ABSTRACT
The nature of community-based participatory research [CBPR] poses distinctive ethical challenges. In the absence of organized guidelines, a remarkable amount of researchers' time and energy will be spent tackling these ethical challenges. The study aimed to explore ethical issues and principles potentially arising when conducting CBPR. This qualitative study conducted in CBPR Center of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Required data were gathered through systematic literature review and semi-structured interviews. Representatives of community, academia, and nongovernmental organizations [NGOs] participated in our study. Ten interviews with representatives of partner organizations, four group interviews with academic staff, and four with representatives of community were conducted. Repeated thematic analysis was used to elicit ethics-related overarching themes from transcribed interviews. As recommendations, these themes were then organized into a set of CBPR-related ethical issues and principles. Four CBPR ethical guidelines [including 173 articles] were selected from a systematic review. Overarching themes relating to ethical principles which emerged from interviews were as follows: Trust, transparency and accountability, equity and inclusion, power imbalance, tolerance and conflict management, and attention to cultural sensitivity. Practical principles that emerged included: Consensus rather than informed consent, ownership of data and research achievements, and sustainability and maintenance of relationships. According to findings and in comparison to international guidelines, the present study put more emphasis on cultural sensitivity and sustainability as CBPR ethical tangles. Community-based participatory research ethical challenges are of the same kind in most parts of the world. However, some discrepancies exist that calls for local scrutiny. Future use and critic of current explored ethical issues and principles are highly encouraged
Subject(s)
Ethics , Evaluation Studies as TopicABSTRACT
As social health is a condition-driven, dynamic and fluid concept, it seems necessary to construct and obtain a national and relevant concept of it for every society. Providing an empirical back up for Iran's concept of social health was the aim of the present study. This study is an ecologic study in which available data for 30 provinces of Iran in 2007 were analyzed. In order to prove construct validity and obtain a social health index, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted on six indicators of population growth, willful murder, poverty, unemployment, insurance coverage and literacy. Following the factor analysis, two factors of Diathesis [made up of high population growth, poverty, low insurance coverage and illiteracy] and Problem [made up of unemployment and willful murder] were extracted. The diathesis and problem explained 48.6 and 19.6% of social health variance respectively. From provinces, Sistan and Balu-chistan had the highest rate of poverty and violence and the lowest rate of literacy and insurance coverage. In terms of social health index, Tehran, Semnan, Isfahan, Bushehr and Mazandaran had the highest ranks while Sistan and Balu-chistan, Lurestan, Kohkiloyeh and Kermanshah occupied the lowest ones. There are some differences and similarities between Iranian concept of social health and that of other societies. However, a matter that makes our concept special and different is its attention to population. the increase in literacy rate and insurance coverage along with reduction of poverty, violence and unemployment rates can be the main intervention strategies to improve social health status in Iran