Consent is one necessary foundation for ethical research and it's one of the research ethics committee's major roles to ensure that the consent process meets acceptable standards. Although on Oxford 'A' REC (an NHS Research Ethics Committee based in the UK) we've been impressed by the thought and work put into this aspect of research ethics, we've…

Consent is essential for legal and ethical psychological practice. EPs in the UK work with children and young people from ages 0 to 25, meaning that consent gaining practices must take account of the complexities of different professional guidelines, legislation, and case law depending on the age and competence of individual service users. This…

Background: Randomised trials have been on the rise in social policy over the last decade and a half, particularly in areas working with young people and vulnerable adults. Informed consent is an important principle for ethics committees governing research conducted by universities. Aims and objectives: We consider the arguments for and against…

The Confidentiality Advisory Group (CAG) is a specialised body that advises the Health Research Authority (HRA) and the Secretary of State for Health on requests for access to confidential information, in the absence of informed consent from its owners. Its primary role is to oversee the safe use of such information and to counsel the governing…

Formal consent for children's research participation legally resides with adults, and guidelines typically recommend consulting children about their participation only from 7 years of age. How can researchers support younger children's informed decision-making about their research participation, particularly in larger-scale studies without…

The aim of this article is twofold. It describes a long-term relationship with a not-for-profit organisation in the UK, focusing on a particular project that used drama as a tool for building self-confidence and employability. At the same time it reviews autoethnography as a research method, describing its distinctive features and questioning the…

Sexual violence is a widespread issue on university campuses. Although not a new concern, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the United Kingdom (UK) have only recently implemented prevention strategies. Many approaches focus on increasing knowledge of consent and related harms, but are rarely evaluated, or sit outside of the curriculum. While…

This article presents the findings of a systematic qualitative analysis of research in the ethics of digital trace data use in learning and education. From the resulting analysis of 77 peer-reviewed studies, we (1) map the characteristics of research by study type, academic community, institutional setting, and national context; (2) identify the…

This study explores the opportunities and dilemmas that have been encountered by researchers seeking the views of young people with autism. Twelve researchers were interviewed about their experiences in this field. Through exploration of the complex methodological and ethical issues that they encountered, this study aims to better understand how…

Considerations for conducting ethical research with human participants in languages other than English are addressed to some extent in regulatory and guiding statements for researchers, but in ways that are minimal or vague. In this article, I examine guiding documents for research ethics from four countries: the UK, Canada, Australia and the USA,…

Non-consensual sterilization is one of the characteristic historical abuses that took place mainly in the first half of the 20th century. People with intellectual disability (ID) were a prime target as part of the ideology of negative eugenics. In certain jurisdictions, laws were in force for several decades that permitted sterilization without…

Co-producing research is complex and messy. This paper draws on Tina Cook's argument for the systematic inclusion of 'mess' in research accounts as a conceptual framework through which to articulate areas of ethical mess from within a co-produced research project. Through narrating the 'messy' ethical complications the paper illustrates a number…

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted an abrupt shift in the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in practice. The pre-pandemic use of informal ICT was already ubiquitous in social work practice. The purpose of this teaching note is to highlight that social work education must prepare students for practice using ICT during COVID-19 and…

Universities have a special status in society because of the position they hold within their communities and their responsibilities for civic leadership. Consequently, there are increasing calls on universities to make their processes, teaching and finances more transparent to the general public in order to promote greater accountability. Guidance…

This study expands our knowledge of consent in linking survey and administrative data by studying respondents' behaviour when consenting to link their own records and when consenting to link those of their children. It develops and tests a number of hypothesised mechanisms of consent, some of which were not explored in the past. The hypotheses…