners accordingly)

Reporting results:

• Is the EE research team aware of the (implicit) ethical impact of the way results are presented? (e.g. was the potential for stigmatization or discrimination considered when choosing the wording and emphasis of particular results?) [30], partly [50]

• Has the EE research team made sure that the way the results are presented reduces the potential for misinterpretation by third parties such as politicians and special interest groups? (e.g. by changing perspectives when re-reading results and revising the wording etc.)

Consequences for the future:

• Has the risk–benefit ratio for the EE research project been discussed in terms of its possible consequences for the people/society of the (near/more distant) future? (e.g. does lay considerable burden on study participants for a relatively low practical or epistemic output?) [30]

• Has the research team overlooked any negative consequences that could be detected in advance and therefore avoided? (e.g. acknowledging non-scientific partners when publishing, the handling of emotional distress of participants in interview studies with sensible questions, supervision of researchers involved in asking sensible questions etc.)