Table 1 Comparing two ethical paradigms
Pre-dictive ethics | Iterative ethics | |
|---|---|---|
1 | Ethical risks are generally predictable | Ethical risks may NOT be predictable |
2 | Ethical procedures should be pre-specified - Ethics as ‘requirement’ | Ethical procedures should be emergent to take into account the unfolding context - Ethics as ‘process’ |
3 | Treats participants as being ‘subject to’ research | Treats participants as being ‘subjective participants within’ research |
4 | Ethics reviews aim to protect participants | Ethics reviews aim to help researchers to think sensitively about how to maintain an ethical stance towards and with research participants |
5 | Ethics reviews aim to evaluate researchers | Ethics reviews aim to work with researchers to explore ethical concerns |
6 | Ethics reviews ‘apply’ codes of conduct and treat ethics as a set of ‘accountable standards’ | Ethics reviews analyse ethical concerns with researchers in relation to the specific research context |
7 | Researchers treated as independent from practices of data collection and regarded as implementing a research protocol | Researchers seen as reflexive participants within research |
8 | Work with a binary of ‘ethical’/‘non-ethical’ | Treat ethical problems as multidimensional and contextually framed |