What is it about?
We provide practical guidance for researchers and ethical review committees on using formal qualifications and training, explicit claims of competence, and markers of in/competence to assess qualitative research competence as part of the ethical review process.
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Why is it important?
Researchers should demonstrate that they have the appropriate experience, qualifications and competence in qualitative methods. Ethical review committees have the responsibility to judge this claimed competence. But this process is often invisible.
Perspectives
This paper came from two incidents that made me think about how we judge research competence as part of ethical review: I taught a session on ethics in qualitative research, to members of ethics committees and realised how ill-prepared many felt to judge qualitative projects. They either applied quantitative understandings or they decided to trust the applications knew what they were doing - both are problematic. I reviewed two qualitative projects as part of my role on an ethical review committee. Both did pretty poorly at demonstrating they were prepared by teams who had appropriate qualitative experience, qualifications and competence.
Dr Julie Mooney-Somers
University of Sydney
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Ethical review and qualitative research competence: Guidance for reviewers and applicants, Research Ethics, November 2016, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1747016116677636.
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