THE ETHICAL ANALYSIS OF ADAPTATION OF RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIAL APPROACH IN THE FIELD OF IMPACT EVALUATION FOR HUMANITARIAN PROJECTS

Conducting and communicating research is a responsible intellectual job. A researcher would go analysing immense literature and would search for valid evidence. Prior to narrating an authentic statement. Correspondingly while selecting a method for study it is vital to opt for an approach that is ethically suitable in a defined context. While applied on a set of a populace, generally denoted to as a sample and/or universe. Therefore, social research would be a more laborious task. Hence, the social context is ever-changing in terms of time and space. Diverse methods of social research are being invented yearly. To compete with consistently changing social phenomena and needs of evidence. Operational research, evaluation, and screen monitoring are the most prominent approaches of modern social research. Hence, these naive approaches of social research would undergo learning and adaptation. Community development projects and retrospective studies thereof are also being synthesized, with existing methods of social research. An identical practice is an adaptation of the Randomized Controlled Trial hereinafter (RCT) approach to conduct impact evaluations of humanitarian and development projects. Hitherto, RCT was being widely used by health researchers as a clinical research approach. Hence, an adaptation of this clinical research approach for field studies, particularly for the evaluation of humanitarian projects. Those are being implemented to provide survival support to vulnerable communities. It would require this approach to undergo some ethical adaptations. This research paper is developed to commence a wider literary discourse on requisite ethical adaptations for RCT to use in the evaluation of humanitarian projects. This research paper brings the findings from desk and field. To discuss key questions; where and how we can use RCT, and what ethical adaptations are necessary not to be forgone? This discourse is established on the usefulness of RCT, ethics of social research, ethics of evaluation, and humanitarian principles. The overarching purpose of this research paper is to facilitate the adaptation of RCT in the field of impact evaluation. While considering the ethical principles of the development sector and evaluation. Article visualizations: