Ethics of Research on Abortion

This resource is from the Capacity Strengthening for Abortion Research in Nigeria (CSARN) project. The material was developed as teaching modules for project Fellows who are early-career abortion researchers in Nigeria.

This presentation covers the basics of ethics in research and its relationship to abortion in the Nigerian context, as well as the application processes for ethical approval in Nigeria. During this session, ethics was defined as a determination of what is good or bad in the process of conceiving, conducting, and reporting research findings and the determination of acceptable boundaries in conducting research. Facilitators highlighted principles of research ethics like maximizing the benefits and minimizing the risk of their research, conducting research with justice and autonomy, respecting people’s (i.e. research subjects') confidentiality and privacy. Ethics of research publications, and how to avoid plagiarism, identify and avoid predatory publishers were discussed.

Some of the key ethical issues in abortion discussed include – limited capacity for oversight on research on abortion, challenges in getting informed consent from parents of adolescents, ensuring privacy during interviews, risk of emotional harm, judgmental interviewers, issues around getting respondents to recruit and meet expected targets and the issues of confidentiality. Some of the highlighted ideas on how to resolve these dilemmas include training research staff as well as ethics and research committee, and also provision of guidelines to assist in recruiting participants, getting informed consent, and supporting participants.

Participants also learned different examples of misconduct in research such as salami slicing, fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, honorary authorship, and undeserved exclusion in authorship. Facilitators highlighted requirements for authorship, the responsibilities of a scientist, the ethics of data sharing, and some of the red flags for predatory publishers. Participants participated in a practical session on research misconduct.