Monica Ruiz

Children and young people are increasingly involved in social science research as co-researchers. In such roles they can take on a range of responsibilities from developing research questions and methods, to undertaking fieldwork and analysis, to knowledge exchange. As co-research with children and young people becomes more common, significant ethical concerns have arisen about how to pay them fairly for their involvement. Yet, there is no consensus about what constitutes ethical practice. The limited literature primarily originates from a health context, concentrates on the ‘Global North’ rather than the ‘Global South’, and focuses on children and young people as research participants rather than as co-researchers. Based on our experience from the International and Canadian Child Rights Partnership, which involves research teams of children, young people and adults from both the ‘Global South’ and ‘Global North’, this article critically assesses the rationales for different types of payment, following the well-rehearsed typology of reimbursement, compensation, appreciation, and incentives. Our critical assessment surfaces questions about the intergenerational positioning of children and young people, the commodification of their involvement in co-research, and the balancing of individual and collective social norms in different contexts. The article proposes a framework of reciprocity for respectfully acknowledging children and young people’s involvement. It removes the categories of compensation and appreciation and creates two new categories of recognition and resource exchange. Furthermore, it narrows the category of incentives to equity incentives. Reimbursement is expected but, as such payments are not based on principles of reciprocity, it is not included in the framework itself. Unlike existing typologies, this newly developed framework is specifically intended for co-research in the social sciences with children and young people, and is aligned with the social justice aspirations of co-research.

In this paper we will review some of the conceptual controversies that arise when talking about conscientious objection, for this we will begin by analyzing what conscientious objection is not to starting from reviewing civil disobedience and other legal figures that have been associated with the OC. We will try to show that, although this concept is related to several figures should not be confused with them, and I will try to show how such confusions. Conceptual problems in the public arena, which result in attacks on the autonomy and civil rights of populations that have historically seen their rights violated sexual and reproductive rights.

Informed consent (IC) is a cornerstone of ethical research, ensuring participants are informed and provide voluntary agreement to participate. Yet IC remains complex, especially in research with young people, and practical examples for engaging youth meaningfully in IC processes are limited. Participatory visual methodologies engage youth as knowledge producers to think creatively, express diverse perspectives, and engage in dialog. This study explores how participatory visual methodologies can involve youth in IC by inviting them to create and discuss visual representations of its key concepts. Grounded in literature on research ethics with young people, we ask: How do young people in Cameroon represent some of the core concepts within IC visually, and what kinds of conversations emerge around these representations? To address these questions, we conducted workshops with 56 young people (10–16 years old) in Cameroon’s Southwest and Northwest Regions. Participants took photos to represent and discuss the benefits and risks of research, voluntary participation, and confidentiality as key elements of IC, and created visual representations of IC forms. Findings show that incorporating visual elements in IC prompted participants to critically engage with IC, facilitating a deeper contextualized and nuanced understanding and meaningful dialog about both the notion of consent and the study they are potentially consenting to. This study presents a case on adolescents and IC in an African context, emphasizing the importance of social and cultural factors in IC and contributing to literature that largely focuses on younger children in Western settings. Integrating participatory visual methods reframed IC as a collaborative, group-centered process rather than a researcher-driven, one-time event. These findings highlight the potential of participatory visual approaches to deepen youth engagement in research ethics, contributing to more equitable and locally relevant research practices.

Objectives—To assess the relationship between the approval of trials by a research ethics committee and the fact that informed consent from participants was obtained, with the quality of study design and methods.Design—Systematic review using a standardised checklist.Main measures—Methodological and ethical issues of all trials published between 1993 and 1995 in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, the Journal of the American Medical Association and the British Medical Journal were studied. In addition, clinical trials conducted in Spain and published by at least one Spanish author during the same period in any other journal were also included.Results—We studied the published articles of 767 trials and found the following indicators of lower methodological quality to be independent predictors for failure to disclose REC approval or ICP: absence of concealment of allocation, lack of justification for unblinded trials, not using a treatment for the patients in the control group, absent information on statistical methods, not including sample size estimation, not establishing the rules to stop the trial, and omitting the presentation of a baseline comparison of groupsConclusion—Trials of higher methodological and scientific quality were more likely to provide information about their ethical aspects

Introduction: The use of human samples in genomic research has increased ethical debate about informed consent (IC) requirements and the information that subjects should receive regarding the results of the research. However, there are no quantitative data regarding researchers’ attitudes about these issues. Methods: We present the results of a survey of 104 US and 100 Spanish researchers who had published genomic epidemiology studies in 61 journals during 2006. Results: Researchers preferred a broader IC than the IC they had actually obtained in their published papers. US authors were more likely than their Spanish colleagues to support obtaining a broad IC, covering either any future research project or any projects related to a group of diseases (67.6% vs 43%; adjusted OR = 4.84, 95% CI, 2.32 to 10.12). A slight majority of researchers (55.8%) supported informing participants about individual genomic results only if the reliability and clinical validity of the information had been established. Men were more likely than women to believe that patients should be informed of research results even if these conditions were not met (adjusted OR = 2.89, 95% CI = 1.46 to 5.72). Conclusions: This study provides evidence of a wide range of views among scientists regarding some controversial ethical issues related to genomic research, suggesting the need for more study, debate and education. In the interim, journals might consider including the investigators’ policies regarding these ethical issues in the papers they publish in the field of genomic epidemiology