Ethical and Responsible Social Science Research in Armed Conflict Contexts

People living in conflict are among the most vulnerable to any adverse effects of data collection, sharing, and publication. Researchers working on conflict situations also face challenges, dilemmas, and danger that goes well beyond existing ethical codes. This project will study how ethical research is sustained and adapted within conflict settings by researchers studying health and displacement. The findings will be used to develop ethical guidelines for conflict zones and support the protection of citizens, communities and researchers living and working in conflict situations. The research team plans to implement an analysis of the ethical issues of research on human subjects in situations of armed conflict. The project will begin by mapping existing knowledge in locations of armed conflict about the ethics of research, how researchers identify risks and challenges, and how they navigate ethical research discourse. Using interviews the project will document the current practices of research questioning; data collection, storage, sharing, and security; and ethical oversight and how these vary across settings. In addition it will use the Delphi Technique and further data collection with researchers and multilateral organizations to develop best practices, including for data collection, storage, sharing, security, analysis, and publication. Output from this project will include an annotated reading guide, handbook of best practices, and in-person meetings and workshops with researchers and large multilateral organizations. It is anticipated that the results of this project will lead to better ethical protocols for research that will then inform research on armed conflict, and collaboration between organizations on data collection, analysis, sharing, and security. In addition, we anticipate this will result in more research on situations of armed conflict that can inform policy and programming in humanitarian situations. This project is funded through the ER2 program by the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences and Office of International Science and Engineering. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.