3. Ethical Aspects
How can qualitative researchers collect data during social-distancing measures? Adam Jowett outlines several techniques researchers can use to collect data without face-to-face contact with participants. Bringing together a number of previous studies, he also suggests such techniques have their own methodological advantages and disadvantages and that while these techniques may appear particularly apt during the coronavirus crisis, researchers should take time to reflect on ethical issues before re-designing their studies.
Editor’s take: Data responsibility starts with you - Ben Parker - The New Humanitarian
"When I started my career, I got a foot in the door by making bar graphs. Way back then, (let’s just say it was the pre-Windows era), bosses were super-impressed. Things haven’t changed much. People still love graphs and maps. Bosses like them. Donors like them. In this often depressing world of humanitarian action, data glitters. But the way the world has gone, it’s time for a talk about data responsibilities. Misinformation and disinformation are running wild. Data can be – is being – weaponised."
Keynote address at Cart-ONG's 7th Humanitarian & Development Data Forum held 2-3 November 2020.
Ethics in evaluation and COVID-19: New practices in a changing world - Elisa Sandri - Itad
The COVID-19 pandemic has created shockwaves around the world and has radically changed not only our usual working arrangements but also the overall approach to evaluation and data collection. As we increasingly rely on remote data collection, we are also at a turning point for ethics and safeguarding in evaluation. A greater reliance on technology and innovative methodologies for data collection brings new challenges in applying ethics in evaluation.
Much qualitative research typically relies on face-to-face interaction for data collection through interviews, focus groups and fieldwork. But there are myriad ways researchers and students can collect qualitative data online or gather textual data that already exists.
"How can qualitative researchers collect data during social-distancing measures? Adam Jowett outlines several techniques researchers can use to collect data without face-to-face contact with participants. Bringing together a number of previous studies, he also suggests such techniques have their own methodological advantages and disadvantages and that while these techniques may appear particularly apt during the coronavirus crisis, researchers should take time to reflect on ethical issues before re-designing their studies."
Conducting evaluations in times of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) – IEG World Bank
Current circumstances push us to rethink how to go about our evaluative work to address ethical, conceptual, and methodological challenges that will affect our capacity to conduct evaluations.
The need to adapt social research to the new reality is particularly acute when we engage with populations affected by marginalisation and/or violence, creating double or even triple fragilities. In this article, the San Diego Tribune describes how students from San Diego University gather oral histories from marginalised communities, and how they adapt their methods of social research to the new situation created by the pandemics.
A guide to preventing and addressing social stigma associated with COVID-19 - WHO
Social stigma in the context of health is the negative association between a person or group of people who share certain characteristics and a specific disease. In an outbreak, this may mean people are labelled, stereotyped, discriminated against, treated separately, and/or experience loss of status because of a perceived link with a disease. Such treatment can negatively affect those with the disease, as well as their caregivers, family, friends and communities. People who don’t have the disease but share other characteristics with this group may also suffer from stigma. The current COVID-19 outbreak has provoked social stigma and discriminatory behaviours against people of certain ethnic backgrounds as well as anyone perceived to have been in contact with the virus.
Good practices during COVID-19 - OECD/DAC and IEO/UNDP
The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled an immediate response by the development evaluation community. Building on informal consultations in a series of knowledge-sharing exchanges, consultations and webinars convened by OECD/DAC Network on Development Evaluation (EvalNet) and the Independent Evaluation Office of UNDP the two institutions have jointly prepared this guidance note capturing good practices for evaluations during COVID-19.
Data should drive COVID-19 mitigation strategies in lower and middle-income countries – DHS Program
One size fits all does not apply to COVID-19 measures. There is a need for data-driven and context-specific decision making with respect to COVID-19 responses, to avoid putting specific categories of people at risk.
Just as we researchers have been thinking of our colleagues, students, families, children and giving everyone that extra slack, we also need to be extra thoughtful about the human subjects we work with in evaluation. To that end, we urge everyone who is thinking of a phone survey right now in a developing country to exert an abundance of caution.
What matters in our work as evaluators - blog on an interview with Donna Mertens
What matters in our work as evaluators, is to raise up issues in a way that sheds light on the change needed in programs and policies – by asking provocative questions. We have to be ethical and honest about the values underpinning a program or policy, and this is particularly true in cases of global crisis such as the Covid-19 one.
IEG Lesson Library - Independent Evaluation Group
As the global community ramps up efforts to confront the Coronavirus pandemic, evidence from the responses to past crises offers important lessons on what worked and why. These lessons can help guide the various responses to the health and economic challenges posed by the Coronavirus.
To assist this process, IEG has created a repository of relevant work, bringing together a range of evaluations of responses to past global crises such as the 2008 financial crisis and the 2006 Avian Influenza, to make the lessons generated more accessible. This repository will be updated regularly as new reports and analysis become available.
Disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic
Evaluation is about gathering and analysing relevant evidence; and disinformation is a threat to political dialogue and social dynamics, but also to evaluation.
In this reading list the EU Council Library includes references to a number of resources on disinformation about Covid-19 and to the history of disinformation; an excellent reading for evaluators in times of global crisis !