Specific considerations during health emergencies

Pandemics and emergencies are marked by multiple and mutually reinforcing

challenges that render populations more vulnerable, including impacts on personal
health and wellbeing, livelihoods, the physical environment, and the economy.
Organizations supporting research under these circumstances have a responsibility to
respond to the substantial ethical challenges that arise in such contexts by adjusting
research processes and funding arrangements to protect the people being researched,
as well as all researchers.

The following are elements of research ethics that require specific attention in the
context of the COVID-19 pandemic:     

 All studies should comply with the disaster emergency laws, rules, and guidelines
of the country where the research is conducted.
 Applicants and researchers will be required to adhere to all preventive measures
as advised by the World Health Organization and national guidance.
 No research activities should be undertaken if they impede emergency
responses.
 Safety considerations for research participants, as well as researchers, are
paramount in health emergency and pandemic contexts. Research design needs
to have clear protocols of risk assessment and mitigation strategies to ensure
protection from risk of infection and to mitigate other health risks, including
potential mental health impacts on research participants and researchers.
 Remote interaction and conducting online or internet-based research are likely to
be part of the research design with COVID-19 restrictions in place. These
present specific ethical concerns regarding privacy, transparency, confidentiality,
and security. Specific measures must be devised, implemented, and documented
to:
o ensure transparency during recruitment;
o take necessary steps for data security and ensure that data are not used
for subsequent non-research purposes.
o offer participants the opportunity to modify their data; and
o offer participants the opportunity to withdraw from the research and retract
their data;
o obtain informed and knowledgeable consent and ensure that consent is
obtained on an ongoing basis;
o use secure communication protocols and platforms;
o consider the expectations of participants about privacy;

Note that research methodologies should not be modified if doing so would compromise
the ethical standard of the research.

Key research issues in difficult contexts

Safety and principles of do-no-harm are critical in contexts of pandemics and
emergencies. In IDRC’s experience, the following sets of questions are important
for research in general and in challenging contexts, such as the COVID-19
pandemic:

Who sets the research agenda? Is research designed and defined at the local level,
and how are priorities set? How are local perspectives reconciled with global agenda-
setting, and how is research embedded in local knowledge ecosystems? Are there risks
and bias in terms of research that is concentrated in and about easily accessible
locations that might exclude less accessible areas and populations?

Who is the research for? How can research projects balance the benefits for the
funder, the researcher, and research participants, and how can research findings be
used to improve the well-being of research participants and populations? Funders may
have a need for research to inform interventions, but they need to balance the risk of
exacerbating vulnerabilities of targeted groups. Projects need to engage with a wide
variety of research partners in addition to various local groups to avoid the convenience
of narrow engagement.

Conducting Qualitative Research During the Pandemic

As in other areas of society, conducting research amid the COVID-19 pandemic
requires adaptation, while ensuring the quality of research is maintained. Overseeing
high-quality qualitative research is challenging because quality standards depend on the
paradigm in which the inquiry is based, the proposed research strategy, and the object
of interest (Sparkes & Smith, 2009). As such, some researchers judge qualitative
research quality based on adherence to a set of criteria and standards (e.g., the
Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research [COREQ], the Standards for
Reporting Qualitative Research [SRQR]; Peditto, 2018), while others view quality as a
phenomenon that cannot be strictly attached to methodological rules (Sparkes & Smith,
2009). Although there is debate with regard to the use of standards or alternative
methods to judge quality, there is an informal consensus around the fact that
consideration must be given to the clarity of the research question, the rigorousness of
the research method, and the transparency and completeness of the reporting process
(O’Brien et al., 2014). Similarly, trust in the research process is established when the
researcher demonstrates an alignment between the different components of the
research process, including its epistemology, theory, methodology and methods (Morse,
2015).
Taking a reflexive stance (i.e., engaging in active reflection and disclosure of how and
why the researcher comes to certain decisions) is important to ensure trustworthiness.
For example, in an ordinary qualitative research endeavor, extensive and intensive in-
field time and proximity between participants and researchers are considered key to a
trustworthy rendering of complex human phenomenon. However, both of these
elements are impeded in the present COVID-19 context due to the urgent need to
respond to the pandemic with empirical data and the physical distancing measures
implemented on an international scale (Sandars & Goh, 2020). Below, we present our
reflection on how qualitative research can be conducted with these considerations in
mind. To extend previous literature discussing the use of qualitative research in the
context of this pandemic, we: (a) identified two major challenges stemming from
COVID-19 associated measures—“time constraints” and “physical distancing,” that may
both threaten qualitative research standards; and (b) discussed potential
methodological venues to face the aforementioned challenges and ensure high-quality
research standards.