How can team leaders ensure that research respects human rights?

Leaders can start by establishing clear policies that explicitly support human rights. They should promote a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion, encouraging open communication, and providing training to educate team members on human rights issues. Regular assessments and audits can help ensure compliance and create accountability within the team. Leading by example and fostering an environment where everyone feels safe to voice concerns or issues related to human rights violations is crucial.

Team leaders need to make sure that study protocols follow guidelines and regulations as well as IRB principles. It is essential to inform patients, caregivers and families about all implications of participating in human research.

Anyone doing any research - even in social sciences - needs to understand the foundational documents - Declaration of Helsinki AND The Belmont Report. Although many people think first of medical research (drugs, devices, surgical procedures etc..) - ethical principles apply to research where talking to or observing others is the research - are those involved aware that they are part of a research study? Does being involved put them at risk for harm?

If we look at statistical research and how it is used to govern policies for a variety of problems, it often misses out on a larger part of on-ground society that has never been considered due to geographical reasons, accessibility issues, and lack of awareness. This includes minorities with no access to the internet, information, and of course - even political reasons are there that only a particular set of groups gets to participate, discuss, and be a part of research surveys and analysis done. The one possible solution can be to spread awareness before collecting data, focusing more on on-ground research, and definitely to include those with lived experiences as they definitely speak nothing else but truth. :)

Ethical principles is actually the bedrock. This will guide whether or not the respondents will be willing to share information free of bias.

Depending on your discipline, it is good to keep oneself abreast with what are the latest in the field - be it in the form of attending conferences, listening to talks, reading up of magazines and journals, etc. Aside from keeping oneself updates with the latest topics and findings in your field, keep yourself informed as well with the latest in methods, and issues regarding the applications of certain methods of data collection, processing, handling, and analysis. Certain journals of certain fields publish special volumes and/or issues touching on debates, discussions, and arguments for and against a particular methodology. These provide great ideas on the practical and ethical concerns that can arise, and can keep you on your toes.

Always seek approval from an ethics committee - it’s better to submit and be ‘exempt’ than to not have submitted at all. Ethics committees are there to protect the safety and well being of participants. By always seeking approval - you have shown your ethical principles for protecting participants.

The topics covered are included in an informed consent document. In some countries (like the US) there are federal laws which regulate the content of the information in the consent. These are called essential elements. Informed consent may take on various forms - one page short form to many pages - depending on the type of study. The informed consent is ALWAYS approved by the ethics committee.

As someone who often uses recorded interviews and podcasts as a means of qualitative research gathering, it is extremely important that I communicate to my subjects about the ethical implications of my work. This is particularly important because their names and likeness will be available for people to hear widely. In order to do this, I hold regular meetings with my production team to discuss ethical issues and I encourage team members and guests to ask as many questions as they need to to discuss possible ethical concerns. This helps to protect the rights of research participants (podcast guests), and it also helps to ensure the integrity of the research findings.

Monitoring and Evaluation is pivotal to learning and improvement. Monitor and Evaluate at intervals so that you can quickly adapt the learnings to your research methodology.

WATCH OUT FOR THE CHOSEN TOPIC Some topics cannot naturally avoid Human Rights violations, so if you are not for it don't go for it. Other formalities can also guide you to avoid getting into violating the human rights of your targeted audience. Avoid using the same methodology that other researchers earmarked for human rights violations used, by reading the write ups of their critiques. Modify your research topic if it turns out to be that which will be geared towards the violation of human rights, no matter how much you put in to dodge it.

Do not stop reading your topic of interest and take out time to learn from credible journals. This will help you learn from different perspectives.

The application of the highest standards of ethical conduct is a requirement across all the different stages of research, e.g., design, participant recruitment, questions and writing. Here, the principles of ethical conduct enshrined in declarations, ethics training and approvals can help structure this process. But beyond this ethical conduct lies the wisdom and judgement of individual researchers. So, one must ask how their writing makes use of participants’ views. One must, under all circumstances, represent, or shy away from misrepresenting, the views of interviewees, especially when direct quotes are made.