Ethics & partnerships
Research ethics with communities: consent, fair payment for community researchers, partnership agreements and the lessons of past abuses.
- Community-University Partnership Agreements: What to Put in a Memorandum of Understanding
A practical checklist for written agreements between universities and community organisations doing research together: purpose and values, governance and decision-making, budget and overheads, data ownership, intellectual property, authorship, conflict resolution and ending the partnership.
- Informed Consent in Community Research: Individual, Collective and Ongoing
How informed consent works in participatory and community-based research: what the Common Rule requires, consent as a process, oral and low-literacy consent, community permission alongside individual consent, photographs, co-researchers collecting consent, withdrawal, and consent versus the GDPR lawful basis.
- Paying Community Researchers and Participants: A Practical Guide to Fair Recognition
How to pay and recognise community members who take part in research: the difference between participants, public contributors and community researchers, cash versus vouchers, effects on welfare benefits and tax, institutional payment barriers, and non-financial recognition, with UK NIHR and US guidance.
- Research Ethics With Communities: Beyond the Ethics Committee
Why research with communities needs more than standard ethics approval: the Belmont Report and its limits, the history behind community distrust, CIOMS guidance on community engagement, the Durham and NCCPE principles for community-based participatory research, the TRUST Global Code of Conduct, and practical safeguards.
