The ethics review and the humanities and social sciences: disciplinary distinctions in ethics review processes

Introduction

While no single discipline ‘owns’ ethics and ethical thinking, the practice of reviewing research for ethical clearance sits at a significant disciplinary-paradigmatic intersection. Moral philosophy, as a field of philosophical enquiry, lays claim to declarations of the philosophical tenets underpinning ethical conduct, including the consideration of normative convictions around what is ethically right. MacIntyre (1998), for example, indicates how classical conceptualisations of ‘virtue’ and ‘justice’ provide a foundation for considering ethical practice and the enactment of ‘judgement’ as an important tenet in the determination of what is ethical. ¹

By contrast, the ‘practical’ ² review of research is predominantly conducted under codes and protocols that are rooted in the biomedical sciences. Emmerich (2013) notes that these disciplinary fields are ‘widely assumed to be the intellectual pater familias of the “research ethics community”’ (p. 181). The principles underpinning ethics review and the practices that define the conduct of ethics review boards (ERBs) developed largely in response to historical violations of human rights, adverse research events and their legal ramifications, with the fields of medicine and psychiatry specifically implicated. As Stark (2010) observes, ‘ethics codes are invented at moments of professional vulnerability, not at moments of strength’ (p. 339).

The codes and protocols that define approaches to the practical review of research compel ERBs to consider: (i) the methodological decisions and approaches proposed by researchers; (ii) the ways that research participants will be engaged in the conduct of the proposed research; and (iii) the implications that extend from the outcomes of the research intervention. Although concerns for the philosophical foundations of ‘virtue’ and ‘justice’ may be important in the deliberations that ERBs apply, it remains that the purpose of the ethics review corresponds more deliberately with the pragmatic determination of the appropriateness of the research and the implications it will exert, with these concerns codified within ‘specific institutional processes and procedures’ (Baloy et al., 2016: 6). Determination of such appropriateness is subject to various forces, such as institutional expectations, grant requirements, and research or committee culture.

Situating the argument: The context of higher education

In making this claim for the specificity of HASS research, we highlight that the contexts within which ethics review processes are enacted prescribe the practical conduct of the ethics review. As extensions of larger administrative and bureaucratic assemblages, ethics review practices operate within higher education contexts that exert influence over the ways that research is designated and evaluated. As most within this sector recognise, neoliberal managerialism is significant in determining how processes deployed in universities – including those processes associated with the ethics review – gain bureaucratic form and function (Connell, 2013; Giroux, 2002; Mintz, 2021; Olssen and Peters, 2005).

Since the late 1970s, this transformation has emerged in terms of the ways that ‘we think about, organise, and fund education’ (Mintz, 2021: 80), with the conjoined logics of ‘efficiency of the free market, the need for deregulation and the reduction of government spending on social services’ (Mintz, 2021: 81) reconfiguring the social function of higher education. An effect of this transformation is evident in the ways that higher education is administrated. Although the prerogatives of the free market shape the ‘outward’ function and funding landscape for higher education, increased control defines its ‘internal’ machinations. In Australia, the context from which we write, successive reform agendas and policy compacts since the 1980s have worked to impose greater levels of accountability, competition and economic rationalism into the Australian higher education system (Marginson, 2013). This is a situation that Barry et al. (1996) observe ‘involves less a retreat from governmental “intervention” than a re-inscription of the techniques and forms of expertise required for the exercise of government’ (p. 14). Scott (2004: 439) observes that in this climate, universities have transformed into ‘technically contrived service organisations’ driven to accept the values of industry, yet with the bureaucratic overlays of internally mandated governance.

Ethics review processes operate within this climate. In Scott’s (2004: 439) view of the external stakeholder-driven modern university, ‘ethical issues are in danger of becoming second-order issues’ that are conceived of in procedural terms rather than as fundamental to the values and practice of higher education and research. As James (2021) notes, under these conditions ethics review processes become enmeshed within ‘regulated, tightly administered practices within universities’ (p. 548), and function as points of enactment for accountability and compliance. James (2021) argument identifies that the ethics review process represents a tangible indicator of ‘a shift towards administration and the embedding of regulatory machinery within universities’ (p. 551), where the review board is activated as a locus for compliance-checking and disciplinary control (p. 550). A similar view is noted in Johnson et al.’s (2020) observation that, for many researchers, ethics review represents an ‘adversarial rather than a communicative’ (p. 742) function and that ‘close scrutiny, over-regulation and obsessive control’ (p. 742) define the conduct of ERBs.

While we are sympathetic to such criticism and acknowledge that the audit-culture inherent to the contemporary university provides a mediating context in the enactment of ethics review processes, we note that such processes can, when motivated by a spirit of engagement and collegiality (Allen, 2008; Hickey et al., 2022) alternatively provide the foundation for far more generative encounters. In our previous research (Hickey et al., 2022) we have noted that when ERBs approach ethics review with a conviction towards deliberative engagement, the ethics review process can be actively used to advocate for modes of research that might otherwise be proscribed. Providing that the constitution of the ERB’s membership is considered carefully and that ‘a wide range of expertise and disciplinary knowledge’ (Hickey et al., 2022: 553) is represented, the capacity for the ERB to advocate for and endorse approaches to research beyond narrowly conceived ‘rational, scientific and quantitative’ (Troiani and Dutson, 2021: 5) forms of research presents as a distinct opportunity.

It is in this way that the ERB can in fact work to confront the conditions of the neoliberal university. Rather than working to further entrench narrow conceptions of research (and researchers), a deliberative ERB provides a bulwark against proscription by provoking engagement and the development of broad understandings of what ‘counts’ as research conduct. A representative and deliberative ERB has within its purview this capacity, where the board affords an important function for recognising and supporting diverse forms of research activity. We now turn to consider the principles that underpin the constitution of an ERB working under this remit.

Challenges in current approaches to ethics review

The challenges inherent to prevailing approaches to ethics review include: (i) a higher education climate that is not favourable to HASS research, ³ and (ii) ethics review practices that are perceived as being inappropriate to HASS research. We argue that ERBs that apply generic and institution-wide review processes, and that maintain memberships with narrow disciplinary expertise are at risk of marginalising other research disciplines. On this point we note Busher and Fox’s (2021: 475–6) observation that ERBs invariably preference ‘research projects based on utilitarian understandings of ethical practice’, which may be an inappropriate response to much HASS research. Ignoring the disciplinary nuance and epistemic foundations of distinct research approaches generates prescriptive ethics review practices. In this sense, we argue that it is imperative that ERBs seek to maintain wide understandings of approaches to research and the concomitant epistemic and methodological foundations that inform diverse modalities of inquiry. We suggest that two factors must be considered by ERBs seeking to engage deliberative and engaged approaches to ethics review. In the first, we suggest that an ERB that maintains broad expertise within its membership maintains capacity to effectively review ethics applications. In the second, we argue that direct engagement with researchers by the ERB provides a basis from which to deliberate on the nuances that are inherent to specific research practices. We turn now to consider these factors in detail.

The epistemology of the ethics review

We acknowledge that, even with the application of these strategies, that the basic epistemic assumptions inherent to ethics review represent a challenge for HASS research. Significant here is the epistemological division that defines qualitative-interpretivist and quantitative-positivist approaches to enacting research and producing data (Tolich and Fitzgerald, 2006). In their survey of ERBs in five different countries, Tolich and Fitzgerald (2006: 71) observed that they were ‘yet to find an ethics committee that reflects qualitative epistemological assumptions’ (p. 71). Their conclusion was to ‘accept that the epistemological assumptions [that they aligned with] fit ethics committee expectations like a round peg in a square hole’ (Tolich and Fitzgerald, 2006: 71).

Echoing Tolich and Fitzgerald (2006), Bell and Wynn (2020) observe that a ‘fundamental epistemological conflict’ (p. 206) emerges between qualitative researchers and ERBs in terms of the ways that framings of risk, benefit, and consent are configured in social science research. They apply the notion of ‘imaginations of risk’ to identify three key elements of risk inherent within prevailing ethical review process: the risk posed by research itself, the risk posed to the institution, and the risk posed to the researcher (2020: 10). For Bell and Wynn (2020) qualitative-interpretivist researchers hold antithetical views on risk to those applied by ERBs, with this posing a point of epistemic conflict. Various scholars have highlighted how these imaginations of risk can prevent important research from advancing, particularly in the humanities, social sciences, and fields using community-based participatory research methods, such as the creative arts (e.g. Ferris et al., 2021; Massoumi et al., 2020; Sluka, 2020; Tamariz et al., 2015).

These examples highlight inherent epistemic assumptions in the review of research. We suggest that the intersection of these with systemic pressures inherent to the managerial university context creates further tensions. While biomedical epistemic concerns drive the processual impetus of the ethics review, the mediation of its effects might be more deliberately associated with risk management and aversion. Hedgecoe (2016) raises this point in terms of ‘reputation management’. As Hedgecoe (2016) notes, reputation management ‘involves control of internal organisational behaviour as a precursor to managing external reputations’ (p. 488), with the implication for ERBs corresponding with the oversight role that they play. Beyond merely undertaking ethics review for the evaluation of the merit inherent to a specific research inquiry, ‘the expansion into higher education of specific ways of organising public sector work, known as “new public management”’ (Hedgecoe, 2016: 487) has had the effect of monitoring how research is conducted and disseminated with emphasis given to the implications for a university’s reputation. As Hedgecoe (2016) identifies, under this logic, an ERB serves ‘as an instrument of organisational reputation management, preventing the gathering of data that might, when published, harm the University’s interests’ (p. 490). The problem identified by Hedgecoe (2016) rests in how the work of the ERB is positioned, in whose interests, and for what purpose.

Reporting from our own experience, we note that our own ERB has not encountered similar pressure to conform to university mandated sensibilities. We remain autonomous to the point of assessing applications for ethics clearance based on merit. Having said this, we have however been active in bridging connections with the senior executive of the university and maintain close contact with the university’s research integrity office and directorate of research. This has encouraged a relationship that enables the ERB to relay details on its deliberations and practice, assert its presence as an important entity within the university’s administration and, perhaps most importantly, maintain autonomy in its statutory function. Undertaking our deliberation impartially to the university’s executive while maintaining close dialogue and representation with the university executive arm has enabled the ERB to avoid the pitfalls identified by Hedgecoe (2016) in functioning as a jurisdictional entity.

Notably, The NHMRC’s (2007) National Statement provides some coverage to ensure this impartiality. Under Making and Communicating Decision, section 5.2.23 notes, ‘A review body may approve, request amendment of, or reject a research proposal on ethical grounds’. This is extended under 5.2.24 (c) and further emphasis of the required impartiality of the review process is noted in 5.2.28. We take seriously this mention of the approval, amendment or rejection of an application ‘on ethical grounds’ and defer to the principles outlined in the Statement to defend decisions made. With the reporting and disclosure of ERB deliberations and processes, and a stated adherence to evaluation processes on ethical grounds, we are positioned to ensure that the ERB reviews the merit of the research and is not unduly influenced by university interests.

Discussion: Towards a humanities-oriented ethical review practice

Critiques of the appropriateness of ethics review processes in HASS have drawn attention to ‘the personal ethics of “self-regulation”’ (Alderson and Morrow, 2006: 407). Two dimensions define this position: (i) that social science research is intrinsically more ethical in its remit because it engages with questions of what Bosk (2007) refers to as the researchers’ sense of ‘moral certainty’ (see also Bærøe et al., 2022; De Wet, 2010; Peled-Raz et al., 2021; Sheehan et al., 2018), and (ii) that ethics review processes risk undermining the value and purpose of HASS research (Alderson and Morrow, 2006: 409).

We resist these assertions and suggest that there are good reasons to undertake ethics reviews of HASS research. Not least for the oversight and ‘quality assurance’ that the review process provides, the ethics review also broaches the possibility for nurturing a research community by providing a point of engagement, professional development and professional dialogue.

Views that position ethics review as simply a ‘control mechanism’ (Stolp, 2016: 16) miss the value that a deliberative and engaged ERB can provide. As our own experiences indicate, considerable capacity exists for the ERB to engage with researchers and nurture a larger climate of research conduct. We extend Alderson and Morrow’s (2006) suggestion that ethics processes can indeed inform research practice and provoke deeper understandings of the implications it generates. As they argue ‘research ethics can introduce practical, realistic insights in new dimensions’ (Alderson and Morrow, 2006: 412). Accordingly, we summarise the following as reasons for why HASS researchers should engage with ethics review processes. These processes present as:

Rather than hinder research activity, engaging with the ethics review process holds the capacity for enhancing understandings of the research process.

An ERB that is enabled to engage with its research community maintains ‘the potential to act as glue that helps to hold together what would otherwise be very disparate knowledge traditions’ (Scott, 2004: 445). Further, Brown et al. (2020: 764) found that educational researchers were more likely to see ERBs as ‘friend’ rather than ‘foe’ when the review process was built upon mutual understanding and learning, a flattened hierarchy, and deliberative application processes. We agree with this sentiment and, in Figure 1, present our depiction of how the ERB, through adopting a deliberative and engaging approach to its efforts, addresses the diverging methodologies of HASS researchers.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Broadening the traditional ethics review board’s approach to address the diverging needs of humanities and social sciences research.

The matrix presented in Figure 1 depicts the intersecting dynamics between (a) the variety in research designs contained within ethics applications submitted to ERB’s for assessment, and (b) the ERB’s approach to assessing these applications. On the horizontal axis, the methodologies proposed in ethics applications can range from narrowly prescriptive, positivistic designs to an extensive variety of interpretivist designs. The vertical axis reflects the ERB’s operational style, ranging from being distant and regulatory through to deliberative and engaging. We have argued in this paper that ‘traditional scientific’ methods associated with quantitative-positivist research are used extensively within the biomedical and ‘hard’ sciences. These methodologies are more likely situated at the ‘limited’ end of the modalities of inquiry spectrum, for which ERBs traditionally focused on providing a compliance and authoritarian assessment. Comparatively, HASS researchers use a wider variety of research methodologies, including extensive use of qualitative-interpretivist and mixed-pragmatic approaches. These approaches lead to what can be unusual and/or complex research designs that push and ultimately advance the ERB’s interpretation of how ethical obligations are enacted across different contexts.

By intersecting these dynamics, the resulting quadrants contain what we propose are four general ERB approaches to assessing ethics applications. The upper, ‘remedial’ and ‘participatory’ quadrants provide for traditional ERB’s broadening their approach to address nuances and specificities of HASS applications, as well as provide a supportive and advisory structure for student and early to mid-career researchers across all disciplines. The remedial review process of the upper quadrant might typically involve the ERB providing constructive written feedback on gaps in relation to more standardised quantitative research designs. In comparison, the participatory review process can involve additional, direct engagement, including meeting with the researcher(s) to clarify and/or better understand their research design and to offer advice for addressing the study’s ethical obligations.

The two lower quadrants reflect ERB operations that would be more appropriate for experienced researchers across disciplines, reducing the need for the educative aspects associated with the upper quadrants. Therefore, the pure, conformative review process involves a focused compliance assessment, best suited to highly structured, positivistic research approaches submitted by experienced researchers. Here, the ERB’s assessment tends to reflect a more rigid and expedient ‘yes/no’ outcome. In this approach, the ERB is more likely to be perceived as partisan or ‘foe’ by the researcher. Hence, the bipartisan review process prompts the ERB, prior to determining a ‘yes/no’ position, to represent the ‘friend’ stance and extend requests for further clarity in circumstances where experienced researchers are submitting novel and unfamiliar research designs associated with interpretivist-qualitative studies. Finally, notwithstanding our advocacy for ERBs to embrace a deliberative and engaging philosophy as a fundamental tenet for assessing any application before it, an assumption of this model is that ERBs tend to operate across these four approaches subject to the profile of each application before it.

The demand for ERBs to be increasingly reflexive and dynamic in the service they provide is apparent throughout this paper’s discussion. The conceptualisation and typology presented in Figure 1 highlights the importance of an ongoing conversation as to how ERBs need to remain relevant and productive in line with the veritable feast of research ethics applications they assess. We welcome further debate and refinement of the concepts introduced here. The need is clear for ongoing scholarship on the evolving practices of ERBs to continually evolve our understandings of ‘ethically safe’ research, and to optimise the service and value-add ERBs provide to university structures, the research community and broader stakeholders, within the context of societal, regulatory and environmental shifts.

Conclusion

We commenced this paper by drawing attention to the disciplinary distinctions that frame ethics review. Although the HASS disciplines might maintain association with the tenets of moral philosophy, ethics review processes have emerged from the pragmatic codification of biomedical epistemic concerns. This association presents a tension. The ‘chorus of complaint’ (Bosk, 2007: 196) that has emerged from HASS researchers, suggests that formalised ethics review processes fail to understand the tenets of HASS research, and consequently disempower its researchers. We hold a different view.

Fostering a deliberative institutional environment where the ERB ensures that its membership is representative of the research conducted within its institution, and that researchers are enabled to engage with the ERB, provokes a climate of mutual benefit for researchers and the ERB. Reflecting upon our own practices as an ERB in an Australian university, we note that the assessment of research for its ethical merit is enhanced when ERBs seek to understand the conditions and assumptions that inhere to specific disciplinary and methodological applications. Through these means, review processes develop as more deeply informed. Opening opportunities for ERBs and researchers to engage and deliberate on the ethical dimensions of research establishes the foundations for better research, with this especially significant for HASS researchers.