With a mix of project stages and experience in the room, it felt useful to share experiences about research ethics! Research ethics means: the application of ethical principles to research activities. UoE policy, in line with UKRI (the body that allocates government spending on research and innovation via research councils), names the key principles of research ethics:
- Dignity and Respect for Persons: Protecting the autonomy, rights, and dignity of individuals involved in research.
- Beneficence and Non-maleficence: Maximizing benefits while minimizing harm to participants, communities, and the environment.
- Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: Ensuring fairness in the recruitment of participants and the distribution of research benefits and burdens.
- Integrity, openness and transparency: Conducting research with honesty, accountability, and transparency.
- Responsibility and accountability: Considering the broader societal and environmental implications of research.
What this means for specific, niche research projects that explore situated music-related phenomena… well, it depends. We talked about our experiences of seeking ethical approval for projects ranging from the study of trauma related to music used in warfare, to systematic interview studies exploring institutional and contextual factors impacting musical performance anxiety, to observational research requiring fieldwork recordings and international travel. We discussed the separation of ethics-approval-protocol from the thinking work of interrogating the true ethical implications of your research project.
Depending on the specific research project, the task of preparing, explaining, revising and applying ethical considerations to a plan of work might also articulate with quite a range of policy documents – these can change often, and even the review committees may find it hard to stay up to date on research data management, travel guidelines, student attendance and registration regulations, and so on.
There is a peculiar time-warping, dialogic nature behind the written statements that are needed to bring to the surface – and then justify – the ethical considerations made about a research project. We noticed that the depth of reflection and the communication skills involved in this task are powerful. The experience and skills to engage effectively in University research ethics review are valuable, and overlap to a great extent with those needed to create effective research design, make other applications in general (e.g. funding, career progression), and publish peer-reviewed academic work.
